New Resolve

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.” - Edith Lovejoy Pierce

This year it's thirteen years since I met the boy that would be the man I married, twelve years since our first date,  six years since we moved in together and five years since we got engaged, got a cat and I got my first borderline diagnosis (2009 was a busy year). Now three years a Boardman family member and hopefully by the end of it a first time buyer and homeowner.

The new year always begins with a promise of opportunity, a chance to think about the things that didn't go how you wanted last year and how this year will be different.  You invest in the hope that the simple changing of date, will enforce a dramatic turn in your circumstances in the twelve months to follow.  A subconscious  barrier develops allowing you to feel confident that when the clock strikes midnight, all your woes of the previous year are over and you are free to start again.
 For me new year feels like a new chapter of a book, the previous ones you are thankful for and have learned from, but are ready to turn the page, tuck it neatly with the other slivers of paper and see what is  going to come next.   It's an open door at the end of a long corridor that was the year past,  that you have wandered down and tripped up on the carpet a few times, but now, as you come to the end of December,  you can see the door is not just ajar but wide open.

With every new year now I am thankful we have survived another year relatively unscathed, as so many in recent years have dented our armour and held us back from our achievements, but with relief comes the unknowing doubt of potential problems in the year ahead.  As we have so harshly learned, your life can change in a split second and throw obstacles in your path in unfair proportions.
For a lupus sufferer the hope of a new year comes with the inevitable knowledge that the year will go two ways, it'll flag up new problems, more hospital appointments, medications and worry or, you will again muddle through, hope for the best  but always have that nagging doubt that you are a biological ticking time bomb that could off at any time.

I feel that there is so often too much pressure placed on new year as a celebration, to look forward to the year to come and make the changes for a better and happier life, but for so many it is not.  Some know at the start of the year that this is going to be the toughest yet and on the first day of the year are wishing the weeks away to get through the troubles that lie ahead. People live with the knowledge that this will probably be the last year they may have with there family, others are fighting to find the courage to survive their first year without someone that they have lost.  

While we should enjoy and embrace new year in the way that suits us in that time and place, we shouldn't always use it as the only part of the year to embrace change.  New year is plagued with promises and resolutions that many of us struggle to keep, we achieve our best when we are at our happiest and most confident and not when the Gregorian calendar dictates.

Last year I didn't make any resolutions or start any new year diets, after the few years we'd had I decided I was just grateful to be back on my own two feet and feeling like the former Claire again that I decided 2013 was just going to be hopeful, and so I lived the year with that word in my mind and felt it in my heart the whole year through, giving me strength when I have had moments of doubt.
So how about a change this year? scrap that outdated idea of a new years resolution, give yourself a break and think of something you want this year to be or how you want this year to feel. It could be a word or a sentence but embed it now and remember it on those tougher days that can challenge us all.   For me this year is going to be "Magnificent, dreams are in sight."