Another Year...

Another year has shed it's last dying hour upon us,
taking with it every aching memory that burns within.
The final seconds seem to drone on forever
and in those final moments, we realize the worst and best of the year.

["I hope you had the time of your life"
The moments that kept you alive...]

Flipping through the photo album of the year;
pictures of your greatest and closest friends shine at you.
Each bringing with them an entire new wave of emotion
and a longing to see them as often as you did in school.

Endless parties that reigned on for days and being hung over going into work,
nights when everything seemed to blur together into nothing but a memory.
Alcohol poisoning and strip club visits
with paper plates and plastic ware - the fine china.

Here's to new apartments being shared with friends from kindergarten,
to stealing signs, robbing houses and getting away with it.
To new bonds of old friendship and new friends,
along with the old ones who have been there for you through it all.

Cheers to new beginings and complete understandings,
to differences and similarities, beaming with anxiety.
Raise your glass to the memories of endless nights of deep conversation
and getting to know someone; both inside and out.

Bow your head to the acknowledgement you spent too much time on the phone;
twenty-one hours with someone who you still care about deeply.
Open your arms as if to welcome everything that will come your way
and smile, knowing that your friends are there with you through it all.

Look in the mirror and see your reflection beaming back; no longer broken.
The year has torn you and worn you down completely, yet built you up.
Your spirit bears the scars of emotional distress where you had no clue,
and yet something made you push through - that's trust right there.

["I walk this empty street, on the boulevard of broken dreams"
The memories of what broke you down]

Turn the page and venture down the darkened corridor that you hid from,
embrace the darkness and welcome what comes at you.
First, you lost the first "love of your life" to immaturity and indecision.
Your head reigns: "What's keeping me alive?"

To cover your pain and heartache, you destroyed your lungs and liver.
Swallowing gallons of alcohol and devouring packs of cigarettes like candy -
each tearing a piece of your life off, slowly but surely.
It was worth it, in your head, wasn't it?

The person who you trusted everything into, up and walked away
after a night of "miscommunication", or so they say.
The real reason they walked away is because, even though they knew,
it still bugged them to know that you are gay.

In the process, you were lied to, deceived and betrayed -
completely stabbed in the back by someone who you "trusted".
Ironic, isn't it? They say not to trust you and then they break you down.
A bit uncanny how these things seem to work out.

You find someone else and become completely attached to this person,
then a "game" is played and as it unfolds, "pawns" in this masterpiece are turned on you.
You become the villian, the one everyone wants to see fall
and you lose your "best" friend in the process. Lovely!

You gained from that loss - a room mate and a new girlfriend,
but part of you is still incomplete because you miss her.
Why do you miss her of all people? What makes you miss her?
Is it the fact that you cared or the fact that maybe you cared too much?

Either way, what's done is done and cannot be undone.
The truth came out and you were freed from that wrath.
You eventually stopped caring what people thought and in doing so -
you destroyed everything that ever kept you...you.

Parental beatings; day in and day out - nineteen years worth of abuse
all boiled up inside of you and you never said a word.
You were you. The unbreakable one and the second you crumbled, people weren't there.
The second you started to fall, people got scared.

Now here you sit, some two hundred stitches later -
mixed in with some knife wounds and a gun shot,
adding in a pinch of disgust and a hell of a lot of will.
Now that this year is done, your head reigns with one question:

"What will the next year bring?"