I jumped on board the Tidings of Danger and Mayhem prompt project, but that was before I saw about half the prompts are Winter Counts.

I’ve loved reading everyone else’s Winter Counts, and they are a nice idea… for someone who is not me. My brain just doesn’t hook memories together, then divide them up, that way. I remember things as long stretches, unless a particular month (I’m looking at you, JULY) is so terrible, it draws my attention and becomes an object of my obsession, until it is finally over. The fact that I’d given up writing online is also key – there’s no personal record I can read to refresh. So I’m not going to be able to write a pretty Winter Count like everyone else. I’m going to smush it together a little.

I can tell you how 2005 started. 2005 started good. I was a few months into the job I still have – then, it was pretty new and a pretty big change and a pretty pretty step up. Time was flying by, because I’d settled into a routine – work noon to 8 p.m. during the week, hang out with my friend Aron after work just about every night, then drive down to the Keys on the weekends, to visit Beaker. The schedule made the weekends feel languid and long, every single week – I’d drive down after work Friday night, party with some old friends, crash at Beaker’s. Either we’d wake up together Saturday morning, or he’d be fishing, so I’d spend the day sunning myself, reading, doing laundry, whatever.

He and I would relax together on Saturday and Sunday nights. Dinners out, or fresh fish at home, drinks on a beach, maybe a nighttime boat ride or a movie. I’d drive to work Monday mornings, and walk in the door tan, satiated, and smiling.

I was starting to rethink romantic relationships, how they should be, and how I would choose their parameters, for the rest of my life. Maybe I did not need to follow the path everyone else seemed to follow – boyfriend/girlfriend, living together, engaged, married. Maybe I was ON the right path for me – independent, my own place, following my career, but with a man I adored who loved me too a manageable drive away – the set-up was starting to feel like a dream come true: my relationship and my independence, and the same time, with no apparent compromise, for either of us. It was the first time that it occurred to me – not only could I do something different, but there was a pretty strong pull that I should choose a different path for myself. And an alternative setup is something I’m still leaning toward, and something I’m still thinking about, but this isn’t about now, this is about the first months of 2005.

I think of 2005, as a whole, as a kind of a mountain of suck. It started low on the suck-o-meter – things were doing pretty good. Then it gradually got worse/higher until a large peak in July. Once I got through July, things started to even out, calm back down, and sink down the suck-o-meter gradually… until a spike in November, and that just about brings us to now.

So it makes sense that the first months of 2005, there were a few things happening that at the time, I didn’t know.

I was losing face with some people I respected quite a bit. They say hindsight is 20/20, but to this day, I couldn’t tell you how it happened. My sight is only clear in reaffirming that it did happen, and it was starting in the first few months of 2005.

I was becoming close friends with Aron and Dave – of course, I DID know that was happening. What I didn’t know was that both of those relationships would soon change, in ways I’d never expected.

And,

Beaker was angry with me for moving out of our house. Angrier than he let on, angrier than I think even HE realized, and his anger was simmering and getting stronger, every week I spent in my condo, living by myself, working my new job. He didn’t want joint girlfriend custody, he felt abandoned, and because we never talked about it, I had no idea, and just… continued.

Like this story will have to, once it’s time for my next Winter Count installment in a few days.

This is a Tidings entry for Winter Count – January, February, March and April.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 12th, 2005 at 10:38 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.