It probably wasn’t noticeable from the exterior, but 2009 was perhaps the most monumental year I’ve had in a little more than a decade as far as my mentality and resulting general life course goes. I know that sounds terrible considering I had a child in 2007 and got married in 2008 but honestly, 2009 is when everything about who I was and what my life was about during the last 10-14-ish years drew to a close.

See, around the time my mind started messing with me in a clinical sense, some people that I deemed “Important” began to make me believe these negative things about myself that weren’t true. As the story goes, these beliefs lead to more profound false beliefs which fueled actions to back up the initial beliefs and then allowed me to believe more lies about my identity handed to me by predatory self-loathing idiots and it all just spiraled out of hand and turned into this huge mess in which I had successfully morphed myself into this godawful person I never actually should’ve believed I was in the first place. Since 2003-ish when I first started realizing what a mess I’d gotten myself into, I’ve been steadily trying to pick up the pieces, refigure everything out and clean up the catastrophic messes I made. (I’m not saying I’ve been successful the whole time since then, by the way. In fact, I spent the first couple years after that continuing to inadvertently botch things out of sheer habit and blurred vision.) And, in the last couple years or so, I’ve finally gotten to a place where I’m consistently happy and [relatively] stable enough that I can really look back on all of it and go “Okay, since this is the most sane I’ve ever been, let’s see if we can figure out exactly what the hell actually happened with a [relatively] clear perspective…”

Okay, looking back on things and overanalyzing them is nothing new for me. In fact, it’s been pretty damned exhausting hauling that neurosis around with me for over half my life. However, this time when I took a second (or a week) for retrospection, I actually felt this incredible sense of closure and profound relief.

No, it’s true! In the last year I’ve finally gotten over some people and events that not only don’t exist and/or don’t matter anymore but really never did matter to begin with. (Yes, I’m still a bit embarrassed that I built such a huge framework for my life out of complete bullshit, but I’m certainly not about to waste any more time feeling sorry about it or worrying about what I could’ve done differently.) A few months ago I even performed a little one-person ritual in which I identified all the lies and false authorities on which I’d built my self-worth and discarded them formally. (There was a lot of candle-lighting, stone-charging, body-cleansing and meditation involved.) And then I sat down and identified all the truths about myself and my life that I’ve always known and that people who love me have always been willing to support. And honestly, it felt like a complete mental molting of sorts.

But wait! That’s not all that happened this year! This year I finally (FINALLY) was able to make all the amends to people I’d hurt that I’d been needing to for many many years. I honestly never really wanted any sort of response or forgiveness from these few leftover people (although forgiveness is always welcome) but I just needed to know that I did all I could to at least deliver the genuine apology that was deserved, no matter how past-due. Somehow, not only did I get this knowledge of successfully delivered messages, but I was honestly listened to and respected by the recipients, my apologies heard and taken seriously. I was even granted forgiveness, which was the icing on the cake and the ice cream on the side. The feeling that I don’t owe anyone else an apology for anything is an incredible novelty to me and makes me value and choose my actions with impeccable care. (This is not to say I’m not going to offend people or step on toes ever again - I do it at least monthly. I just don’t make offending others an objective anymore.)

And, in addition to being liberated from this completely invisible fear-based “prison” of false beliefs I’d crafted around myself based on the opinions and actions of people who are worthless AND finding closure from my unbelievable cruelty in the past, I also was able to finally get away from Myrtle Beach/South Carolina, (which really turned out to be more of a symbolic liberation than a physical one as I’d finally gotten to a place where I adore(d) the people I’d chosen to surround myself with there.)

With all of these genuinely life-and-mind-altering events combined I was finally able to look at my life objectively and see - without guilt or denial or refusal - all the truths and blessings that are lying in my lap, this great existence that kind of just happened upon me and the realization that, if I don’t go and screw it all up (again) I have the potential to do whatever it is that I may want to do. (Figuring that out is another issue altogether.) And I have more loving friends than any human deserves cheering me on, so I kind of owe it to everyone who bothers to have faith in me as a human (including myself) to point myself in a direction and quit making whiny, self-loathing, fear-based excuses as to why “I can’t”. And now that I’m not wasting all my time hurting over the past and the idiots I let dominate it/me or trying to therapanize (new word alert!) my brain into normal, everyday functionality, I don’t really have any excuse not to.

So it seems like my reevaluation and life-participation in 2010 is a bit more important than usual. This being said, none of these completely-invisible-but-totally-important changes I’ve made in 2009 were on my Resolutions list, so I’m not going to base the rest of my existence on some list I scribble down in the next few weeks. However, with all the shit I’ve been able to throw out of my daily life in the last year and where that’s put me right now, I know I’ve got a lot more momentum going forward than I have in a really really long time. It excites me to dream about what that will allow me to do between now and 2012 when the world/existence comes to a screeching halt.* I’d better get started.

* No, I don’t believe that crap.