EDLM 12.31.22
New Year’s Eve is never what I think it’ll be, and this year was no different. This was slated to be my first new years alone since my divorce. I had the same boyfriend for the first four years….. and then my father died and I was back home for his funeral, so I rang in the new year with my mother….. and then I had a not so serious boyfriend. But this year It was just me.
And I grieved a bit if I’m being honest. One of the things that changes when you get divorced is that no one is obligated to spend holidays with you anymore. And, as your kids grow up, they’re no longer obligated to spend holidays with you either. So, it creates this aloneness that you either embrace or that completely destroys you. And I chose violence in the days leading up to it.
But then I decided to embrace it. I made a plan and I was ready to be alone. I bought the kind of frozen pizza that only I like, I had decided to rewatch one of my favorite movies, and I was very content with the idea of being snuggled up at home after a weekend of traveling in the bitter cold the weekend before.
And then, as is usually the case, my carefully crafted plans changed. My kids all ended up forgoing their other invitations and staying home. My oldest son’s girlfriend decided to visit on her way back to college, so she was here, too. And then my youngest son decided to invite his friends over to spend the night.
I suddenly had 8 other people in my house a few hours before the ball dropped, and I was expected to produce food and entertainment for the occasion. Luckily, I’m always prepared for such a thing.
They were loud and messy and hilarious. We ate nachos and played party games, we laughed way too much, and we talked about adult topics that they were too afraid to discuss with their own parents.
I’ve realized that parenting teens means also parenting other people’s teens. And that said teens need adults they trust because they have tons of questions. So, I listened, I offered advice when asked, but mostly I answered questions about what to do with the hard parts of relationships, what’s normal to worry about and what isn’t, and how reproductive anatomy works.
We had ups and downs that night, I personally had ups and downs that night, but ringing in the new year in a role I’ve truly enjoyed filling for the last several years ended up being just the new years I needed. It was a special reminder that change can be good.