I was going to title this 2017 – A Year in the Crapper and include an appropriate photo, but my friends tell me I overshare.
So, here’s my modified letter to the world:
2017 KINDA SUCKED
Like burnt-pan-of-forgotten-soup-boiled-dry SUCKED.
It took a whole year of bad things happening for me to put my finger on exactly what was wrong…
2017 – LIKE TREE-EATS-ROOF KINDA SUCKS!
Yeah, yeah. Having a tree drop on your house in a sh*t storm was a pretty big effing clue. But you could just chalk that up to really bad luck and shrug it off. If it weren’t for all those bad juju kinda things that kept happening.
I TRIED 2017. I REALLY DID.
I tried traveling to exotic locations and exploring for fun and adventure. I generally learned there is a diminishing return on happiness. The farther away we got from home, the more likely we were going to need an E.R. trip or an intervention. We are now circling the drain of 2017 and sticking mostly to home as a result.
My son loves to go places and sleep outdoors.
Or so I thought.
Instead, what I found was photographic evidence that my son just likes a variety of places he can write calendars–or, if not writing them, he is contemplating it with a fistful of markers or crayons awaiting his next fix.
My son discovered a love of popcorn. That was a new obsession.
But despite the happiness campaign the people at Orville Redenbacher are pitching, popcorn can’t fix everything.
Not even calendars can do that.
It also took me nearly a year of misery to realize something…
Despite the occasional flashes of joy and happiness I managed to capture…
In most of the photos I took of my son…he was not smiling.
He was there. But he was an unwilling participant in:
Mommy’s Campaign for Happiness and Symptom Control.
If 2017 were a fairytale–it was the Hans-Christian-Andersen-dark-with-a-side-of-maniacal-laughter kind. And it would have opened with this line…
THERE ONCE WAS A HAPPY BOY…whose mother tried to address his recurring rage-outs with a wave of pharmaceutical fixes.
We tried several different combinations of psychiatric panaceas. If a drug caused a side effect, we gave a pill to fix the side effect – or in theory, that’s what it was supposed to do. Instead, it produced yet more side effects that, surprise, surprise, we’d try to address with more medication.
It was the loopiest, saddest, roller coaster of a year you can imagine.
There were the bids for happiness that ended in tears.
Then there was the reality check that bounced. HARD!
Part of me wanted to believe this was a transition year. That turning thirteen and becoming a dreaded teenager was the root of this particular evil. But after several incidents of biting in school this fall, I decided to stop the massively medicated merry-go-round–at least in part.
We backed off the majority of his drug trials. He is back on the two drugs that have the fewest complications and I just deal with side effects that only have him crawling up the walls and not sleeping instead of the combo-platter pharmacopeia backlash that produced jittery anxiety, biting, and head bashing, among other things.
I now take comfort in momentary joys–as rare as a solar eclipse and therefore exponentially more cherished in their singularity.
But when added up in seconds, the joys of 2017 could not outweigh the sorrows.
For every golden day in the sun, there were days that drained like pus from a wound.
In this year, I have watched my happy boy transform in a downward spiral of misery and depression, taking me with him.
Then I had to leave my job to take care of him. Because, once he outgrew his handlers, I was the only one who could get him off the bus.
I left a good place to work for a life of uncertainty and near-poverty that allows me to work from home in the hours that my son is in school.
The only upside to this stress? I have spent less time developing an ulcer over the toilet tank of a government where The Great Evil and his Cabal of Cackling Soulless Ones are stirring a sh*t stew for the masses to swallow.
So, 2017–that’s it! I am out of it: Out of work. Out of patience. And now, out of time.
I AM DONE, 2017.
SERIOUSLY.
I AM DONE WITH YOU.
I am coasting the rest of this year and hope that 2018 has some upside that I just can’t foresee or imagine. But I doubt it.*
Asterisk Bedazzled Footnote:
*In a traditional end-of-year review, I usually take a light-hearted look at the craziness of my life. 2017 hasn’t been so much crazy-fun as it has been crazy-needs-to-be-committed. I’m not going to pretend otherwise and that’s my gift to you. Some years, all you can give is the honest truth…even if it is wrapped in a craptastic bow.**
**Seriously, though, being sick with cough and congestion this past week may have affected this year’s letter. Perhaps after I finish coughing up a lung, I’ll find my happy place again?
*Hack*
*Hurk…Gag…Harrrung*
*Ptui!*
Or, maybe not.
TheDustSeason 
Yep. Sucks. That pretty much sums up the year. Hoping for all of us that 2018 brings abundant joy . . . and change where change is most needed: Congress and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
P.S. – can’t tell you how many times I’ve burned soup.
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I can only imagine what three more joyful years of our current administration will bring. It’s a recipe for disaster indeed! Vote hard in 2020!
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So many people have so much news that words cannot address. Silent hugs. Silent hugs.
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Hugs are my favorite form of currency. They compound with interest!
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I remember a year that was so bad that when New Years Eve came, and friends came over to “celebrate” I could not fucking understand WHAT we were celebrating. Then midnight came and I realized that year — I think it was 1979 — was OVER and it would never ever ever come back. But I woke up with strep throat and a hangover….
I HOPE the same is true for you and 2017. I wish I had a magic wand to fix things like your son, my friend’s son, my hip, all the screwed up stuff we contend with heroic humans that we really and truly are. ❤ ❤
Burning soup is not that strange or desperate. If you burn water, I'll react 😀
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If there’s a way to burn water, I’ll find it. But, I laughed reading “I woke up with strep throat and a hangover” followed by “I HOPE the same is true for you and 2017.” Good thing you separated that by a paragraph. 🙂
Sincerely, though, 2017 was a plague of a year. A black death of hope in a political sense, and a dark and troubled time for downward growth in our household.
But, I can hear my son stomping something fierce overhead, so, I’m cutting myself off of whingeing to go see what he’s up to!
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I think behind every misery in our personal lives, lurks the misery in DC. It has been impossible to ignore it. 😦
P.S. I think the hangover and strep throat represented the last grasp of that miserable year, unwilling to let go completely but it did. It had to.
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I hope the New Year brings less challenges and more happiness.
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Thank you for that. You are a bright spark in the firmament my dear muscleheaded friend.
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🙂 Thank you for saying that — I appreciate you ! 🙂
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Fuck 2017. And quite possibly 18, 19 and 20! I don’t have high hopes for them, K, but I sincerely wish you a healthier, happier New Year and hope for some resolution to the issues you and your boy are facing. Thanks for keeping it real.
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That is both nice…and nice and depressing. To contemplate the unendingness of the political ramifications of the end of days approaching makes death a feasible alternative (and likelihood). But then, I eat chocolate and turn my back on social media and toward the arms of my blogger buddies, and feel much calmer.
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Can I offer you a hug from here? 2017 was not the best for me either – and from here forwards, the only way is up. All good wishes to you – your year may have sucked, but we all just love the way you wrote it up!
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Awww. *wipes tear away* Thank you.
Just when I think I am the whiniest whinger (sp?) who has ever whinged… Along come my friends to make me feel okay.
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I hope this was your bottom-out year and good things are coming your way. You deserve it! You’re loved from afar.
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Love is my favorite currency. Hang on…*Checks that comment for possible double entendre. Nope, sounds good to me.* Happy New Year when it hits.
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I hope this doesn’t sound dismissive and I’m not trying to belittle your pain, but you can read this post a different way. This is a year you tried and you tried and you carried on trying when a lot of people would have given up. The sorrow may out weighed the happiness, but those moments of happiness where the result of your efforts without you they would have not happened.
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Whenever I meet a person who has a positive outlook on life, I scratch my head and wonder, “Are we made of the same star stuff?” I think I was birthed of the detritus of blackhole remnants. That said, those sparkly meteors that shoot through the sky sure are pretty. I think you are made of meteorite dust, my friend.
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Ha ha if you knew me you wouldn’t think that. You are an inspiration keep on at it
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