I. Am. So. Sorry.

As we all know, 2016 sucked.

Jesus Christ what a terrible year. From the never-ending stream of celebrity deaths (and not the awful ones! What? Why?) to the terrible environmental news and the disastrous American election and Brexit and Syria various global catastrophes to the smaller and more personal crises of harassment, Frances’s health issues, my Dad’s decline and death and its related catastrophes, friends’ minor and major upheavals, house stuff, money stuff–fucking hell.

2016, were you high? Please tell me you were high. Please, please tell me this was some opioid-induced fever dream from which, in two days, we will all awake with 2016 to do all over again with less of the soul-shredding. Because I don’t know about all of you but I am feeling a bit shell-shocked here. Like … is it done? Are we done? Is it going to get worse or is this the bottom? Can it get worse? Of course it can get worse, dumb question. Please, Universe, don’t take that as a dare. We are collectively penitent for our sins and I am in particular very sorry for choosing Flaws as my word of 2016. 

I am feeling kind of like the person who didn’t bring an umbrella, so everyone is getting soaked by the rain. Yes yes I know my accessories don’t influence weather systems and Donald Trump was not elected because I was looking to exercise my tolerance muscles, but holy motherfucking christ on melba toast. “I want to learn to accept the flaws in myself and other people,” said the naive January-2016 version of Andrea. The Universe cackled: “You got it!” And thereupon I was deluged with an epic thunderstorm of personal failings, familial grudges, medical snafus, friend crises, minor criminal shenanigans, a neverending stream of celebrity grief on FaceBook, and a collective decision by a throat-chokingly large number of my fellow humans to embrace xenophobia, racism, misogyny, anti-semitism, and homophobia. At some point in there my poor overwhelmed tolerance muscles hit a series of barbed-wire walls and quailed away. My god. I wanted to learn about Flaws, not see humanity drown in a toilet of its own inner sewage.

I mean there were good things. There was my aunt’s book release and there was finding out that Frances is probably not going to need hip reconstruction surgery for at least a few more years after all. Which hurray, but you know, first I had to be told that she DID need surgery and quite urgently in order to avoid dislocation, which turns out to have been a pile of horseshit, but just because it was horseshit doesn’t mean I didn’t panic for a few weeks straight.

Was it really just one year? Doesn’t it kind of feel like it was ten? I kind of feel like I’m ten years older.

There were good things. There were. And I am clutching them greedily in my secretive fists in case 2017 tries to take them.

And I promise I’m going to choose a much friendlier word for 2017. Something so inane and meaningless that taken either as a dare or a jinx, it would at worst be no more than a minor inconvenience. Like Tea, maybe. Puns. Artichokes.

I also promise that I did some sewing and some of that will turn up here.