New Year’s Eve Is The Saddest Day Of The Year

New Year’s Eve is the saddest day out of the calendar.

Every year I’m reminded of how lonely I am. Whether I’m out on the town with somebody, clinking glasses with friends, with a lover, or alone on the couch, I am lonely and I am tired.

Any bodies in the room are just that. Just bodies. Just people breathing the same air I am. Just smiling faces to mimic. Because that’s what holidays do, that’s what December does, that’s what the end of the year does — fills people up with joy and excitement, makes them radiate and reminds them of all the reasons they’re so thankful to be alive.

For people like me, it kills.

It forces me to be pretend I’m happy, to fit in. It reminds me of all the reasons I didn’t want to be here this year. It emphasizes how no one is in love with me. It takes a count of all the people in my life and notes that the number doesn’t matter because there’s not a single one I could talk to about the pain. It screams about just how alone I am.

It beckons me to welcome another year of this. It kills.

December has been gnawing into my bones all month long. By New Year’s Eve I feel like I could die.

The last day of December brings out all the ghosts I’ve been working overtime to ignore. It pulls out all the monsters from under my bed. They take a hold of me and hold my head under water, and just for a couple of precious minutes, I imagine how much peace there would be if I could just get through the burn in my lungs.

It makes me wish there was someone there to hold my hand until I could feel my pulse again.

New Year’s is horrible.

People ask what you’re doing. The answer would be nothing. The answer would be trying to hold on long enough just to keep my head above water. The answer would be trying not to disappear.

It was hard enough getting through all the Christmas cheer I couldn’t escape anywhere. The holiday music everywhere I set foot. The tinsel and Christmas lights. The pictures on my Instagram feed of everyone celebrating, laughing with their loved ones, all the presents, babies’ first Christmases, and all the fucking engagements.

New Year’s Eve comes soon after with a wrecking ball. I am a fucking demolition.

Everyone is busy buying sequin mini dresses, ordering champagne, making plans, figuring out ride arrangements, buying tickets to parties, all in anticipation.

I’m burning white hot from the inside out thinking about how I have no one to kiss. No one to hold my hand. No one I can be honest with. No one to tell me it’s going to be okay.

Other people are preoccupying themselves with what mundane little New Year’s resolutions they are going to make, how many pounds they want to lose, how they’re going to manifest a good man, how they’re going to be more financially responsible, give up sugar or Coke, try to smoke less. People like me are just taking it day by day, sometimes hour by hour, hoping they’ll make it through to the new year and gathering up the strength for another 365 days.

What am I doing New Year’s Eve?

It really doesn’t matter. I could sit at home alone in my bed with a bottle of wine, pass out with Ambien before the clock even strikes twelve, find myself downtown in a short little black dress. Inside I’ll be dying, no matter where I am.

I’ll be wishing to make it through another year. I’ll be hoping that maybe next year there will be someone I can be myself with, someone I can tell all my naked truths to. I’ll be hoping that maybe next December will be a little less heavy.

I’ll be trying very hard to just stay.