There's only one thing I really want from 2010. After all the thinking, the reflecting, the brooding, I realize it comes to this, and only this.

I want to be well. Fully well, healed of my pains and griefs. Well enough to seize opportunities, to take chances, to live a good life. I want to be well enough to move forward, not tied to a past I cannot bear to remember. Well enough to be happy, not riding a rollercoaster of highs and lows. Well enough to be with other people, instead of cloistering myself away. Well enough to pray to God, to go to church, to not be afraid of myself or my thoughts or my potential.

2009 will be the year everything changed, because 2009 is the year I realized I have been sick and want to get better. It will be the year I began to love being alive, began to see the potential in it, instead of being afraid of it. 2009 will be the year I learned there is something for me in this world.

And 2010 will be the year I took it and made it mine.

This year has been a mess. An ugly mess, a beautiful mess, a year of great happiness, a year of excruciating anguish. But it has been my year, and I am the better for it, grateful for it, would not take it back (not even the terror and the tragedy) because it's one of the most beautiful years I can ever remember.

To 2009. May it live forever as the year I discovered I am ready to live my life. To 2010, the year I intend to start living it.

The old gods are chasing me in my dreams again, demanding I listen to them, trying to grab at me as they did oft times before, but that is the curse of Janus' month, he becomes so much more solid near the Month of Doors than any other time of year.

I keep dying. Sometimes I remember to feel horror. But it never is as horrifying as watching other people die. Last night I dreamed another woman murdered me, stabbed me through the abdomen -- she was hungry and lean and vicious and jealous and from the French Revolution -- and I looked down at my bleeding dress and said, profoundly perturbed, "now all I'm missing is the abusive husband" before I fainted away.

I'm up and down, I'm manic and I'm moody, I'm frantic with energy and depressed as all hell, and I close my eyes and try to pretend this profound loneliness, in no way appeased by all the company I've been visiting with lately, doesn't mean a damn thing.

My pretense makes me a liar, and I swallow that down with no tonic to ease the taste. A melancholic liar, tortured every night with doubt and solitude, remembering happier hours, and terrified to be so burdensome as all this. And for all this, I am trapped.

I'm just down. I'll come back up. And when I've had as much as I can handle I'll swing back down again, and my bad dreams will follow, dreams where I die alone and old gods hunt me like a prize to be won.

Everyone knows the universe expands. Not everyone realizes it contracts, also, sometimes shrinking in size until it is no larger than the head of a pin. Sometimes you hear it, rushing back, like water flowing up, the whole world condensing into a single moment. And just when you think the universe is about to collapse in on you, it rushes out again, leaving you tiny when, just for a moment, you were an immensity.
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Don't mistake my longing for desire. I want nothing, but I miss the things that weren't, that won't be, that never could have been. The impossibility gives them dearness. The impossiblty means I never ask.
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I know what you're doing, even if you don't. You're not drifting -- you're biding your time, gathering strength, waiting for the secret sign that will carry you out into the universe again. You're getting ready, so that when the time comes, you won't even have to say goodbye, you'll just go.
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I know how the story ends. It ends like they all do, me alone, and you running away again. Me alone, left to decide -- do I chase you, or do I wait for you to come back to me?
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I heard it in your voice. You doubt my ability to stay committed. You don't understand me at all, do you? You think I'm like you. But I'm not. Not in that way.
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I am the giver of gifts. I have no other language to sufficiently express love. Don't look at me like it was a bribe, or strong-arming you into a secret exchange. What is freely given should be freely accepted -- the gift means it comes without condition.
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In the end the only thing that ever changes is who dies in my bad dreams.

Tonight, it was me.

My life would go so much better if I spent more of it curled up with other people napping.

I passed today's test.

It comes early this year. There's a light, to fight off the terror, but even now I can tell it won't be enough. It's never enough. 16 hours to go and already, the headache starts. I can feel my throat closing too, a swollen patch that won't behave.

Maybe if I keep moving I can hold out for a rescue.

I was told one is coming, but I don't know whether or not to believe. I want to believe. Don't you?

Half-gloved fingers brushed over the covers of the books on my bench. Accelerated Distance Learning. College Degrees by Mail and Internet. "So," he said, soft and something a little like sad, "you do mean to leave that place forever."

"Yes," I said, almost automatically, before realizing it had been a long time since he stood before me like he did now, covered in snow and dripping invisible snow on my floor from his cloak. He was flushed with the cold. "What were you doing outside?"

"Feeding the birds," he replied, his tone even, undecided. "They get hungry too." I half-nodded, waiting for him to drift away like he always does, but he stood, as if transfixed, thumbing through my books. "I'm glad you're going." He added, as if uncertain of his place. "Though sorry you are running from it."

"Just one more hungry demon to keep ahead of," I replied, staring at the screen as if he would understand I didn't want to think about what I was running from. I began to automatically type a response to a facebook post, when his voice broke through my half-concentration again.

"Do you ever stop running, my lady?" I looked up and he was sitting on the bench, by my feet, gazing at me with eyes full of intent. I hadn't seen such a look in a long time. It was familiar, like something from a dream; I know you, his eyes said, let me show you I know you. My heart, remembering the refrain of that song, began to whisper, yes, show me.

So I was honest. "I stopped once, for a little while. I decided to stand my ground." He didn't ask when, for his eyes darkened, even before I finished my thoughts. "The monster caught up with me."

He shuddered, and shook his head, snow melting in his hair. He knew the story from there -- everyone knows the story, the deception, the imprisonment, the Fatal Words, the flash of light and the sound of violins, and a king being born out of the bloody aftermath. He knew -- he was there.

"You can't run forever," he said, cold fingertips touching my cheek with a chill my skin could register all the way through my veins. "Have you planned for that, jewel of my heart? What you will do when we are too old to keep ahead of our monstrous foes?"

"Once," I reminded him, "you would have taken my hand, and said, 'if we must run, let us make it such a chase as will be remembered in songs'."

The start of his old smile flashed at me like silver surfacing unexpectedly in a river, and it grew into a grin I almost recognized. "How far do you think we could get before Sunday?" He asked, conversational, cheerful. "I mean, where and how we'd be going, we don't need to worry about the weather."

I saw him at last; a man with a boy's face, a gleam in his eye that spelled disaster and delight, a look I'd known of old. Gone was the sullen, half-angry man who'd be skulking in his place, too serious and too heavy, full of an impotent rage at a cold universe that didn't care.

Here he was instead, my Outlaw of old, come in the last strokes before midnight, to steal me away from my nightly demons, and rescue me from harm.