365 DAYS

As I sit here in nothing but the glow of the Christmas tree lights and the computer screen, staring at the ornaments that have been collected to be brought out and admired for only a handful of weeks out of the year and then tucked away, safe in their packings until Christmas rolls around again, when another few ornaments will be added to the collection and the process repeats itself, I wonder what milestones will have come and gone when I next look at them.  When I looked at them last, I was not quite the person that I am sitting here tonight and I marvel at how much can change in just 365 days; how many ways a person can evolve day by day as events unfold that no one can know until the moment they happen, or even, perhaps, until they've already passed, the change as yet unperceived, but there nonetheless.

I used to be terrified of death, and of dying.  I have never felt that feeling of invincibility others talk of feeling in their youths - I spent far too many hours and days surrounded by sickness and death as a child to ever feel as though I had the power to laugh in death's face.  I saw him early, and he terrified me.  It is only as an adult that I have managed to conquer that terror, consigning death to an immutable and unavoidable truth that may never bring me peace, but is not something that haunts my nights with its presence.  What terrifies me now, as I look at each ornament, some marking my birth, some made by a Carrie long-changed by days and years of accumulated events, some made by the kids I could never quite imagine but desperately wanted, is uncertainty.  Uncertainty destabilizes me; knocks me from my center into a freefall of unknown variables and onto a path around which I stumble, not knowing what I might find around any corner.  Not that any of us ever know, really, but if I can at least have a vision of what I hope to find at the end of the path, I can walk it; can handle the odd twists and turns when I know that there are a few constants upon which I can ground myself.  It is when you have no constants that the algebra problem becomes unsolvable, no matter how many ways you rearrange the equation.  And this terrifies me.

I feel my constants slipping into a place of mutability, where change becomes possible, and the goals are no longer clearly seen on the path ahead.  I am forced into a state of becoming, once again, and I'm not sure I'm ready for that, or the 365 days that will mark the time that passes when I once again sit in front of these lights, looking at these ornaments, wondering where I might find myself another 365 days gone by.