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2012 was the year of estrangement. Several meaningful relationships died in many different ways.

Some were smothered to death;

some passed-on peacefully in repose;

some bled to a slow death;

some were violent;

some were long dead but came to my notice belatedly;

a few because the transplant was rejected.

Some fatalities were expected, some too sudden…

The relationships were not all cherished, yet I mourned and shed bitter tears for the passing of each. People I worked with, some I grew up around, a couple I shared many laughs with, a few who were family.

But as I sit on the eve of a new year, thinking of these who are no longer in my daily consciousness, I have only a remote sense of nostalgia.

I didn’t fight to keep those relationships alive; I chose to let them go, without grace at times. It was a detached, clinical decision to move away from those who drained me.

Through all that heartbreak and angst, with a never before seen will, I fought to keep one relationship alive. If ever I find the person who conceived marriage, I would dig them out of their grave and spit on their face.

Could there be a concept that’s more strenuous and difficult, yet so lusted after than that of binding two people in marriage? Do you know of anything marketed more effectively than marriage? Yet, I fought and will continue to do so… to keep this relationship going. There are a hundred reasons why, reasons so loud in my head, it mutes the voices in my heart.

(Hey, you gay folks out there! Don’t fight so hard for the right to marry… it’s too gimmicky by half, and you’d be better off not being contracted to each other.)

In all this chaos, much of it self-made (I’ve always sucked at pleasing people and maintaining relationships), I am protected by friends who slipped into my life in my teens, who with iron claws hold onto the things they love in me, blind to the rest of who I often am.

And also in this chaos, are two little people whose touch is so precious; whose love is so vocal and unconditional; and in their image of who I am, I build many dreams. I go to bed with the burden of their love… yes a burden, because I don’t always feel deserving of it.

I die a thousand deaths, when I think of all the ways in which I could do them wrong and of all the ways I could let them down. I have feared nothing more fiercely than their love.

Happy 2013.