DEAR 2013

Dear 2013,

If you were a person, you'd look somewhat like this:

Photo from Pinterest

Okay, maybe not that skinny. But you get the picture, right?  You'd be stylish, calm, collected and poised, with your beautiful shiny wavy no-need-to-be-blowdried-hair.  And everyone would turn their head while you strut around town in your sexy stilettos without worrying about blisters on your toes or ankles at the end of the night.  You are sexy and you know it.  You are worry-free and it's true.  You are reeking of awesomeness.

Thank you for giving me so much--a lot of which I had to work really hard for (hey, give credit where credit is due!). But nevertheless, thank you for opening up so many wonderful doors for me.

Thank you for making me believe in my body and what it is capable of doing.  For giving it the confidence to finish 2 half marathons this year. For giving me the strength to continue to run and lose weight in the process. I'd like to think that this is the best I have looked in the past 7 years (please feel free to correct me if I am wrong).

This year, you taught me how to bake and while I no longer bake as often as I would like to (too much sugar is bad bad bad. Diabetes runs in my family), I am very grateful for this new skill.

You gave me a really unexpected gift this year--an opportunity to do what I have always loved--going out, meeting and talking to people. It was not something I had asked for.  I don't even recall ever hinting that I wanted it.  I thought I had gotten too old for change. I thought that that ship has sailed. But thank you for knowing better than me.  Thank you for taking me out of my comfort zone and for planting me in a job where I am always on my toes. To say that I am happy for this chance to be challenged (sometimes infuriatingly) again in my career is an understatement.

Thank you also for making me fall inlove with myself again. I can't remember the last time I had so much fun just not being in a relationship.  So much fun that I surprisingly didn't miss being in one.  I don't know if you and Karma had a conversation but it seems that this was the year dear old karma worked in my favor.

You were tough too, at times.  The biggest git this year was having to force myself to say goodbye to someone I wasn't ready to say goodbye to. You took away my Uncle Dan, my dad's brother, the only person on this earth who didn't make missing Papa so hard because he was so much like him. He was always asking me and my sisters to visit him in Baguio but we never got around to doing it.

Sigh.

Anyway...

Thank you for my family's health and for helping my son continuously improve as the days go by. He is doing very well in school, better than I had predicted, in fact.  Thank you for making us laugh, sometimes at our errors. Thank you for keeping us safe, for always keeping us together and for never failing to give us what we need.

My favorite bit about you, 2013 was the wonderful relationships (old and new) that have blossomed within your months. My family and I grow closer everyday, even when we sometimes find ourselves breathing down each other's necks from a thousand miles away. Thank you for fortifying my friendships and for teaching me to learn to let go of the ones that no longer bring me positivity.

As you draw to a close, I can only hope that 2014 brings me more joy, learning experiences and enough pain to gather strength from.

I love you, 2013. You were a very good year.

Now, on to the next one.