I hate New Years Eve.
‘But
Maddy!’ You say, ‘you’re such an
optimistic, cheerful gal with a
twinkle in her eye and so much hope for the future! How could you HATE New
Years Eve?! It’s the paradigm of fresh starts, breaking bad habits, new love
and second chances?!’
To which I reply: ‘because it is FUCKING BULLSHIT –
THAT’S WHY!’
And then I chuck my drink in your face,
because you’re so naïve and innocent I feel like I’m doing you a favour by
crushing your spirit.
 |
| I hope the bubbles burn like hellfire. |
Unlike other ‘holidays’, like Hallowe’en
and Shark Week, New Years Eve has never been kind to me. Try as I might every
year to not get my hopes up or have high expectations, every single time the
clock strikes midnight on December 31st, I find myself a little
sadder, a little lonelier, with a little more contempt and liver damage than the
year before.
I blame movies. I’m a full-blown sucker for
the whole ‘mad-dash-through-the-airport-to-stop-my-one-true-love’s-plane’
baloney. I know it’s unrealistic and clichéd, but for me it’s less about the grandeur
of the gesture and more about the romance: a sentiment to which I am woefully
estranged with – unless you call giving me a heads up before blowing your load
‘romance’. (I do because beggars can’t
be choosers.)
So I’m romance deprived and New Years Eve
always has that promise of either rekindling old affairs that ended for the
wrong reasons or sparking new ones with that wonderful/horrible tradition:
kissing at midnight. It’s a scene that every year never fails to seem right out
of a fairytale – the countdown, the cheering, the confetti or streamers or
whatever, hearing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ play and looking into someone’s eyes and
laughing and sharing a kiss that is so full of promise and magic that
everything in that moment seems perfect and crystalline and absolute…
I am, most definitely, not speaking from
experience.
Last year at midnight, in order to avoid
the oppressive awkwardness of being the only person in the bar not sharing a
moment with someone, I was furiously mass texting ‘H@p py new Yearz!!1!!’ to everyone in my contacts in order to look
preoccupied when the clock struck midnight.
The year before I believe I was waiting in
line for the bathroom with the rest of the spinsters, and the year before that
I vaguely remember downing five shots of whiskey at midnight in order to get
through the countdown and the unbelievable emotionality of that FUCKING SONG.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not usually an
overly sentimental person - I watched ‘Marley & Me’ without crying, for
fuck’s sake – but that just goes to show that New Years Eve is such a powerful
piece of godforsaken insanity that it has such an absurd affect on me.
I’ve done it all to try and curb the
disappointment: I’ve gone to lavish, large scale parties with dress codes and
champagne and brass bands. I’ve gone to outdoor concerts on Sparks Street in
the freezing cold, I’ve gone to dive bars with 10$ pitchers and sticky floors,
I’ve gone to house parties where I haven’t known a soul. It’s always the same:
25 dollar cover, losing one of your high heels in a snow bank and convincing
countless people not to drink and drive because their cab was supposed to show up four hours ago. Oh, and the overwhelming feeling that something magical was
supposed to have happened but woefully passed you over, again.
No matter the venue or company or expense,
New Years Eve never fails in its ability to piss me off. I’ve had a better time
getting mildly drunk on a Tuesday at an open mic then I have on New Years, a
night with so much preparation and planning and outfit choosing and makeup and
hairspray that you just can’t help but let high expectations creep in. But FUCK,
man! If I can’t have ONE immaculate midnight ONCE in the decade or so I’ve been
going out… well… what’s the goddamn point!?
Maybe this year I’ll stay home with a
two-four of Labatt and watch other people grasp for their own perfect midnights
from the comfort of my living room. Or maybe I’ll give it one last shot… I
still have a day or two to decide.
But, regardless of my increasing emotional
decrepitude, I still have hope, no matter how foolish, that 2014 may be my year. But most of all I hope all of your New Years Eve’s contain one thing
above all others…
The wild promise that the best is yet to
come.
Happy New Years, you beauties.
