On Contemplating Another Year

As the end of 2009 rolls around, I am curled up on the couch next to my Christmas tree. It is glistening red and gold and green and I think back on the year that just passed with a glass of red and my laptop balanced on my knees. My cats curl up at my feet, ginger Morghann, the little Morghanna le Fay with her mischievous golden eyes and the queenly Krystal with her imperious stare.

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The day is hot, a drop of sweat trickles down the nape of my neck, down between my shoulder blades. You can taste the heat in the air, but it's okay. The airconditioner will kick in soon and the night, at least inside, will be cooller.

I'm filled with emotions, a delightful, delectable smorgasboard of feelings from the bitter taste of hurt to the spicy tang of anger to the warm, sweetness of love that sits like a lemon drop on the tip of my tongue.

It's been a hard year. A good year. A long year. It's been a year of firsts, a year of breaking boundaries, of discovery. It's been a year of learning humility, rediscovering old passions.

Above all, it has been a year of Change.

Somewhere between admission to the Supreme Court and building my first house, I lost a friend that was like a sister to me - but I discovered other friends who were strong and true.

I travelled to Europe and saw it with different eyes this time around because I was on my own. Strolling through London in the faint blush of summer with the City a seductive, pulsing maze drawing me in.

Beautiful Ireland draped in a misty vale, tantalising and mysterious. Trekking from the dark walls of Belfast to the vibrant Dublin.

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Then sailing Greece with its ocean bubbling on the wind and landing on my tongue in droplets that sizzled and popped, swimming in the middle of the Aegean Sea on a day that was so still you couldn't tell where the water ended and the sky began.

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I fell in love for the first time too. Me, the self-confessed Ice Empress, the attachment-avoidant, committmentphobe. Me! The seductress, the temptress, the guiless vixen, the Lillith and the Eve who laughed with twinkling eyes and a crooked smile and said to herself, "you can touch my body but you can never touch me" found herself on the other side of the equation. Found that losing the game was bitter indeed.

Outmanouvered, check-mate.

Hearts can break into a million pieces. They may take a long time to heal, the scars remain. A lesson well learned.

I was a Maid of Honour for the first time at my cousin's wedding. I became a godmother and discovered a deeper love than I thought I was capable of, a love greater than myself. Unselfish, undemanding.

I began to write again.

I found my voice.

I found myself.