I Broke My Heart: My New Year's Resolution

I'm sitting on my couch and I'm thinking of New Year's Resolutions. I'm sitting on my couch thinking about how terrible it is to be aware of another person's expectations of yourself. I'm thinking about how terrible it is to know you aren't meeting them.

I'm sitting on my couch. I'm thinking. Cogito ergo sum.

I'm thinking about how I always feel pressured into giving some snarky, bullshit answer to inquiries about my resolutions. Last year I said that I had resolved to become more conventional and take up a college cliche or two, like binge drinking.

I'm thinking.

I think that most people have their public resolutions and their private resolutions. Public resolutions are those resolutions we feel like we need to have in order to satisfy other people's expectations of us. We offer up humorous promises to develop alcoholism, or give out statements asserting a new ideal like being more positive or making sure to pay one persona compliment a day. Bullshit platitudes to makes sure people around us don't think less of us.

I'm not going to get shitfaced every night, and you're not going to remember to tell that nice lady in HR that her shoes are cute. No matter what we say, we actually have no intention of following through with our public resolutions, I think for the simple fact that we don't make these resolutions for ourselves. We never do. They don't matter to us. Why would you do something that doesn't matter?

Then again, many people spend a great deal of time doing things that don't matter to them. Working. Charity. Marriage.

I'm sitting on my couch and I'm starting to think about the snowmen.

We make private resolutions much in the same vein as we make public ones. Only, we make these promises with the intent to satisfy our personal expectations of ourselves. I promise to be conventional so that when I make half-assed attempts to be more sociable I can feel less guilty about not having any success. So I can go home at night and read a book and be alone in my room and not feel crushed under the weight of being found somehow wanting.

We make these private little agreements with ourselves in order to satisfy some intrinsic and false need to feel as though we will progress, as though we will change into something better. Into something we feel better about being.

I'm still thinking about the snowmen.

My mother brought home these two mugs from work that the staff had received from parents (preschool teacher perks). They are those kinda tacky holiday shaped ones, you know, like the ones that are invariably re-gifted right after receiving them?

These two mugs are shaped like the heads of snowmen who have for some reason been dressed in a manner that suggest they somehow feel cold, even though they have physical bodies composed entirely of frozen bits of water. Like even though they are every bit as frozen, temporary, and savage as their environment they can still feel frightened of having to face said environment. So they've put on this armor that is supposed to protect them from feeling the truth of what they are made of.

Tacky ceramic holiday mugs just got deep, eh? Just wait, there's more.

Anyway, my mom brought these mugs home. They had been filled with packets of Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate (the kind with marshmallows) and green peppermint candies.

My mom took out the goodies, and then set the mugs on the counter. I walked by, looking for a snack, and stopped. I picked up on of the mugs a looked at it for a long while. “This is cute,” I said. The hot chocolate and candy had been set on the counter next to the second mug.

“Parents from work. Your Aunt ***** gave me the one she got.” She nodded to the second mug. “I'm just gonna put them in the gift box.”

The gift box was the box of odds and ends we collected that could be feasible offered as gifts to loved ones. Soap. Candles. Children's craft sets. That sort of thing. I looked back to the mug in my hand, and then turned the second mug around and looked at them for a while.

While both of them were obvious snowmen, but one of them had been subtly manipulated into taking on a traditionally feminine aspect. And by subtle, I mean that it had large pink circles painted on its cheeks, and its carrot nose had a distinctly soft and feminine up-turned curve. I was looking at a masculine and feminine pair of snowmen mugs.

I looked at them and saw that they were in love.

I looked at them and it occurred to me that the snowmen were what I had to look forward to in life. The tacky ceramic holiday mugs were perfect examples of how the world treats people. The world, other people, look at you and then by fright or might they reach into your mind and claw into your heart the they take away anything they think has value, like taking the candy and discarding the mug you got it in. No matter how armored you've tried to make yourself, not matter how many hats and scarves you bundle on, the cold always gets to you.

And then we turn look in the mirror and discover that the brutal world we live in, the ice and chill, is what we are. We try to dress it up, and defend against it, but every single on of us is made of cold and frozen snow as cold and frozen as every other person who has ever hurt you.

I think I broke my heart a little, looking at those snowmen mugs.

Cold as they were though, something about the boy snowmen mug had put a smile on the girl snowmen mugs face, had inspired a little color in her frozen-white cheeks, even though such a biological function is not possible for her because she has no blood and is made of snow.

There was something about the boy snowmen mug that was worth smiling about, and there was something in the girl snowmen mug that was capable of smiling, even though everything that other people had judge worthy and valuable had already been ripped from them by the cold, cruel world, and then scattered about.

I saw them, and my heart broke because they were more true than any other false pretense of warmth and love I had seen this holiday season.

I'm thinking that I am going to take the snowmen mugs and put them somewhere in my room where they can be alone and in love together, simple and empty and free.

I'm thinking that my New Year's resolution is going to be to try to be like a tacky ceramic holiday snowmen mug.

I'm thinking I'm not going to bother with public or private this year.

Have a great 2013, guys. So long and good night.