retrospective?

in these four days before christmas i keep on thinking about the year that has passed, the christmas before this, and the christmases yet to come.

this year...

all the hassle and the drama of leaving my home of fifteen years, finishing my thesis and trying to graduate on time (and failing), the latest inappropriate (young) guy, drinking sessions in manila, dancing nights away, with carmina and the manila boys, the lazy days of presummer with alan allan boyong josh melay pam pia, all the nice nice memories of the easy life i never knew i had.

i never expected to pass up law...i always thought i'd be studying law, but given my less than stellar scholastic performance of college and high school years past i never thought the kind professors (oxymoronic yet again =)) of up law would allow me to spend four(or more) years here. but they did...

and so the past six months have found me surviving terror profs and terror recits and super terror exams with some sanity still intact, drinking (hehe the constant it seems) the nights away with ate maha kuya aman and the other nice ates and kuyas of up law, talking about funny things and funny people with ates tia (cha) karen (kawen) and ninez (nee-nez), falling for guys who...argh..'nough said, liking a guy who may or may not like me back but i hope likes me back cause that would be totally totally great, hanging out with my crazy and amazing blockmates, gaining weight and gaining weight and gaining weight...

this christmas...

has been all about catching up with family, staying on my dad's good side by STAYING HOME, eating as much as i can cause of all the times of the year i gain weight christmas is THE best excuse. i realized just now how much i like hanging out with my dad, with his grumpy gruff old-man-papa 'tude, his super sarcastic super on the mark observations, his no-nonsense take on things. now more than ever i look at him and see the best guy in the whole world, the one guy who has never let me down. and my sisters. my crazy gorgeous outta whack sisters. they are the best!

and i feel so privileged to have so many new friends to celebrate this christmas with, and so many old friends to be thankful for having yet another christmas with, that the disappointments that i felt so keenly for the past few months fade more and more.

this is the first christmas i have spent single in quite a long time...and i don't quite know how to feel about that yet. in many ways it's okay, in many ways it's not. but that's me. bipolar in the weirdest ways.

for the past few months i have railed at Him for allowing me to yet again fall and fall badly. but in the past few days i have thanked him for allowing me to get back up. and for the people he sent to help me to my feet.

i wonder, in the christmases to come, how will i view this year and this christmas? with happiness, or sadness?

in the christmases to come, will i be alone, yet again?

well.