When New Year sucks

I am opening the envelope on New Year’s Eve. It’s from the official, handling my case at the City. I have applied for assistance when getting ready in the morning and going to bed in the evening. I need someone close to me when washing myself and brushing my teeth, putting on lotion, deodorant, that kind of basic stuff we all do to start and end our day. The application was denied. This matter is beside my case in the court where I was denied help to move myself from the bed or couch to get to the bathroom, and assistance to get to my treatments and doctors appointments.

So, why am I opening this envelope on New Year’s Eve? It’s been sitting there for a couple of days and I am pretty sure of the outcome of the application, yet I am choosing to open it on New Year’s Eve.

We have just entered 2015 and if you want to read something cheery about turning a page, committed new year’s resolutions, things can only get better from here and positive thinking changing your life, you can stop reading right here. Because here is a New Year’s observation from someone who is not allowed to leave the dark forces behind in 2014, seeing the light of 2015.

I am opening the envelope because I will spend New Year’s Eve by myself. Lying on my couch watching TV, knitting, like every other fucking evening during the year. I am not spending New Year’s Eve alone by choice. Not my choice anyway, a witty comment I heard the other day watching the wonderful movie Hotel Marigold. I have been doing it a number of times before. It’s extremely sad and it sucks. Therefore, I might as well open a declined call for help brushing my teeth in the morning.

2008: “I am alone on my couch watching the traditional Swedish PBS new years celebration. Sipping on cider and nibbling some snacks. Trying, at least. But it’s sad. For some reason I had this idea someone would get in touch with me this year. Ask for me. But no one did. Not even this year. Friends and family are having their celebrations. I am alone. With a tumor in my breast. I am alone with cancer. What if this is my last New Year’s Eve. And no one is asking for me. It makes me sad. You are not supposed to be alone on New Year’s Eve. Especially not with a deadly decease. 2009 will be the decease. I am crying.”

An extract from my journal 2008. But really, that must be the most horrible New Year’s Eve ever? No, there have been worse.

So, 2014 wasn’t that bad. Not bad at all. Neither I nor anyone else was dying. I did survive the cancer and here I am. I am grateful. Of course I am grateful. It still sucks though, being alone on New Year’s Eve, the home care people serving me my usual everyday dinner (my choice, I didn’t feel like buying something extra) feeling sorry for me, being upset for my sake.

I have accepted being physically limited and I am trying to make the best out of the situation. I am making a strong effort not poisoning the world with my darkness and I am mostly doing a good job in that sense. Being nice, cheery and chatty with home care staff and family, saving tears and fears for myself.

But entering 2015 I feel like I am stuck in solidified tar. For six months now I have been fighting the City for being assisted with the most basic things in life. Getting out of bed, going to the bathroom, getting dressed, having escort for my treatments to get me through the day. I am not asking for excesses. I think I am asking for human rights. And I am denied.

I am fighting so hard, and the harder I fight the deeper I am sinking in that tar. Entering this new year it is up to my neck, solidified, I can’t move. They have won. I am beaten by the system. No new year’s resolution can alter that. I have no page to turn. No positive thinking by me can change a protocol run city official and a court judge. And I don’t know what to do. It stops here. The dark forces from 2014 will continue running my life, there is absolutely nothing what so ever I can do about that. That’s where I am at the entrance of 2015. Stuck to the neck in solidified tar. In this sense, how can things only get better from here?