I’m a Christmas guy. I love Christmas. I do the music, I decorate where I live, I even have a Santa hat and an ugly Christmas sweater (actually, it’s a hockey jersey made to look like a sweater).
This really is the most wonderful time of year.
Except for New Years.
New Years Eve and I have a tense relationship. Actually, it’s pretty much an abusive relationship…NYE has beat the shit out of me in the past, so nowadays I go all passive-aggressive and drink myself into stupor in order to strike back.
Starting from easiest to hardest:
1) I don’t do nostalgia – looks back at the year, and at years before, are generally either (a) annoying or (b) depressing, and I don’t need either one of those.
2) Nowadays I hate crowds, and the best New Years’ parties are pretty crowded. That’s how I know I’m not a misogynist or a racist or any other -ist: I hate everyone equally (and, yes, that’s a joke for anyone who is sarcasm impaired).
3) Oz got his start on one particular New Years Eve. My first experience with suicide came when one of my best friends committed suicide on NYE. Mike certainly wasn’t the last, but he was the first, and that night changed me – the world was no longer a safe, happy and comfortable place. There is a lot of Mike (and 2 others) in Oz…
So, while you’re out celebrating and laughing, raise a glass and offer a silent toast to Oz and all the other ghosts…he is, after all, my stand-in for all of the helpless, broken kids who killed themselves because they thought there was nothing more to life than pain and despair and loneliness.
