I wish I could say that the first month of this year went well for me. Unfortunately, January started well and became more painful with each passing week. Here’s how it happened.
I was in a pretty good place overall at the start of the month. Financially, things were decent thanks to some lucrative December gigs. I generally felt good emotionally and physically. This got me looking forward to this year and believing that I had finally gotten out of the rough water that nearly drowned me so many times last year.
Things quickly went downhill after that promising start. The first issue was health problems early in January. In addition to making me feel bad, this also prevented me from making nearly as much money as I’d hoped I would. Some more car trouble around the same time as the health issues further worsened my financial situation. That triple punch shook me and made me feel worried about what might happen next.
By far the most painful event in January was losing my grandparent’s house after it was sold. While the closing date was originally going to be on January 31st, it got moved up to January 29th. My final visit was January 27th. That was my saddest day so far this year. I cried more and felt more tired from the tears and all the emotions around that situation than I had in a long time. While I wasn’t there when the closing happened two days later, I still felt sad as it passed from my family into another family. I hope the new owner will love it, treasure it, and get as much value out of it as my grandparents and all of our close family members did over the years.
The day after the closing was my last chance to see Banks the jaguar at my local zoo before he got sent to live and (if all goes well) reproduce in Texas to increase the jaguar population. While I got there in time to see Harry, who is Banks’s dad, I arrived too late to see Banks. I don’t know if Banks was regularly brought in earlier each day than other jaguars or if he was brought in early on his final day to prepare for his move. Either way, I felt devastated at missing my last chance to say goodbye, wish him well, watch his antics, and tell him I love him. That pain plus the pain of losing my grandparent’s house the day before essentially ruined that day for me.
On top of all of this, several animals whose profiles I follow on social media died. One of them died during the final visit to my grandparent’s house and another died the following week. The fact that they were dogs hurt even worse since dogs are my favorite animals and their deaths always affect me more negatively than the deaths of any other animals, especially when they’re dogs that I’ve enjoyed following for quite some time.
All of that made my last week of January incredibly painful emotionally, and it made January my most painful month in recent memory. After all of those hits, I felt a lot more sad, scared, and nervous for the future than I felt late last year or early this year. Any one of those painful occurrences alone would have been difficult enough. The combination gave me the sensation of drowning and made me fear that this year would be just as bad as last year.
Fortunately, I was able to do some work on my car with a family member as well as on my own. That seems to have gotten it running much more smoothly without breaking the bank. I’ve also started using higher quality gas after years of unknowingly using low quality fuel. I’m hoping that that along with regular maintenance will further improve my car’s health and performance. Speaking of health, although my own health is still below where it usually is, there have been enough health improvements to give me a huge sense of relief and make it easier to handle the other, more painful situations. Those improvements have given me some hope that things will continue looking up.
Even with the improvements that happened toward the end of January, I’m still dreading how the rest of the year will go after such a difficult first month. I’m hoping that January will be the most painful, difficult month of this year and that the rest will be much easier and more enjoyable. Some lingering health issues from last month, remaining concerns about my car and financial situation, an extremely unpleasant interaction on the third day of this month, and having to get through all of those without my dog Sawyer while knowing that he will have been dead for three years this April have me fearing that this year will continue to suck. I hope that that fear is mistaken, and I’ll keep doing what I can to make it that way.