Inner Pe--

We do this all the time, this expectation for another new year to be better htan the last then it proceeds to feel more awful than the one before. There is a genocide that makes me feel like if I was alive during the Holocaust and faced with the images that have twisted my stomach since 6th grade, I would still be here just liking them on Instagram and moving on. A is such a funny word. No, multiple genocides. Children mining for the cobalt that makes this little lightbox in my hand that gives me dopamine like Pez dying daily in Sudan (I think, God there's so much to remember nowadays), yet I still am against having a diamong ring anywhere near my hands (or other body parts I guess) because I refuse to fund such an unsafe environment for tradition.

I want to get closer to God but it feels like I can't without walking myself to the pearly gates because the world is full of noise, noise, noise. I feel like the Grinch, the original without Christine Baranski and her boobs or whatever the fuck was happening that musical distracting from the fact that Christmas is just so goddamn loud that the Grinch can't get any sleep in his little mountain with his dog. Plus, it just frustrates me to hear thtem root for Israel when I just watched parents sob over bundles of cotton that were once their smiling happy children. It's disheartening to know that I'm right and hear people that I used to trust as teachers are more worried about the name in a book than what the name represents. Should we really defend land over the people on it? If Jesus died for human sins, why are we still idolizing the possession of land over the precious lives on it.

It's just so much. I can't even beg for a break because this is the part of the accident where the doctors are removing the shrapnel of windshield you didn't realize was too dirty until you hit that tree you didn't see coming. We have to go through it, not over it. What's over it? It doesn't matter. We are in the scary trench, holding onto a celestial hand and praying things will be alright. There will be more scary things to come. You thought the anglerfish was bad, but you've never seen the bottom of the ocean before. You always stopped before the end of the adage and now get to see why the curious cat is the cat that truly lives. I want to be the cat that truly gets to see the beauty of live, which means going forward and not stopping no matter how much I want to.

I do not think that 2024 will be any better than 2023 or 2022 (but hopefully better than 2021; though if not, I'll be okay with having people 6 feet away from me again. I felt someone's breath on me the other day and nearly lost my mind). I wish for peace but you can't wish for peace; you have to make peace. This is me making peace wiht the fact that peace will not come. I will not have inner or external peace. I'm already mentally preparing for November when Trump somehow wins the office and the Supreme Court fights him and he joins Israel in their onslaught on Palestine and becomes a dictator and people try to stop im by striking but the three moneybags, Zuck, Musk, and Jeff fund him anyway and Mr. Tiny-Dick-Tator goes on and on until the rush of power he's never had before gives him a stroke and he dies at 80. It's going to happen. I'm just happy we get to fight a war in gym shoes and sweatpants instead of heels and dresses.

I think in 2024, I want to live like I'm going to die. But that might lead to me actually dying since pre-diabetes doesn't mix well with eating every shape of pasta I can legally find. I'd like to get laid again. I'd like to buy my second car. I'd like to maybe address this whole student loans thing (preferably with lawyers and dynamite, Tom and Jerry style), or say to hell with them and move to New Zealand. I'd like to continue to push my friends towards their goals, even though for them it probably feels like the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friend's game where you had to push Cheese down a hill and he only seemed to be having fun when you pushed him too fast and were trying to break/stop him from crashing. I'd like to reach out to more people and read more books (but not buy more books, for the love of God). I'd like to pray more. I want cheese. Like... A lot of cheese. I'd like to diversity my palate is probably what my brain actually meant. I just want to snag the bits of happiness that I can make in this awful disgusting place and put them in a drawer so I have something good to look back on.

This year absolutely sucked. Aside from "everything in the world going on", I lost my grandfather, someone that I loved and one of the people who helped shape the silly and weird person that I am. I fought a losing battle with student loans, barely made it out of my war with unemployment, lost a job in three weeks over nothing (the man literally cited a broken bottle as why I was let go -_- I will eventually forgive, but today is not the day). I just want to have more happiness next year to hold onto than I had this year. That's my ultimate New Years wish.

[The title is a Kung Fu Panda 2 reference. 10/10 recommend, the animation and story are both wonderful.]