There was a girl who didn’t understand New Year’s. To her, it simply meant a night when she would accompany her mom and aunt in her grandma’s living room, having a sleepover in her brand new princess castle tent while the sound of their soft voices and a series called Harry Potter played long into the night after she fell asleep.
There was a girl who loved New Year’s. It meant a big party that she was invited to by association and got to hang out with all the older girls from her dance studio, whom she idolized as if her life depended on it. It meant eating a bunch of sweets and treats and drinking sparkling grape juice out of fancy cups. It meant staying up and playing games like poison dart frogs, watching the ball drop, and spending hours dancing and making TikToks before falling asleep on different furniture pieces around the living room.
There was a girl who longed for future New Year’s. She and her friend spent the night just the two of them, making failed cake pops and planning a way to be in Times Square for the night without the huge crowd and an uncomfortable, long period of time outside. They pretended they were a match for her brother in a miniature game of hockey and sat and talked hours into the night.
There is a girl who has lost her interest in New Year’s. She can’t complain; she has spent her last three New Year’s in the tropical and warm Florida Keys. But the mainstream view of spending the night bringing in the new year with friends and family, celebrating, partying, getting dressed up, eating food and sparkling grape juice, playing games, and watching movies is lost to her. She does go out to dinner at her favorite place in the Keys, getting a strawberry daiquiri, and taking a lot of photos at sunset over the water, but the rest of the night is usually replaced with an early night in their hotel room after with the rest of her family waking up for the last five minutes of the year and returning to sleep. Although she wouldn’t trade being in Florida or her family for anything and does have parts she adores about the time, the appeal isn’t as noticeable for her.
Beyond the single night activities, the new year brings more that she doesn’t always appreciate. She’s 17, a senior in high school, and isn’t fond of change in general. Yet, each year brings more and more change, especially considering this year means graduating, becoming an adult, moving away from home, and probably a lot more she isn’t ready for. She is also faced with trying to find impressive New Year’s resolutions, and the guilt, embarrassment, and regret she is faced with when she can’t keep up with them after a week or two.
Overall, New Year’s remains a reminder of all that she’s lost, is losing, all her achievements and weighing failures, and basically everything she tries to forget throughout the year.
Maybe there will be a girl in the future who loves New Year’s again, not that the one now necessarily doesn’t. But for now, it stands as a mediocre day of the year that she’d overall rank in the same category as Saint Patrick’s Day or godforsaken Valentine’s Day.
Hopefully, this new year will be a good one, but that is yet to come.
