Does this count as a resolution?

The end of one year and the beginning of the next, if nothing else, serves as an excellent means of pausing to examine yourself, your friends, what did you or did not spend the year doing, the world at large, whatever you want really. So I've been thinking about this year a lot and have come to the conclusion that it kind of sucked. On levels. What's odder still, is that that doesn't necessarily bother me the way I know it should.

I rang in the new year by getting yelled at repeatedly, and then hit, by my ex-boyfriend at at New Year's Eve party. Suffice to say,  I kissed no one when the ball dropped. I didn't have much time to dwell on that spectacular shitstorm because class started. I realized pretty quickly that I didn't want to be in class, but had spent so much time talking about how that was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life that there was no room (I thought) to change my mind...even at 23. So I stayed in that class, got my A, signed up for a summer course, got my A, and started my third semester. I shouldn't have kept it up as long as I did when every assignment was an exercise in making myself care in the hopes that eventually I would. I'd started to hate reading and writing (two things I'd previously considered hobbies.) I've only just started enjoying either again and it's still a struggle to write on even a semi-regular basis. It still feels like work instead of a compulsion.

Quitting school was terrifying. I didn't know what to be without my nose in a book. I'm still not sure who I am. I have a few things down, the basics: sexual preference, political affiliation, religious bent (that last one gets fuzzy sometimes.) Beyond that, I have no idea who Meredith is or what she wants. I went to get drinks with two childhood friends last night, one is studying oceanography and marine biology (ecology?), the other is in law school. While they're still hammering out the finer points of what they want, they have a big picture. We're the same age. I have no picture. I don't even have a background color (purple? some days I'd rather wear green.) I miss the certainty of a big picture (even if it's a Monet.) I liked my plan, rather I liked having one. And my lists. I haven't made any lists in a long while. I go to the grocery store and forget to buy the thing I came in to get and instead leave with hummus and a pound of olives. I needed soap. I can't wash my face with olives.  Or hummus.

And then there are the dudes...

If I've learned nothing else this year, it's that I have spectacularly terrible taste in men. My entire dating history (up to an including my last misinformed foray into dudetopia) has been a failure. I've spent a good part of the last 5 or so months wondering what I could do or say to be more of whatever someone wanted. I kept my phone at my side, I rearranged plans, I watched what I wore and said because I was afraid that any of it might be the thing that killed it. In the end, none of that mattered because there was never anything to kill (I kind of knew this all along but ignored it as best I could.) I shouldn't really be upset that it's over because, as he'd be quick to point out, it was an unofficial few months. A 'lost' few months if you will. You can't be disappointed in end of something that never happened in the first place, right?

But I am. Despite my best efforts, it sucks. I'm bad with guys and this is yet another example of it. So I'm done. 2010 will be dudeless. I'm not switching teams. I'd like to think of it as "pulling a Morrissey." The absence of dudes will not tell me how much they want to like me but don't. They will not flirt with my friends. They will not tell me how terrible I am at not being a girlfriend or that I am too ambitious to care about anyone else. They certainly can't hit me or make be feel bad about my ever-expanding collection of dresses or the funny, obscure words I use. They won't try to paint me into a corner or continually tell me how great and funny and generally amazing their last girlfriend was. They can't stare at my tits when I'm talking or break plans. They can't do anything at all because they don't exist. And I can just be myself (whatever that turns out to be) without them.