It’s New Years Eve 2018 and my fever has spiked and broken over and over for the last four days. I haven’t been able to go to work… just getting out of bed to go to the bathroom exhausts me. I find myself floating somewhere between almost relaxed and utterly delirious, wondering if I was an idiot to so quickly brush my doctor off when she offered me a free flu shot. Because “I haven’t had a flu shot since I was 18…”

All this time in bed has also allowed me ample time to reflect. And I suppose it’s human nature to look back on this particular day and compare your life today with the year before.

I was alone on New Years Eve 2017, both literally and figuratively. I got drunk off wine (is anyone surprised?), entertained myself in a group chat with friends from college, and worked on my blog that I planned to launch at the end of the following month because launching immediately in the new year just felt too cliché to me.

Just three days prior, I was relapsing and falling back into bed with my ex after six months of nearly no contact, only to wake up and wonder what the point of it was. We didn’t have some breakthrough conversation about where we stood, but I could only assume our time together was the result of us both being lonely. I was also drunk. It meant nothing more and somehow I was at peace with that and vowed that it was one last bad decision of 2018 and I would be leaving him and my bad decisions right there.

I had no idea that the following week, I’d meet the man who, over these last four days of 2018, has been holding cool towels to my forehead when my fever spikes, sitting me up to take medicine, making home-cooked meals, and running his fingers through my hair at night to make sure I fall asleep.

When I’ve cried and apologized about being sick, he only urges me to stop, reassuring me that I’m his girl and that, “When one of us goes through a tough time, we go through it together.”

I am writing this blog as a note on my phone, because I don’t have the strength to pull out my laptop. I cannot figure out a way to show my appreciation for him. Not just for the last four days, but the last 358. So I do what I always do when I don’t know what to do.

I write.

You have given me strength and courage that even I did not know was within me at times. You have supported my blog from day one and encouraged me to take chances and pursue my dreams. You have called me out when I’m wrong, hurtful, or just downright spiteful. You have made me smile every single day of 2018. You have never made me feel as alone as I was last year, even though so much of this year was not spent physically with you. You have always accepted me for exactly the woman I am. I may be a mess, but I’m your mess. And you…

You are my sweetest melody.

FEATURED IMAGE BY: NINE KOPFER

untamedmelanie

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