Today, I’m ringing in the new year with a fresh batch of sadness and self-pity. I guess some things don’t change.

In trying to help myself out of a bad crying jag just this evening, I searched a bookcase in my little room for something familiar. Like a thousand times before, I pulled out Vincent van Gogh’s private letters to his brother Theo. If anybody’s my alter ego, it’s him, and there’s always comfort in what he writes. This paperback of mine from the ’70s is so worn out from use the pages are loose and the cover hangs on only by triple scotch tape along the spine.

The page I first flipped to (which could not have been more fitting, considering my current mood) has him reasoning:

“What shall we say as to the fact that there are times when one feels there is certain fatality that makes the good turn out wrong, and the bad turn out well? I think one may consider such thoughts as partly a consequence of overwrought nerves, and if one has them (Editor’s note: I KNOW I do!), one must not think it one’s duty to believe that things are really as gloomy as one supposes; if one did so, it would make one mad. On the contrary, it is better to strengthen one’s physique, and afterwards to set to work like a man, and consider that melancholy as a fatal thing. One must always continue to use these two means. In the long run one will then feel one’s energy increasing and will bear up against troubles. Mysteries remain, sorrow or melancholy remain, but that everlasting negative is balanced by the positive work which is thus after all achieved. If life were as simple and things as little complicated as Goody Goody’s story, or the hackneyed sermon of the average clergyman, it would not be so very difficult to make one’s way. But it’s not so, and things are infinitely more complicated, and right and wrong do not stand separately, any more than black and white do in nature.”

*****

I’ve been struggling a lot these past few years with unrequited love. By my way of thinking, it’s got to be one of the hardest things to handle when you don’t have outright problems—you know, you’ve got clothes, food, a roof over your head, health, money in the bank, a vehicle, etc. It’s made worse when you don’t have other loved ones to “fill the void,” giving you somebody else to focus on.

The other thing I’ve been batting around in my brain is that old question, “Is it better to have a loved one tell you the truth, knowing it will really hurt, or should they be sensitive enough to protect your feelings?”

I still don’t have the answer, and I’ve been trained as a journalist to always seek truth above all else. Surely that’s what the Bible promotes. I know, though, that I’ve kept certain things secret to “protect the innocent,” and it’s always seemed to be the right decision.

*****

My attitude tonight is, “Who cares—let it rip!” The way my nerves are so jangled I don’t have any expectations of living a long life. I often go through the utter fear of, “Is this the day I have the nervous breakdown?” Let’s hope it’s peri-menopause, as other women have assured me.

*****

As bad as things get in the world I find people don’t want to hear what the Bible says. It just seems to turn them even further away. I’ve never been able to figure out this phenomenon as someone who got saved so young I don’t remember how or when it occurred.

One of my favorite people from my whole life, Oscar Woodall, said to me when I first revealed this fact to him over the phone, “So, are you one of those people who was born saved?” We both had to laugh at his off-the-cuff remark.

I can testify to the fact that being saved since early childhood is no guarantee that you won’t make a wreck of your blessings. Right now, in this dawning of 2009, I’m climbing out of any number of self-made ditches.