Two years ago on January 2, my body still ravaged by the New Year’s festivities, I limped into my local gym demanding to see a personal trainer or anyone who could help me shake off the extra 10kg I’d been carrying around since the birth of my son four years earlier.
For me, as for many others, committing to the battle of the bulge had become an annual ritual. Every year a fit of bravado combined with self-loathing would realise itself as the top item on my list of resolutions. But, as we all know, it’s only too easy to get waylaid by our busy schedules, work load and downright laziness. So in previous years those ambitious weight-loss plans always ended up in the bin of lost dreams and hopes — alongside my size 32 jeans — even before January turned to February.
Having been a prolific shopper in my skinny days, I’d grown tired of looking longingly at my pre-pregnancy clothes and wondering what happened to that girl and who on Earth would inherit my beautiful clothes? As I was turning 30 that year, I decided I wanted both my body and my wardrobe back. Being relentlessly single-minded in most other areas of my life, I finally decided to be as resolute with my weight.
So I panted, heaved, sweated, prayed and sometimes even wept, but two years down the line I’m back to my pre-baby weight, but with a different muscular and toned body shape. I’ve competed in road races and triathlons and have added to my vocabulary curious words like lunges, squats and dead lifts. I can even distinguish my quads from my glutes. Who knew?
So now, as I reflect on the past year and look ahead to 2010, I’m a firm believer in making resolutions and keeping them. My aspirations for this New Year are, however, far more cerebral and spiritual than a tangible, cast-in-stone to-do list.
This year it’s written in pencil, with no hard-and-fast rules. After a draining year juggling three jobs and academic studies, I want to spend 2010 being more present and fully embracing what the universe brings into my life. I want this way of being to replace the mad rush, anxiety and sense of expectation that characterised 2009. No hard feelings, 2009, you’ve been awesome, but I’m glad to see the back of you. This year I simply want to be.
With no more reams of academic theory to plough through over the weekends, this year is about reading for pleasure: novels, biographies and, now that the recession is over, I won’t feel so guilty about my monthly fix of the pricey Vanity Fair magazine. With no more group discussions with my varsity classmates on Saturday mornings, I’m going to sleep in till 10am.
Having lived in Johannesburg for 10 years, I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t speak or understand any of the local vernacular languages, so my single tangible resolution this year is to learn Sesotho/Setswana so as to avoid those awkward moments with colleagues or friends; those, who, when they greet you, you respond to with bewilderment and finally, at a loss about what to say, you simply break into isiXhosa, creating more confusion and embarrassment.
As for love, well, what can one say on that score? You can never predict when it will come or leave. I’ve now left it to God after years of obsessing, plotting and yearning. At a party to see in 2009, my girlfriends and I ran out into a storming Johannesburg night with the hope and intention that the first rains of the first day of the New Year would wash away our bad luck. We hoped that 2009 would bring us lasting love. For all of us it did indeed bring love; alas, it was not lasting.
I started calling him the ghost when I realised that he wasn’t real. Ghosts are figments of our imagination dreamed up by our hearts’ desires. You can’t touch or see them when you want, only when they decide to appear. Exquisitely sweet, intriguing, magical and intoxicating.
But, not being a fairy, I couldn’t whip out my wand and make my ghost appear as and when I chose. Our childhood fairytale story books have ruined us for real life. The thing is, as a friend pointed out, ghosts are interesting and fascinating, but being perpetually haunted is not. So, as I bid farewell to 2009, I also lay my ghost to rest.