Resolutions for an Arbitrary Holiday

Resolutions for an Arbitrary Holiday By Nell Iris New Year’s Eve New beginnings, new times, new you! Who decided that a new year should symbolize all that? Why do we even need new beginnings, why does everything always have to be better and newer? It’s not that I’m anti-change—considering I’m about to make a huge change in my life, that’d just be stupid—I’m just opposed to picking an arbitrary point in time to celebrate it. I’m also opposed to the actual celebration, but I always let myself be talked into s**t I don’t want to do. That’s something I’m going to change this coming year, too. I take a drink of the champagne—sparkling wine?—I brought on my little adventure straight out of the bottle. “Classy, Petter,” I mutter, ignore the lingering feeling of yuck on my tongue and take another, bigger gulp. I grimace. It’s utterly disgusting, and I’d give anything for a hot chocolate instead, but nooo. I had to snatch a bottle of bubbly from the fridge when I made a snap decision to sneak out of the house and get away from the wild party I’d been dragged to by my friends, and instead spend the rest of New Year’s Eve with some quiet and solitude. What better way to do that than to hike up to the ancient stone ship at the top of the hill and cheer in the new year in style. It sounded like a good idea in my head, despite it being pitch black and cold since it’s the middle of the winter; I prefer things thousands of years old over rap music and drunk people. But I didn’t expect to be stranded up here. I was just going to visit the ancient site and look at the magnificent stones for a while, set off some of the sparklers I stuffed in my pocket, take a sip or two of the bubbly, and start the new year listening to the rhythmic waves of the ocean instead of music I don’t like. I wanted to be surrounded by nature and history and the feeling of magic, instead of dancing and loudness and people saying s**t like “you’re such a great friend, why don’t we see each other more often?” to people they can’t stand. It was a great idea. In theory. Now though, I’m not so sure. I wiggle my foot in my sturdy boot and wince when it hurts like a b***h. Because of course I stumbled and twisted my ankle, so now I’m sitting here on the cold—but thankfully snow-free—ground with my back against one of the old stones, gaze ping-ponging between my poor ankle and my cell phone. Because of course, I have no reception up here. The irony is that I made it all the way up the hill without incident. The climb was really steep at times and the “road” was mostly an uneven dirt path formed by thousands of feet walking this way over the years. I had the forethought to borrow a headlamp hanging by the door before slinking out of the house, and the moonlight is pretty bright, so I could see well enough where I was going to stop myself from stumbling. But then the sight of the old stone ship in the moonlight was overwhelming and eerie and awe-inspiring, and I took a step back without looking, and I tripped and fell. When I tried to break the fall, I landed on my foot and twisted my ankle. I was lucky I didn’t break the damned thing. Also lucky I didn’t break the bottle in the fall because wouldn’t being pierced by a glass shard have been the f*****g icing on the misery cake? So here I am. Alone. Leaning against a huge stone that’s been standing in this exact spot for at least fifteen hundred years. It’s breathtaking if I ignore my throbbing ankle. And if the chill doesn’t kill me. The winds are pretty fierce up here on the cliff overlooking the ocean; they’re howling through the stones and pulling on my clothes. They hurl the water against the rocks below, and the steady sound of waves crashing on the shore calls to me. I adore the ocean. How untamed it is. The wildness. I wish I could see it properly. Maybe I can crawl closer and watch what I’m sure must be a spectacular sight? I shake off that thought immediately. “Don’t be stupid,” I mutter. Wouldn’t it be just my luck if I crawled to the edge, got too close, lost my balance, and fell, crushing my skull against the cliffs? Yeah, no. I’m staying right here. I’m not dying on the literal edge of Sweden after leaving the party without telling anyone where I was going with no damned cell reception to call for help should I survive the drop to the beach. I look at my phone again and sigh. Still nothing. I can take stunning photos with it, though. That’s what I was doing when I fell. “Maybe they’ll print one of them when they find my cold dead body,” I say into the wind. “Then they can hang it on this stone, and someone can carve my epitaph into it. ‘Here lies the sorriest son of a b***h to ever have visited this place.’ It would serve me right. At least I’d be remembered forever.” I groan. This has always been my problem. Doing before thinking. “Control your bloody impulses, Petter,” my mom always says with that exasperated tone of voice that tells me she’s sick and tired of having this conversation with her soon-to-be thirty-year-old son. And well…if I’d listened, I wouldn’t be sitting here with a twisted ankle, would I? Nor would I have been at the party in the village by the foot of this hill if I’d learned to control my bloody impulses and wouldn’t have been tempted to go see the stones.