An Open Letter to 2008

Dear 2008,

Well, I guess this is it. Where has the time gone? It seems like just nine years ago, I was sitting in 7th grade Spanish, counting years in my head and trying to figure out when I would graduate from college and thus be rid of schoolwork forever. Siempre. Por todos mis dias. As we all know, after four years of undergrad you have learned everything; no further schooling is necessary unless you wanted to do something extreme like earn a living wage. Had I only known then what I know now: I should’ve been studying Spanish while I was still young enough to learn.

But that is water under the bridge, Year Two Thousand and Eight A.D., and soon you will be, too. Many will be sad to see you go, and fondly recall all the pleasant memories that the past year has accorded. For my own part, though, I have a slightly different take.

Fuck you, 2008. You sucked hard. I can’t believe how crappy you were straight across the board. I began this year as a 21-year-old college student living the high life, and end it a 22-year-old grad and child care worker who is expected to act like an adult now. And those major life changes (birthday, graduation, back to work) happened in just one weekend!! Yet, I would say that those 48 hours (very accurately) reflect only 1/52nd of the circus of suckitude you unleashed on poor, undeserving me.

Some might say that time is only a simple construct employed by humanity to help distinguish certain moments from others, and to help reference events past and future. Wrong. Time is a selfish, greedy whore who incessantly takes what she wants and then leaves you nothing more than older and possibly itchier. You keep track of her every minute, hour, and day, and she requires you to undertake the same monotonous routine every twenty four hours so that you don’t die. Or oversleep.

Still, not every passing year was as merciless as you were, 2008. Past years brought me the joy of a driver’s license. The joy of alcohol. The joy of alcohol, legally. This year found me kicked out of college for the contradictory reasoning that I did well in all of my classes and proved that I deserved to be there. How does that make sense? This year found me back at home where I went to high school, making every day some sort of bizarro purgatorial Vietnam flashback where I now once again dream of missing the school bus. This year found me failing in the romantic department on a scale that was nothing short of epic. Holy shit.

Perhaps worst of all, you despicable 12 months, was that you took that which I had so precious little and demanded all of it. More than all of it. Of course I am talking about money. Not content to leave me several dozen grand in the hole, these loan bills that you deliver twice monthly show that you want that money back. And you want it now. It’s not okay that I barely make enough money to drink off my depression over not having any money. I want to be a teacher, how dare you ask me for money? I've got an idea, analyze the subject-predicate relationship in "I’m never ever ever going to have any money!" And thanks to your fantastic bubble burst, 2008, our economy in is the crapper. Awesome. Now there is even less money to go around! And less jobs to make less of the money that is harder to come by anyway. How does that work? Where did everything go? Why did the economy burst about five seconds after I needed to get a real job? Thank God I’m going to grad school soon, where I can rack up more debt, drink heavily (but by myself this time), and once again succeed in classes until I get kicked out for it.

But diplomas are pretty snazzy, I’ll give you that. Mine looks super and I appreciate you spelling my name right. My own family doesn’t do that.

But lest we get too comfortable, 2008, you’re currently drawing your last breaths and I couldn’t be happier to watch you expire. You took away my glory days at college and didn’t replace it with a full-time job, a girlfriend, or even a $5 footlong. You leave me living at home, applying to schools that don’t want me, taking standardized tests, driving my little brothers around, sneaking more booze at night and occasionally having to make small talk with old high school classmates I hoped I'd never see again. Didn’t I pay these dues already? Asshole.

You sucked, you know it, and you owe me big time. Life would have been so much better if you had just been 2007 or something. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, 2008. You disgust me.