Truth and Beauty

At the very end of my shift on the 31st, a code was called that resulted in three restraints. That was how I exited 2015.

They say your year will go the way you entered it. I entered it with warmth. I was surrounded by people I've known since I was ten. I called my family in Arizona. I messaged those who I wanted to carry with me from 2015 into 2016.

My first conversation of the year was
Eloosha, with a smug look: Huh, doesn't feel very different.
Me, insistent on magic: almost like New Years is an artificial time construct, you jerk.

traditions carried for generations: Oranges or clementines. Champagne. A table laden with food. Ирония судьбы (The Irony of Fate) playing in the background. Saying goodbye to the Old Year before saying hello to the New. Family. A New Years tree. Sparklers and fireworks. Snegurochka and Ded Moroz. Gifts. Love.

First Day of the Year, discussing bunnies as secret illigal pets during college
"I only ever saw two bunnies at Yale, one was named Truth and the other Beauty, and one of them almost certainly overdosed on cocaine" (which one though, is unknown)

I woke up the next morning and knit for a little bit before falling asleep and waking up with everyone else: all of us soon transitioned to one bed, a lump and warmth and promises to try to stay horizontal for as long as possible. Liza said "my new years resolution is to keep my heart over my head for as long as possible". Eloosha said "I think with my hands". I tucked those away.
Wasting time to the fullest with cuddling and music and late brunch. 
The next morning I woke not in my own bed yet again, and read Autobiography of a Corpse (Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky translated by Joanne Turnbull, 1920's) while surrounded by sleeping beauties.

I made it back to my apartment eventually, only to go back to the same company for a conversation that lasted hours, a midnight visitation and trying to breathe and be brave.