12:00AM

The clock strikes twelve times. 

It is not the type of old grandfather clock she used to see in her grandparents’ house. It is just an imaginative sound she plays in her head while the digital clock on her clock flashes in silence. She counts to twelve and watches the fireworks arising from tons of houses below her apartment at the same time, sparks blasting in the air, drunk teenagers shouting on the street, and a million motorcycles whizzing past on the street. The “happy new year bestie” messages constantly pop up on her phone, like some sort of mechanical movement on an assembly line. She doesn’t know what to say other than “happy new year to you too” with a heart emoji, or just simply a “thank you” with a smiley face to those she doesn’t know that well. It is a new year, yet it never feels like one. 

As soon as the clock hits 12:00am, a brand new chapter of life starts. Yet it could be 3am in New York right now, or 6pm in Hawaii. Time is relative. The new year in California isn’t technically the new year. It is just a fancy imagination that makes you think you can get away with all the shitty things that happened in the past year and just move on.

She lies in bed, staring at the fireworks outside of her window. It feels so lame, she thinks, especially with the darkness and the silence and the lingering cough from the flu. 

2:30AM

She recalls all the past new years she has spent, either alone or with friends. None of them were worth remembering, yet the memories feel so fresh that she sees herself getting lost at the middle of the night when they just got out of the new year party, a thirty minute walk home turned out to be an hour long because of her terrible sense of direction and dead phone; or the time when her parents had a huge fight on new year’s eve - it lasted until the next year, and all she remembered was the shouting and the clattering of bottles and her mother crying; she even remembers when a few years ago when she begged her mother to let her stay up for the momentous moment of the new year, the next morning she heard about the tragedy happened in downtown where people stepped on one another in the crowd right after the countdown.

New year has never been a pleasant memory. Maybe it is a good thing, for that time is relative and the new years she has experienced weren’t technically the new year.

4:14AM

She gets herself up from the bed and walks to the balcony. California nights are always chilly, but she lets the air fill her trachea and then her lungs insatiably, like swallowing an ice cube down her throat to melt the stuffy air in the room that hadn’t been circulated for the past week. 

The street has become quiet, quieter than ever. Most people are tired from the ecstasy of the first couple minutes of new year - perhaps too much shouting and running around. She sees them lying on the street like there are no other people. But there are other people. She is the other people. 

Staying home alone on new year’s eve does not do her any good. She wishes she was with friends, or a couple strangers even, to curse at the stagnant world like nobody cared, to laugh, to cry, to forget about all the shit that has happened to her. But she can’t.

Her mind has never been so clear.

But time is relative, and the new year isn’t technically the new year.

7:06AM

The sun has risen. She doesn’t know how long she has spent on the balcony, just standing and staring into nothing. Suddenly she screams. She screams for so long that she feels all her organs squeezing together and she runs out of breath. Nothing changes, really.

But now she sees the first light beam of the new year shining on her feet, which don’t feel like hers anymore. Maybe time isn’t relative, and there are thousands of new years simultaneously happening. One of them will be a good one, she thinks.