“And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.”
-Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

You could understand the full breadth of my entire experience in 2009 or you could simply understand how my year began, and the result would still be the same. Exactly one year ago, I celebrated New Year’s Eve in Harvard Square at the Hong Kong restaurant with some of my closest friends. It was my first New Year’s open bar experience, and I decided to live a little. In my case, or at least on this particular night, living a little meant a lot of gin & tonics. A lot of gin & tonics. By the end of the night, I’d had a fantastic time, but I could barely make it down the stairs from the club to the restaurant without falling down. Key word: barely. Alcohol is no match for my inherent grace.

As persons in drunken revelry have known since the dawn of time, I knew ordering copious amounts of fried food would help my situation, and that’s exactly what I did. The food arrived, but after a few bites the room went from slightly wobbly to completely spinning. Not wanting to make a mess in such a fine establishment, I rose from my chair and said to my friends, “Alright, I’m leaving.” Knee deep in fried rice and crab rangoon, they couldn’t put up much of a fight as I left the restaurant.

As I exited the front door, I remembered an interesting fact about that night: it was cold. It wasn’t standard New England cold, either; it was “Holy shit, honey! Throw some mo-ah wood on the fi-ah! I’m freezing my fahking balls off he-ah!” New England cold. The wind itself was enough to rip tears from my eyes and then freeze them to my cheek. I looked both ways and remembered where I was so I could determine my route home. Say what you want about the drunken mess I was that night, but Kiel Servideo is a human GPS sober or inebriated.

I turned left and began my journey. After only a few steps, the bitter wind ferociously blew in my face, knocking my New Year’s Eve party hat off my head. By the time I turned around, it was already skipping down the sidewalk nearly a block away from me. I admitted defeat and, with a drunken murmur, said, “Goodbye hat,” before I was once again on my way.

After this night, I was able to determine through the use of Google Maps that the distance between the Hong Kong and my brother’s Somerville apartment, my sleeping quarters for the night and the destination of my journey, was two miles. According to another quick search, a man walks a mile in roughly 20 minutes. However, if a man is heavily intoxicated and battling below-freezing conditions, skin-tearing wind and icy sidewalks, let’s round up to 30 minutes a mile, shall we? All told, that gives me about an hour to walk home. During that time, I endured such unspeakable cold that my male reproductive organs shrank to such a small size I was technically a female for that hour.

I had to talk to myself the entire time to keep going. I begged myself not to stop. “You can’t die,” Drunk Kiel said to Drunk Kiel. “You’re going to L.A. soon. It’s warm there. You’re almost there.” I talked about a lot of other things, too. I evaluated many facets of my life, from romantic to professional. Drunk Kiel had many bits of advice for Drunk Kiel. “For now on, we’re going to do this” or “For now on, we’re going to do that.” And all that time, as I continued my meandering through Cambridge and Somerville streets, I kept putting one foot in front of the other. Left, right, left, right - like a soldier marching in the dead of winter when he knows the war is nearly at a close. I just kept going and, to tell you the truth, I’m not entirely sure I knew where I was going the majority of the time.

Yet, as if by some miracle, I picked my head up from the left-right routine and saw my friends getting out of a cab in front of my brother’s apartment. Some instinct had carried me to exactly where I needed to be. I screamed for them and they screamed for me. Apparently they feared terrible things had befallen me much like Drunk Kiel thought they would. They got me inside and upstairs and in no time I was as warm as the gin had made me earlier that night. I was sober now, though. I guess walking through negative temperatures for an hour will have that effect. I had survived and I was happy, albeit without my hat. Most importantly, I felt like I had returned to normal.

And then 2009 happened. A couple weeks later, I was off to Los Angeles for a semester of immersion into the film industry, the start of what I hoped would be a flourishing career. The night before I left, I was a little baby. Despite needing to leave at 4 am for my flight, I was tossing and turning well after midnight dreading everything wonderful in my Methuen/Boston world that I’d be leaving behind. I went into my little sister’s room. She needed to say comforting things to her big brother to stop the tears and help him man up for the next big step in his life. It helped. Less than a day later, I was comfortably adjusting to life on the West Coast, excited for whatever lay ahead.

The next few months are still like a ridiculous dream. They were less than a year ago, but they feel like they’re a lifetime away. Suddenly I was going to the beach in January. And I was cruising down Hollywood Boulevard getting the peace sign from Billy Ray Cyrus. And I was driving around Beverly Hills checking out the posh mansions that I’d one day own when I was the successful star I was destined to be. I went to Disneyland six times with my yearly pass and would have gone at least a dozen times more if I’d remained there after graduation. I hiked beautiful mountains only 15 minutes away from my apartment. I drove through the desert to that oasis of light known as Las Vegas. Oh, and I worked at a couple of film production companies in my spare time to reinforce that I had, in fact, chosen the right career path.

However, while it rarely rains in Los Angeles, a dark cloud hung over all of this fun and excitement. Back home, the world I’d left behind was changing quickly. In tact when I departed Boston, my parents’ marriage was suddenly in jeopardy. Phone calls home weren’t moments of relaxation to describe all of the wonderful things I was doing and seeing in LA; they were stress-filled conversations that reminded me how much pain the closest and most loved people in my life - my parents and my siblings - were in. Naturally, I put some blame on myself. After all, I was Switzerland during any family arguments throughout my life, so who’s to say I couldn’t have helped the problems we suddenly faced now if I was still within 30 rather than 3,000 miles of the issue? The blame wasn’t mine, of course, and I was forced to learn the most painful lesson of my young life: The toughest thing to accept in life is that which is out of your control.

When the Los Angeles dream finally ended and I was set to return in early May for graduation, I’d given up on the idea of moving out to Hollywood to chase success. Generally speaking, divorcing parents have money tied up in lawyer fees rather than supporting a struggling screenwriter across the country. My first night back on the right coast, I slept on the couch in my father’s new Malden apartment. It was one of the most surreal points of my life. I’d left the normal, happy Servideo home with Mommy, Daddy, Brother, and Sister, but I’d returned to a twisted alternate dimension where dad lives in the basement of a two-family house. Part of me had clung to the hope when I was away that it was all some sick and twisted joke. Not seeing the family destruction first-hand had delayed it from becoming real. Now the reality was being shoved in my face.

My first couple weeks home leading up to graduation, I lived out of my car since I had no Boston University dwelling anymore. No couch was too good for me during that time as I tried to jam as much of college into the few days I had left before it was over. And then, just like that, it was over. I graduated Magna Cum Laude, a proud accomplishment if I do say so myself. What can you do with a bachelor’s degree in Film & Television from a globally respected academic institution? You can laminate it at Staples. Not much else. When you add a dismal economy to the lack of applicability of my degree (did I mention I received high honors, too?), there is not much hope. For the love of God, all I want is hope! Once again, I felt that crippling feeling of no control. The only bright spot of my summer came when I met a wonderful girl and thought it had promise. (Don’t they all?) I should have known better, though. Not in 2009, buddy.

I guess I’d always thought that I’d do well at every educational level, from kindergarten to college, and when I was done job offers would be aplenty. Companies would be paying just to interview and sit down with me. Things don’t work out like that in reality though. You graduate college, and suddenly the world becomes some great mystery. And you may find yourself living with crippling debt. And you may find yourself incapable of finding a full-time job. And you may find yourself living back at home with your mother.And you may ask yourself, How did I get here?! If this happens to you, don’t be surprised when you become more bitter than a jilted ex-girlfriend…except you can’t terrorize any girl he replaced you with when the world chews you up and spits you out. Boy is having no control a frustrating thing.

In the fall, tired of feeling useless to the world, I finally kicked my ass into gear and began volunteering as the assistant varsity soccer coach at Methuen High School. Volunteering means no pay, of course, but when your self-esteem is swirling around a flushing toilet, doing good for others can be a big help. I began working as a substitute teacher and even started to blog. After all, if I’m going to be a writer like I’ve been saying for the better part of a decade now, shouldn’t I be writing on a regular basis? I’m glad you agree. You should come here more often. The last six weeks, I stopped substituting because I could earn more money as a seasonal driver’s helper for UPS. To reinforce my ever-present economic woes, I delivered to affluent people living in giant houses that received several packages every day from unnecessary online shopping sprees. Oh, the other half and how you live! I hope to have the luxury to spend just as recklessly as you some day.

Now, as the year nears its close, you can only imagine how happy I am to be rid of 2009 and welcome 2010 with open arms. I have every reason to believe things will only get better. For the love of God, all I want is hope! However, I’m not happy with the Kiel Servideo that is about to step into a new year. After a continuous array of letdowns in major areas of my life, I’ve become a twisted version of the happy and nice guy I believe I once was. To quote my accurate sister during a recent argument, “You’ve become such a dick, Kiel, and I hate it.” She’s right. I’m a dick now, and I hate it too. Why has this happened? I’ll have to quote my sage baby sister again, this time from Christmas morning when she looked at me with my stoic face during gift exchange and said, “Can’t you show any emotion, Kiel?”
I can assure you I can show emotion. In fact, much like the freezing wind-induced tears from my walk away last New Year’s, I’ve cried a considerable amount in 2009. Chances are I haven’t cried this much since I was the fat, chubby-cheeked child that stubbed his toe and skinned his knee every time he moved more than ten feet. However, all of these emotional displays are on my own, whether it’s in the car on the ride home from seeing my father for a two-hour spurt or while I’m sitting in the living room of my empty house that feels more like an old Western ghost town than the home that holds every memory of my youth. For whatever reason, these tears can’t fall in front of other people. I guess I’m trying to be a tough guy. I can tell you the last moment I cried in front of a family member: On the pier at Newport Beach in late February, my sister sitting beside me on a bench. After that, I clammed up and must have decided it was better to be an angry young man than a mopey one. Since that sunny day in Orange County, salty discharges have been behind closed doors or at least out of sight. I’ve found myself emotionally shaken to the point of tears at the strangest times, including while watching an acapella band sing at my sister’s dance show when I first came home from Los Angeles, but never in front of other people.

Every one cries, though, when the time is right. One night I was driving home from one of my internships, sitting in traffic on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, most likely angry after just having another frustrating and depressing conversation with a family member back home, when I turned to my right and saw a woman bawling her eyes out. I know nothing of her, her pain, or the story behind it, but in that moment I was reminded that everyone in this world has hardship. Like my brother, another wise sibling I’m lucky to have, proposed a little while back, “This must be the most difficult year of so many people’s lives.” It’s true, too. I in no think that I’m a special case of bad circumstance in 2009. Plenty of people are dealing with their own problems too. Still, since everything was too much for me to handle personally, this year I decided to only care about my problems and how they affect me. ME ME ME. I need to take more from seeing that woman cry, though. Some moments stand out in my life, and that will be one of them just like the day I spent playing baseball in the park with my dad when I was five or the night in high school when my sister came into my room singing the opening song to Beauty & the Beast. I can never know what she was crying about, but I know that she has her own pain too. We all do.

To answer my sister’s question about emotional display, I can show it. Unfortunately, it’s through anger when I’m around people. This year, it became abundantly clear to me that anger is the outlet for all of the complicated emotions that we don’t like to feel. When a person is sad enough, they eventually realize lashing out at people is a much better coping mechanism than constantly dwelling on everything that has wronged them. That is the person I’ve become. I have nothing good to give. I’m Mr. Hyde without ever drinking a potion. I’m a hateful young man obsessed with his own problems that is a far cry from the person I was proud to be in the ancient times of 2008. I’m ashamed to admit this and hope that recognizing the change will be the first step towards setting things right. I feel like a ship that was knocked off its course by a ferocious storm, but I’m ready to reset and make my way to port.

The bottom line is that things won’t always go your way, but you can’t live by your excuses like I have for the last twelve months. Failures make excuses; successes overcome them. You just need to keep marching through the bitter wind and cold, one foot at a time- left, right, left right. This year, I’ve dwelt on how little went in my direction. However, I don’t want to be a person who throws in the towel because he doesn’t get the things he wants. You didn’t get the girl again? Tough cookies. You didn’t get to start your dream career? Stop crying about it and do whatever you need to to get there. I need to tell myself this because when the clock strikes midnight tonight, 2010 won’t become a magical time where everything turns around. My world won’t instantly become rainbows and smiles. I’ll still be unemployed. I’ll still have to deal with my parents ugly divorce. There will still be bills to pay, and my dream girl will still just be a dream. In 2010, though, I need to handle those problems better, and that’ll start by becoming a better person again. I’m ready to right the ship, now. I lost my hat and have walked a long way home through treacherous elements, but I’m close to reaching a safe and warm place. In 2010, I have hope that I’ll finally get there.

And for the love of God, all I need is hope!