i will live my life if it kills me
the new year is full of promise and it is coming fast.
New Year’s Eve always makes me feel an abundance of anxious energy, and more often than not I nervously skitter around my house doing nothing all day, paralyzed by the thought that there is something I should be doing. There are a lot of things I should be doing right now: writing my grad school applications, going to buy a bottle of wine, finding a new book to read, making my bed, and writing resolutions. I won’t do any of these things, but it’s nice to think I could do them if I wanted to. Isn’t that the real point of resolutions too? I won’t do any of them, but it’s nice to think I could. It’s nice to think that there’s a possibility, that there’s a chance, that maybe this year things will be different. That sounds bitter, I know. I just don’t know how to feel around New Year’s. Should I buy into the idea that I can be someone new, or should I just be content with my same old self? Should I rot in my bed like I always do, or should I try to strip myself bare and become unrecognizable? I know it’s not that black and white. But sometimes I don’t know any other way to look at things.
I grew exhausted with being a person this year. I had to find my way out of that rabbit hole as best I could. I think I am out, but I can never really be sure. One small thing (a certain smell, or someone who’s hair looks eerily like yours, or even the moments where I think I see you across the dining hall) is enough to send me reeling. But it’s not enough to send me drowning. No one has that sort of power over me anymore.
And I’m wondering, with morbid curiosity, what have I done all year? I cannot tell you what happened from January to the beginning of April. I don’t care to recount those months. But for the rest of it I was this wounded creature, stuck licking my wounds for the better half of the year. By the time September rolled around and I returned to school, I was a type of miserable I had not been in a long time. But with time (and mostly, the loves of my life) things changed, and I realized, goddamnit, I actually really love my life. I have cried in the arms of my friends so many times this year I cannot begin to try and recount every single time. When I came back to school in September, I had written myself off. I was no longer a character in my own life, just a background being who was content with roaming around completely unimportant. But my heart, more than anything, is stupid. It always finds a way to make me blush and stutter over my words. It always finds a way. I am forever thankful for that— even when my mind was so against it, even when my body rejected it, my heart knew what was best for me. What a blessing that is.
I have this weird idea of myself where I think I have no idea who I am, and I think that I am the biggest liar alive. But on one of our many weekly excursions, A told me that she has never seen me be anyone but my self, completely and unapologetically. This had taken me by surprise. Was this true? Was this really the truth? I thought about it a lot after she said that. I tried wracking my brain for moments where I had tried to seem like someone else, or moments where I had tried to hide parts of myself to seem cooler. Every example I found ended the same way— I grew tired, and gave up. I have been a liar to no one but my own self. How had I deluded myself into thinking I was something else entirely?
I started, at the end of the year, to see myself through the eyes of others. I have spent so much of my life listening to my listless and tiresome anxiety, so I decided maybe it’s time to listen to someone else. When I started doing that, when I stopped seeing myself with the eyes that had been poisoned by my past, I was something else entirely. I think this was the first year I really felt beautiful, which is funny considering how vile I felt all summer long. But now, when I catch my reflection in the mirror, I am amazed. Is this who I have always been? Is this the same girl who used to pick herself apart? It can’t be, right? I keep looking at old pictures of myself and thinking that I look vastly different now. But when I show these comparisons to my friends and loved ones, they say I look exactly the same. I know exactly what has changed to make myself see myself beautiful. It’s a funny thing, how much a person can change the way you see yourself. I thought I would forever see myself as a dog kicked too many times, as something not worth loving back, as something too far gone. How easy it was to unlearn. How simple it was to shed. What had I ever been so afraid of? What have I ever been afraid of, this whole year?
The New Year always makes me anxious, and spending it alone this year is surely not helping. But I don’t know. I just can’t really see myself being so miserable anymore. I’ve tied to anchor off my ankle. I’ve finally reached the shore. I know there is still a whole trek to go on. I know there is more to do, as there always is. But I am going to let myself revel in my glory for once. Should I not be incredibly proud of myself? Should I not be incredibly amazed of who I am now, after all that? Should I not be astounded by the fact that I have not, despite it all, turned myself hard against the world? I don’t really care. I will sing my praises at the end of the world, even when there is nothing. I spent so much of this year afraid and alone. I will not let myself fall back into this.
I don’t believe in resolutions. But let me put this one out into the world: let this be the year that I learn that love, the real kind, the one I feel when I look into my best friends’ eyes, does no harm. Let me love without shame. Let me love without hurting.
At the end of the Odyssey, Odysseus is tasked with going on one last voyage. He has to roam the earth carrying an oar until he finds a land where no one has ever been tortured by the sea. He has to roam the earth, walk inland, until he finds the place where no one can recognize the piece of wood that he carries, where they instead mistake it for a shovel. Only then, is it said, he will find peace.
I am walking inland. Find me there, if you can, and ask me about the shovel I carry.