Life Chapter: The Journey Ahead
In a couple of days, we begin a new year. I’ve been thinking about the year behind me and the year ahead. I enjoyed December. I learned to enjoy the Christmas spirit again. The part I really liked was the lights. I lost count of how many times I stopped and just enjoyed watching them. I even had a different walking route with the dog just to see the lights on some houses. Guess I found a new little tradition for myself.
At its core, this year has been one of rebuilding and finding myself. The work is far from done, and I am not ready to try and reconnect with some people. I reached out to an old classmate to say hi, and they wanted to meet up. I felt anxious. I told them to give me some time, that I was busy. I am busy, but I also used it as an excuse. And when I wondered where the anxiety was coming from, it’s simple. I know I have changed in the course of the last few months. I am more stable and more confident, but I am still not where I want to be. I still have things I need to work out even further. I am no longer the person I used to be, and I am definitely not the person they remember, whoever I was back then. The last couple of years burned me down to ashes. This year, I am the juvenile phoenix that barely learned to fly.
I think the anxiety is a lack of confidence, because I’m still learning how to fly.
I am still very much fragile and vulnerable, and I need more time to grow.
I already knew last year that deep down something had to change, that the person I was wasn’t who I wanted to be, and if I continued, I would lose friends. This is why I wrote all those letters to start with. I never meant them as goodbye letters, or to piss people off. I didn’t write them to create pressure. I wrote them because I needed to, and back then I didn’t know what that change would look like. Maybe that’s why some sounded the way they did. They were the first act of my ongoing growth.
In all honesty, I’ve healed a lot since the Letters chapter. But the hidden part of my iceberg still carries pain and unresolved self-hatred that I only recently started to notice. Still, I’m confident that if I keep working on myself, it will be resolved one day.
I don’t know what the future holds with some of the people I still love, but I’m not holding a grudge against anyone. I think this much is clear from previous blogs, even if some people never got mentioned.
What I wanted this year is just to be myself again. Before the depression, before all the bullshit. I wanted to be the endless dreamer, the happier version of me, the wanderer, the adventurer, the friend who cares and loves. I wanted the old me again. But I realized midway through my trip in Indonesia, I can’t be him anymore. I can’t be the old version of me, because even the old version wasn’t perfect, or who I really wanted to be either.
Weirdly enough, this realization brought me peace. I don’t need to be the old me. I can reinvent myself. I can chase my dreams. I can bring the best of all the past versions and make a new version.
And as reinvention goes, I’ll be taking bachata lessons in January. I am looking forward to it, and it is also proof to myself that I am not the same person I was before. I would never ever have done this 6 months ago.
I am still in an in-between phase. Next year, hopefully in the coming 6 months or so, I will leave that space and settle in a more confident version of myself. And honestly, that is exciting. Two truths can exist at the same time, the anxiety and the thrill of the coming year.
Author note: Happy New Year and a late Merry Christmas! Some final thoughts on this blog and this past year. I think in the far future, I’ll be grateful for 2025, the year when enough was enough. 2025 was the year a freshly laid foundation became stronger and more stable. Everything I did and wrote led to this. Now let’s see where this goes. I won’t be afraid to start over if I have to, since the foundation is a lot sturdier than it once was.
New zealand 2017