A quick New Years note

I’m not one for picking through a past year and analyzing it, not anymore. I used to be, to be sure, and I’m not going to begrudge it to anyone else, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that not everything has to be psychoanalyzed to the bone. Sometimes things simply happen to us.

In the past – in fact, for most of my life – I’ve been able to pinpoint when something happened to me down to the month, occasionally the very week. Some years blur more than others, of course, but the past ten years or so have been easy to chop into pieces and sort through at my leisure. Not so for 2022: though a few important events do stand out, much of the past year has been obscured in an odd haze – not a depressive one (for once), but rather one of confusion and, I suppose, an odd form of want. I was always waiting for something to happen. In the end, not a lot did.

I stayed in last night, opting to sit in the bath as the New Years countdown happened. Right on the dot, I heard a firework boom outside my apartment, and slid my body underwater, eyes closed, lips pursed, the rapid thud of my heart banging in my ears in a stark reminder that I may have a soul, but one that’s still encased in meat. Goodbye and hello, I thought to myself, 2022 was odd and dull, but it’s over. On to new things. I’m very “future-forward” now, as cheesy as it seems, but lately I’ve been trying to let go as best I can of old hurts and look forward to, well, growing as a person. Again, cheesy, but I’m also trying not to be so cynical, at least not all the time.

The best and truest advice I’ve ever received is that “life isn’t linear.” It’s not, no matter how much you might try to force it. God, the universe, life – whatever it is to you, it will lob things at you unexpectedly, out of nowhere, whether or not you’re equipped to handle them. Very few will escape this. I don’t exactly find it a “fun fact” – many of the non-linear events in my own life have been deeply unpleasant – but it is certainly one to hold in the mind and, if you can, warm up to. The more I’ve surrendered myself to the wending passage of time, the less afraid I’ve felt of it. I actually look forward to growing older now. Imagine what I’ll have done and learned by the time I’m in my fifties!

– But, well, anyway – I do think it’s fine to be a little afraid. The universe can crush you like a bug and think nothing of it. To me, that means it’s crucial to indulge in the joy you do have around you, to do your best to cultivate love and companionship in whatever form it might take, to see life as (cheesy again!) an adventure to be embarked upon. There is no straight and narrow, there is no singular “correct” path. I enter 2023 with hope for goodness, but balance it with the awareness that I could get absolutely bodied, too. There’s no way to know, but life is both hilarious and deeply fucked up, and to hold those two concepts in your mind simultaneously is, I think, a form of grace.

So, happy new year and all that, but don’t get too worked up – there will be much to marvel at. There always is.