My last year was horrible. It’s hard to know if my 2015 was, in fact, worse than my 2014, because in 2014 I had a major surgery and spent the year recovering from that. But if anything could beat out a year of medical complications in a shitfest contest, it would be last year.
I got a job I desperately wanted, only to discover that sometimes unpleasant surprises lurk in the most unlikely places. I got an internship I didn’t expect to get, and learned a lot about how challenging it really is to help run a successful website. I spent the first half of the year working 50-60 hours per week, splitting time between two part-time jobs and one online gig, and then I spent the second half of the year exhausted and barely able to manage my workweek, let alone life.
I took on a lot, and I’m not sorry for it, but I did burn out. It took a toll on my writing – last year was by far my least prolific in terms of output, even though I did a lot behind the scenes. It took a toll on my friendships. I was rarely able to see my best friends, to call them on the phone, to hear about their lives, because I was too wrapped up in the business of surviving my own and remembering to shower. I have been a bad friend before, in times of deep depression, but this was a different kind of neglect, and one I feel more guilt about. My room remained a mess for the entirety of the year, as did my car, as did my bathroom. I was mostly an outwardly functional, privately hobo-level mess.
I spent the whole year telling myself that if I just tried hard enough, if I could manage to show the universe how badly I really, really wanted this, things would work out. What I learned was that not everything works out the way you want it to, and that sometimes, it’s a real shitty feeling to see opportunities you worked your ass off for go to someone else. Over. And over. And over again. It’s a real shitty feeling to see your hard work crumble the second someone else looks at it the wrong way. It’s horrific to see something good happen to you, and then have it smashed out of your hands mere moments later, multiple times. It’s difficult to give up and let go and learn when you’ve gotta stop killing yourself for a dream and move the fuck on.
But that’s what 2k15 taught me, the hard mistress that she was. I learned that working hard and wanting hard and surviving hard things and maybe even deserving it was not enough to guarantee a positive outcome. I learned that there is only so much you can give before the giving runs out, and you’re just scraping the insides of yourself out to provide fuel for someone else’s fire.
I learned how to walk away rather than fully commit my body to the flames. I learned about setting myself on fire to keep others warm, and I was forced to reflect on how I have being doing that my whole life through, in different shapes and forms. I learned that an inability to keep on doing this was not weakness, but rather a form of strength, as I recognized my limits and remembered I was just one single human girl and I could not continue to run on fumes. I remembered that I am worth taking care of, in whatever form that takes, and that I owe it to no one to remain constantly unhappy working for a dream deferred.
The shitstorm of 2015 taught me a lot of lessons, actually, ones that I didn’t much care to learn. I lost friendships, money, hope, a car (don’t ask, please, that story makes me literally tear my own hair out), and a couple of dreams. I gained the kind of wisdom that is so hard-earned, you couldn’t have possibly gained it any other way.
I let go of a lot, and I gained a lot, too. I reconnected with my sister, a relationship that is consistently complicated and conflicted – the kind only two people who are so alike and yet so utterly different can have – as well as a source of joy and light, and will remain so forever, I think. I told my best friend a secret about me that I had worried would drive her away; instead, she loved me still. I saved money so hard and finally got rid of the feeling that being poor was a moral indictment on who I am as a person, because I lost those savings when life bitchslapped me in the face a few times. I saw old friends from high school and college for the first time in years, and they welcomed me back with open arms and open hearts.
I also threw up on myself in front of my coworkers and experienced the singular feeling of a priest dropping a wafer cracker down my cleavage during communion and then fishing it out himself. (Two events not connected.) There is always more humility to be learned.
To the shithurricane that was 2015: thank you for everything, and don’t take this the wrong way, but never come back.
To the bright and shining prospect of a new year: please, please, please, be better. Or at least please don’t contain any priests with their hands down my shirt at the altar rail. That would be a nice change.