To 2015

I’ve been thinking about this past year. I’ve been thinking about memories and how they change over time. I’ve been thinking about spaces and how they hold onto ideas you never wanted them to have. I’ve been thinking about events and arcs and other people’s stories, real and imagined. I’ve been thinking about 2014 and what it will mean over the course of the rest of my life. 

It was quite the year for me, for my friendships and my family and my future. I realized exactly how much each of those things can mean, and how much each of them can hurt you, and how helpful each can be in your life. You get to decide, you know? You’re not just a ship tossed about by waves. You have a rudder. You have a compass. You can find a map. 

In maybe February or March or April, I read the Dear Sugar advice column #64: Tiny Beautiful Things. Even though the column has much that I can’t relate to, I can’t get the image of purple balloons out of my head and the wisdom in remembering that you do still have a right to such tiny beautiful things. Situations may take you a plethora of places that you didn’t want to ever be and didn’t realize you should have steered away from, but no matter how far away you are from what you thought was good, you still deserve good things. Like forgiveness. And love. 

In May, I listened to The Debate, one of Welcome to Night Vale’s live shows, in a blanket fort I made in a hotel and I napped in the afternoon sunshine, basking in this current definition of my life. Night Vale relishes the weird, the odd, the creeping scary stories that we’d tell around campfires if we weren’t so afraid of the night and I love that. There is a robust fragility to humanity and I am perpetually reminded of that fragility and that strength in me when I listen to these stories. It is a twice-monthly brightening of my life, something to pull me out of where I’ve been, over and over again. 

In June, July, and August, I had a weekly two-and-a-half hour meeting with Interstate 40, east then a few days later, west, between North Carolina exits 266 and 123. My life arrived at the point where I no longer considered the drive a road to be travelled but a location at which I found myself for five hours in a week. Maybe the vehicle or the music changed, but the feeling was the same. It was an isolation of space from location, the same thing that I felt at my last Avett Brothers New Year’s Eve last night. We might change venues and the people around me may be different, but this feeling, this sensation, it’s the same. I know how it feels to be here, even though the coordinates of here have changed. 

In August and September and October and November, I thought about the person I wanted to represent myself as being and I wrote that person down and I hid the doubts and the lack of confidence in my plans, as one does when one is desperately trying to change one’s situation, and in December, I did my best to figure out what you do with yourself once your most unreasonable dreams have been realized. 

In general, 2014 wasn’t stellar. It was an exercise in getting by, in succeeding with the resources you have available to you and hoping that those resources and your wit/skill/gumption will carry the day. And that getting by, that doing my best with what I had, that went on for so long, I forgot what it was like to just live. To just exist. To have enough and not to feel stretched or squeezed by existence. 

I’ve got some clarity back, some space and some time, and I remember what it’s like to live your life, and how it’s different from getting by. I want to keep this feeling. I know there will be highs and lows, times of plenty and times of difficulty, times of renewal and times of giving. I’ve seen the difference between faking it ’til you make it and actually having the skill and energy and ability to move forward without being shattered into a million pieces. I know the difference between trying (when trying is all you have) and performing. 

I much prefer performing. 

So here’s to a year when we don’t just get by, but we live.

Here’s to a year when circumstances allow us to do our best instead of to try our hardest. 

Here’s to a year when, if again circumstance breaks us down, the people around us catch us with the grace and competence given them. 

Here’s to 2015.