I spent the last two weeks of 2024 reading, drinking tea, drinking booze, eating, and surrounded by people I love. I lost track of where and when I was and tried to turn off my brain and all of the voices, while also attempting to engage with the parts of me that needed to scream and cry and asked for the hard reset that I’m hoping those weeks were.
I’m writing this for myself, but also hoping I can post it to the blog, maybe. I’m not sure. We’ll see.
The past year of my life was the most challenging year I’ve ever had. In a lot of ways o feel like I can’t talk about it or that it’s not appropriate or not exactly my story to tell. The fact is, that a large part of what defined my year wasn’t about me. Which is also one of the hard parts - feeling like a footnote in your own life. Being the youngest member of my family, but also being in charge of a lot of big decisions that affect us all… All while being actively no contact with a family member who I was once closer to than most others, because that relationship was no longer emotionally or physically safe. Any of the familial elders I could have talked to about it are ancestors now. Actively fighting to keep my head above water at work and at home, and then feeling like it’s not enough in either space… I’m so lost in my own feelings I can’t tell anymore if that’s a way I’ve been made to feel or if I’m being too hard on myself.
And I haven’t even begun to unpack my feelings about the current political climate in America. I slept more than I have the past two weeks than I probably did the whole year, and yet I’m still so tired.
Change has never been my strong suit - it’s either something I didn’t ask for and comes so quickly I’m completely thrown off balance and find myself on the floor screaming. Or it’s something I need deeply and nothing on the universe can match my pace. The past year has been both of these things.
I was called privileged recently and it really got under my skin. It’s a word that’s been throw at me more than once and it’s an easy one to levy, because people don’t see all the WORK that has gone into building my life. I made a series of conscious decisions to be where I am, for better or worse. Unfortunately, a lot of the “for worse” has been at the forefront of my brain recently and being called privileged while holding hands with my mistakes stung in a way I can’t begin to quantify.
Part of my reading has been a re-read of ACOTAR. (Spoilers are inbound) During my first read I mostly identified with Feyre and I still do - however, I have much more empathy for Nesta this time around. This version of me would have also taken something from the Cauldron.
This Tumblr post has been floating around the internet the past two days, “2025 is the year to get around to it. rub some dirt in the gaping wound of your heart and bare your teeth to your own life”.
May we all force quit that which doesn’t serve us and bare our teeth at life.