2019

It was the year of choosing yourself. It was picking up the pieces of your soul one by one and making something new out of them instead of putting them back together. It was waking up every morning and looking at yourself in the mirror and saying, “You’re okay”. It was last bus ride tickets and walking in the rain for fun, and it was going out with friends you haven’t seen for eons.

It was twelve months of peeling off bandages from wounds you didn’t know were there. It was Singapore. It was like inhaling fresh air after being indoors for so long. It was sleeping it off at twenty-three and waking up at twenty-four, and it was all the questions in between. Questions like, “What now?” and “What the hell were you thinking?” It was rewatching your old favorite TV shows until dawn, like you hadn’t seen them before. And it was going out to the balcony at 2 a.m. because the world was quiet and you got devoted to looking at the stars, and for some reason, you felt like you belonged.

It was the year of irony. Of breaking people’s hearts so you could protect yours. Of meeting strangers and then never showing up again. But it was also the year of showing up to the rest of the world again. It was taking things as they are rather than second guessing. It was the year of spontaneous, solo roadtrips and different cities and looking for answers to what you really want to do in life. It was wearing eye glasses after swearing you’ll never use one again. It was dreaming of Louisiana and jazz music, because you learned that looking at the world rosy-eyed can be addicting.

It was the year of safety. It was weekend after weekends of getting lost to art and self-improvement and books and coffee shops you’ve never been to. It was trusting no one but your own guts. It was accepting that you don’t have to fit yourself in to a huge despicable space in a puzzle when you could just be a single piece that is already whole in all of its being — and it was perfect.

It was twelve months of falling from grace, and catching yourself before you hit rock bottom.

Because all you wanted was to learn how to fly higher than you ever could.