I can’t say 2017 was my favorite year. In fact, it’s been the most difficult one of my life so far in terms of challenging everything I thought I knew about myself, my capabilities, my mental health, and general circumstance in general.
There were several moments when I felt as if time would never start moving again, and there were times when I felt like I was stuck in the darkest cloud and that I’d never find my way out. But in the end, I did. 2017 left my heart so, so tired that I thought it would never work the way it used to again. Then again, the year also leaves it feeling stronger and lighter with the promise of rebuilding relationships, putting better words to my emotions, and being my best self (not just for me, but for others) this 2018.
And if there’s anything to be grateful for this 2017, it’s finding strength in myself and in the people around me, in realizing that despite the difficulties, there are reasons that make each morning worth waking up for, and people that give you reasons to be grateful for each day. 2017 was shit but it was made so much better by all the people I’ve encountered, all the relationships that I’ve made and fostered, and all those that stayed. Thank you for giving me the extra push I needed. Sorry for those that I may have hurt, but thank you for the forgiveness.
I promise to make good use of everything from this year in 2018 :)
During the start of last month, I really didn’t think I’d make it ‘til the end
But I’ve made it through November, and the sun still shines the same way regardless of everything. You’ve made it through the darkest cloud. I’m proud of you, @/self :)
I think art greatly contributes to what makes my personality the way it is. I don’t think I’d be this way if I weren’t artsy. I don’t think I’d be as random, I don’t think I’d take 15 minutes of my evening designing some random type (above) because a quote I heard inspired me. But this is definitely the refreshing part of who I am, and I love finding things that remind me of this every now and again.
More than half the year has passed and I told myself that I’d try to be a better blogger but unfortunately life gets in the way. The good thing is that it didn’t get in the way of adventure! There hasn’t been a shortage of beach trips, road trips, and random outings despite having been the most stressful few months of my life.
There are days when I get incredibly contemplative. This is one of them.
I think it’s only timely that I go back to something that I wrote before. Reading it again has made me realize that I haven’t changed as much as I thought I did (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing), and that I still value the stability that I’ve worked very hard to establish in my life. It’s been tough (incredibly so) but you can’t help but beam up a little in pride knowing that you’ve made it this far (look ma, no hands).
Hello, Overthinking Lily from the Past, you made so much sense.
Things never seemed to hold much impact for me--success, failure, sadness, joy. In theory, it’s not really about what these concepts are, but rather that they signify in context. Joy is joy, success is success, regardless of how you look at it. But what makes each word all the more meaningful to me rather than being the standard cliche motivational tool it’s made out to be, is how it comes to be. These situations though, as I’ve come to learn, need to be filtered.
I suppose you can say that I’m the type of person that lets things roll off my back easily. I don’t place much value on things that I can deem temporary; the thing is, once these things happen, it’s only inevitable that it will be followed by something else—whether I choose to place value on that eventual thing will remain to be seen…and the cycle continues. So naturally, it’s quite a big thing for me to be caught off guard at the sudden realization that my life is moving way faster than I’d care for it to. I’ve always felt like I was stuck in some permanent limbo inside my head, that I’ve somehow come to build a [semi] impenetrable bubble around my emotions, constructed in favor of accomplishing some of my more logical endeavors…like surviving college.
But let’s face it: there are some things that just slowly creep up on you—those that were probably staring you in the face the entire time while your eyes were still too blurry to process the image.
The future is scary. I look at the future the way I would a bitter cough drop, the kind that would take away all my “issues”: my flakiness, my clinginess, and my horrible torrent of feelings. But the truth is the road to recovery is never easy. There’s no use sugar coating it. The promise of great things ahead: corn syrup. A stable job: powdered sugar. Even the possibility of having all your dreams come true before you hit thirty? Sprinkles. In the end, all you get is one sickly-sweet cough drop that will be too hard to swallow. The future is hard to swallow.
It’s somehow ironic how the very thing you once visualized to be the cure to every psychosomatic ailment, every deep-rooted thought or concern, every insomnia-plagued night, turns out to be nothing like you expected. Not in a bad way, per se, but feeling something akin to thinking you’ve recognized someone from a distance, only to find out that it wasn’t really them, and everything you planned to say would just slowly make its way back down your throat. The future is hard to swallow…it also leaves an aftertaste. It’s no surprise that this realization came to me at one moment while I was inside the glass house of my mind (in metaphor) while the bucket-of-ice-water reality would just place me inside my school bus on the way home. I’m a generally silent person, a glass house—where my thoughts can be seen as plainly as they show on my face, but remain untouched. I prefer to listen than talk, but I also prefer listening to things that make sense.
There was a point in time where fantastical dreams of the distant future were filed away in a box called “unattainable,” sealed away and stored, never to be opened again. It gets lost among the sea of boxes just waiting to be opened, its label worn away by time, until it becomes just another box–just another option in a future full of so many. I miss the day when everything wasn’t as hard as it was now. I miss the blissful shallowness of everything, existing completely unmarked by the cynicism of growing up, or when sincerity existed in its purest form: the sheer want to do or say something to someone without thought of ulterior motives or guilt. I miss the time when we had time–time for ourselves, time for each other, time to be spent freely talking or basking in the presence of those who meant most to us. I miss the days when priorities weren’t skewed, when you knew exactly who you’d be sitting with at lunch or in the bus during school trips. I miss knowing the answers to questions that plague me with uncertainty now. Is it okay to say this? Do you mean it? Does this dress make me look fat?
I’m afraid of missing myself, of losing myself in the uncontrollable tides of change. I’m afraid of going somewhere and finding myself never turning back. I am ironically afraid of being too cloistered, yet equally terrified of being open to those who may not understand me. I’m afraid because the future is making me care too much. I’m afraid of caring too much, expecting too much, giving too much, and receiving too little. I’m afraid of the unattainable and how it’s suddenly found its way right there, in front of me. I’m afraid of the limitlessness of everything, of how things like success, failure, sadness, and joy won’t be the black and white ends of the spectrum. It’s difficult for me to come to terms with myself that each day paints another shade of gray between the two—an exception to the rule, an exception to an exception—black, white, platinum, silver, charcoal, slate— to the point wherein I need to reevaluate and realize that everything isn’t illustrated by those four concepts, or by any permutation among them either.
But the fact remains that the future is inevitable—it’s a freight train pulling you away from the station at a steady X kph, and as you watch the image behind you shrink, you have no choice but to sit back down and enjoy the ride. As I’ve come to learn, it doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. And even when it did, it has proven--time and time again--to be absolutely worth it. As scary as it is, it will happen and eventually, it will be followed by something else…and the cycle continues. Hopefully in the hours, days, weeks or months I spend on this train, I’ll find that things won’t roll off my back as fast as they used to, and that there’s so much more to success, failure, sadness, and joy than objectifying them as small pieces of a bigger, unsolved puzzle.
I seem to have fallen off the wagon when it comes to blogging recently. I can never seem to keep my attention on one task for more than 30 minutes, and the whole ‘blogging between homework’ scheme appears to have failed because I’ve reached the age wherein a single assignment takes more than a couple of hours to complete *sighs*. For the sake of my own sanity, I’ll leave this here as a reminder of the little pocket of comfort that I found in the mountains.
Being alone is a blessing and a curse. Sometimes, the privacy is the answer to my silent prayers for silence to be able to hear my own thoughts. Other times, the silence becomes too loud, and my thoughts run too rampant.
Tonight, I’m telling myself that I’ll start studying at 8PM. I’m giving myself a deadline to feel all that has to be felt before I move on with my life and go about my daily routine like I’m not waiting for the other shoe to drop or for the world to give me some momentous sign. What am I waiting for exactly? I don’t know.
