I always do a year in review post of some sort, but from the outset, I already know it’s going to be difficult to write about 2015, because 2015 was difficult.
This was the year that I left my job. This was the year that I walked out on the publishing industry — my dream since I was 17, the only thing I’ve known. This was the year that I thought I could finally let my guard down and let myself fall for someone — admittedly someone a little ill-advised, but who isn’t, and don’t the slightly ill-advised ones always make life more interesting? — and found out the hard way that I was wrong. This was the year that I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder, which didn’t come as a surprise to me, although I’ve been skirting a diagnosis (and psychiatrists) for the better part of a decade. This was the year that I let go — both voluntarily and otherwise — of the last vestiges of everything I once thought I would become, and that’s not an easy thing to do.
You tell yourself when you’re young, “This is who I’m going to be when I grow up.” You grow up, and you become that, and you discover that it’s not what you thought it would be. Then you’re lost, because all your life you’ve been working towards this one thing, and then you have it, and you realize it may not be for you after all.
What is left to dream, when your biggest dream comes true and it isn’t a dream? Who doesn’t come away from that disheartened?
As I’m writing this now, I’m telling myself in my head that people have gone through worse things this year. People have died horribly, people have lost their entire lives senselessly, the world is in crisis; what business do I have, writing from this privileged standpoint, from the warmth of my bed, complaining about how badly I have it when, in fact, I have it so well? I’m living comfortably despite my ‘funemployment,’ my parents are incredibly supportive of both me and all my fledgling recovery plans, I’m always having a good time when I’m not having a bad spell. I have real friends who have stuck by me through all of these personal crises, who stayed my friends even when I stopped being editor and stopped being ‘useful.’ My family is moving to a beautiful new house in a month; I’m getting my dream room. I’m going to Berlin next year and Mom just told me yesterday that maybe I should think about not setting a date on my return flight. I have it so good, and I know it. But another voice says: That’s not the point. It says, that doesn’t invalidate anything you’ve felt or gone through. It says, your having it good doesn’t instantly make it so that you didn’t also have it bad.
It says, you have a right to feel the way you feel. (My shrink says that, too, when I bring it up in our sessions, and I always bring it up in our sessions because I can’t seem to stop feeling guilty for every last thing.)
The hardest thing about 2015 was that it wiped my slate clean. I don’t know who I am, I’m not entirely sure where I’m going, or where I’m going to be in the next few years, and that’s fine when you’re fresh out of college, but when you’re nearing your thirties like I am, it’s a terrifying prospect. You’re supposed to have your shit together by this age, or at least that’s what everyone else makes it seem like. I have failed miserably at that despite having all the tools at my disposal to succeed. Despite having already succeeded.
And now here I am trying to cobble together a new face. Trying to build myself again from almost nothing, unsure of the form I will ultimately take, and unsure if it will be better than the one I have shed.
I feel like a child, and I am not afraid to admit that I’m afraid. I feel like I’m standing on a precipice, looking out into darkness with the knowledge that the only way out is through — the only way out is to jump, regardless of what’s waiting ahead of me, because while I’m not certain about what is coming, I am certain that I cannot go back.
New dreams, I guess. New dreams. I don’t know what they are yet, and I’m scared, but I’m hopeful that 2016 will give me that. A different perspective. An altered view of the world. New dreams, new goals to aspire for and work towards that I just can’t see right now because they’re still shrouded in that darkness, because I’m not ready for them at this point in my life.
But I hope that 2016 is the year that I will be. And that’s all I can do right now. Hope. And that’s enough.
I’ve kept this Tumblr running since 2009. It’s a little surreal but despite my years in publishing, it’s always this blog that comes back to me, it’s the things I’ve written here that people have approached me about. And you have no idea how much that has meant to me, because this is — was — my outlet. I’ve been mostly unfiltered here for the better part of five or six years; this is myself as myself. That it has been helpful in some way or another to complete strangers, that it has been related to, that it has been appreciated; I don’t have the words apart from thank you.
But I’ve been thinking for quite some time now that maybe the time is finally right to close this public chapter of my life, and 2016 seems like as good a time as any. So this will be my last post here. I may pop up again elsewhere, and I’m not going anywhere on Instagram, but this, this particular story, I feel, has come to its natural end. Thank you for being with me on this leg of my journey.
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