2016 was not about finding out new problems, it was seeing how much worse the existing problems could become.
I went into 2016, we all went into 2016 with such optimism: “This is going to be our year.”
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This was supposed to be a year of healing, of accepting, of growing, of celebrating, and it was. My year specifically, we left high school and entered college and adulthood and relationships and grocery stores and dormitories and parties. We all grew this year, as we should be doing every year, but 2016 has brought us exceptional place markers.
But 2016 has also been a painful one.
Death. Politics. Human tragedy, human willful ignorance. For all the good we saw this year we saw a lot of bad, and we thought what if all the bad has superseded the good. We all entered into 2016 with such optimism, an optimism that said even if we got punched in the face we’d still turn out alright. It’s just that we weren’t punched in the face. We were punched in the face and jabbed in the throat and probed in the heart and punctured at the kidneys and busted in the kneecaps and kicked in the shins. We went through all of that and suddenly it’s New Year’s Eve. Some of us feel like we’re hobbling into 2017, some of us feel like we’re riding into it on a gurney.
For me, my progression in self-discovery has been filled with a lot of promise and a lot of pain. I’ve come to accept a lot of things about who I am: I’m introverted, I’m more comfortable with people I know and not at all with people I don’t and while I can deal I’d much rather be with the people I know, I’m picky about the people I know so I want everything for the people I want to include in my life, I know that my end goal is finding the right person to have kids with and it really does not matter to me how I get there just as long as I do.
But right now I’m feeling like I’m going into 2017 in a gurney because these past couples of months haven’t been all too kind to me. I’m worn out after the end of my first semester. I discovered not only am I worse at letting things go than I thought, I’m selective about what I choose to let go and what I choose to hold on to and that it’s very likely I’m wrong about whatever I’m selecting.
I hold on to anger, but it’s always an anger I feel towards myself. I don’t bear grudges, to tell you the truth. I never learned how to be angry in a way that was productive, or at least not self-destructive. It was only ever me and my parents. I thought I couldn’t be angry at my parents, I thought I couldn’t be angry at my friends because frankly, I don’t ever want them to get hurt even if I felt hurt.
In fact, I also learned from my parents how to be selfless, too selfless. My patron saint is a Martyr and now I understand how fitting my name became, and how fitting that it, like the selflessness, was given to me by my parents. It was only ever me and my parents, so they gave me everything. That was how you showed someone your love: by giving them everything because they deserved the world and if you gave them any less you were not fit for them.
I spun that into allowing myself to get taken advantage of. I told myself to qualify it with “as long as I didn’t get too hurt” but that sort of thing doesn’t work if you have a stubborn nature, when you either tell yourself you can handle more pain or you won’t admit to yourself that you can’t handle more.
For being taken advantage of, I became angry. But not wanting to hurt the people I want so much to be in my life, of not learning how to be productively angry and respectively assertive, I turned that anger on myself and that is what has been eating away at me for all my life.
I’m not good at letting things go, especially love. For me, love never dies because love comes at a premium, and I know what it feels like to feel like there is no love. Love never dies because I fear that if it does, I’ll become cynical. Love never dies because love has so much to offer. But what has happened because of a love I was unwilling to let go, I allowed myself to get hurt when it wasn’t reciprocated. It’s not reciprocated out of malice, it’s because like myself, my love is so tied to my ideals that it often comes unrealistic, impossible to reciprocate.
I’m not good at letting things go. So I’m angry and self-critical. It’s not that I don’t acknowledge my value, it’s always been that I’ve believed there’s no limit to my value, just the willingness to add to it. Maybe I’m also too good at letting go the praise for my value.
Honestly, I don’t know what 2017 will bring. I’ve went from wearing no glasses at the end of 2015 to on my second prescription for my near-sightedness at the end of 2016, so if that isn’t a metaphor for how well I can forsee the future, I honestly don’t know what is. Thank you to everyone who’s played a role in my 2016, good or bad, because without you I am not the person I am today and, quite frankly even for all my faults and the potential still waiting to be fulfilled, I’m proud of where I stand today.
I have made a lot of progress, but there’s always more progress to be made. To all closest friends and allies, you mean the world to me. Here’s to healing, accepting, growing, and celebrating in 2017.
