The end of the worst year

I have been trying to write something upbeat and soulless for you all that rings in the new year with gratitude and joy. I have a lot to be grateful for and joyful of. I am healthy and safe. My family is healthy and safe. I have two books coming out in 2024 and Speculation Publications is ending the year on the upswing.

But most of 2023 has been an uphill battle for me, and if you are looking for the author who can glaze over the darkness, then maybe we should part ways. As an author, and a person, I stare into the abyss and I learn how to exist in dark spaces.

This year was a series of dark spaces, broken up by sunny days.

It was spent sloughing off of old skins and cringing with the sensitivity of new ones. It was spent fighting, myself and others, and the world in general.

It was spent grieving. First my step mother in law who passed suddenly in February, then friendships that had run their course, then the person I thought I was supposed to be, then my own mother, who passed suddenly in September.

Grief is a funny thing. For some people it seems so effortless. They can mourn in a linear fashion, diving head first into the despair and then slowly floating back to the surface when they’re ready to breath again.

I seem to bob in it like buoy at sea. Some days are fine and others I struggle to breathe.

Grief is a funny thing.

It has made me more grateful for the people I hold precious. It has made me less tolerate of bullshit. It has compelled me to speak when I would have kept silent and keep silent when I would have spoken. It sharpened my focus on what really matters.

Is that a silver lining? Who knows. Do such things really exist or are they just shiny stickers people slap on uncomfortable things to try to avoid sitting with the darkness of them?

Here’s what I know.

You can’t avoid the dark forever. Glazing over it doesn’t prevent it from happening or save you from it when you are beneath it. When you find yourself there, don’t panic. You can hold more hurt that you realize without it spilling over. When you let it go, it will feel like you are passing rivers through yourself, like the tears will never end and you may drown in your own gloom.

Please hold on.

Sunny Days always come.

Photo by Girma Nigusse on Unsplash