The new year emerges under ice and snow
the shivering beauty of fresh starts
are still tangled with somber shadows
The new year reminds us that beginnings and endings
are both as sharp as the cutting winter wind
amid this season of death, space is made for the spring
The new year slips silently past the white horizon
bringing the bright, painful light of sober morning
to aching heads and rooms littered with good time debris
The new year offers a choice to change
the opportunity to bravely face another blank slate
a promise we can make ourselves to keep moving forward
How long can you try to force something
before you finally come to forfeit?
it's now been 363 days since my heart broke
Walking home on the first crisp day of January
wiping frost off pale cheeks with red, aching fingers
a year's beginning like a heavy stone thrown into a lake
There is a kind of certainty that feels uncommonly cruel
a conviction to cut into raw nerves
like severing a hand to save the whole
Instead I've let this wound continue to fester
faced with the same decision, only denser
the compounding interest of inner pain
Last year, I got blackout drunk on New Year’s Eve, slept with a random guy, which I only have vague flashes of memory about, and didn’t get home again until the afternoon. I felt sick and sad and, to be honest, it was a good harbinger of what was to come in 2020. A lot of poor decisions. A lot of regret. A lot of sickness, sadness, and anxiety. I can only hope the ways things went yesterday will be equally as prophetic.
Last night I managed to only have a few drinks. I was sober enough to drive home around 11, and I did. I didn’t embarrass myself. I didn’t sleep with anyone. I just had a lovely dinner with my friends, smoked and drank a reasonable amount, then went home to my babies and slept in my own bed. I even managed to wake up at a decent hour. Part of me was kind of sad to leave so early, before the New Year had even truly arrived. It made me feel old and unfun. But in the end, I’d take being old to being a drunken embarrassment any day of the year.
I hope that even though I’m still feeling pretty hungover this morning, that today can provide that shifted perspective that I’ve been needing. I still have this desire for today to be the first day of a new life. I always get so scared when the time finally comes to actually sit down and figure out exactly what that means though. I don’t know what I am so afraid of. I guess I’m afraid of taking a hard look at myself. I’m afraid of what I’ll see, of what I’ll have to face in order to change.
I know I can do it though. I won’t look away this time. I’ll be here for myself no matter what I find. Plus now that it’s finally January, I can call a psychologist’s office on Monday and make myself an appointment. Then I can have another person to support me in this journey as well. Hopefully they’ll have some more helpful strategies than what I’ve been able to come up with.
Even though nothing is really different this morning that yesterday morning or tomorrow morning, I still enjoy this illusion of having a fresh start. I plan to have fun with it, to make the best of it. It’s exciting, not scary. I have everything I need to start living the life I want to. All I need to do is decide what life that will be.
The last day of 2020 has already arrived. I kept telling myself I’d have time to make more detailed plans for the new year, but it looks like I’ve completely run out. I didn’t even have time to set up my new bullet journal yet. I guess I can try to do what I can with the time I have left before I go to my friend’s house for her new year’s party tonight.
It feels like I always get so excited at the vague idea of change, of transitional periods in my life, but then when the time comes, I’m so scared. I haven’t felt much like writing for the last week or so. I don’t feel very inspired about anything. I haven’t been brave enough to take the time to sit down with myself and figure out how I’m feeling. I just feel numb instead.
I want today to be a celebration though. I can worry about change and planning and details tomorrow. Tonight is for me and my friends. I want to celebrate how much I have grown this year. I may have struggled a lot, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t any positives. One way I am going to show myself that progress tonight is by not getting ridiculously drunk and by keeping my hands to myself. Then at the very least I can wake up tomorrow with some semblance of dignity and have it together enough to get things done later.
No more running. I’ve reached the end of the pier. It’s time for me to turn around and face myself. I know I can do this. I don’t need to be afraid. Planning for my future isn’t an ultimatum. I’m not writing up strict laws for myself to follow. There are no self-punishments if I fail. Instead I am drawing a map of self-love. Exploring the virgin territory of my heart and mind. It’s okay to take some wrong turns. I’m still just getting a sense of my surroundings. Learning about the ecosystem of my soul. Trial and error. Learning how to love myself again. There is nothing to fear. I am going to be here supporting myself no matter what I find.
As the new year approaches, I have a lot of fear in my heart. I have planned to make a lot of changes and I am just worried that I won’t be strong enough. I worry what will happen when I do make these changes. That’s why in the next few days, I want to try to support myself as much as I can. Instead of writing about all of my anxieties, I want to write about why I deserve to be happy. Why I deserve to experience these changes in my life. Why I am enough.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but whenever I sit down to focus kind thoughts and words toward myself, I feel a lot of resistance. That “cool” “emo” teenage girl inside me still cringes hard at the thought. When I was younger I seemed to have learned somewhere that it made you a more interesting person if you hated yourself. I felt dark and dramatic, tragically beautiful. Loving yourself was lame, unheard of, and besides, I surely didn’t deserve it. And I still struggle with these thoughts every day even though I recognize how immature and harmful they are now. My heart seems to seize up whenever I try to direct loving sentiments toward myself.
But I really want to work on this. I know it will get easier if I can just push past this blockage in my heart and practice being kind to myself. I do deserve kindness. Especially from myself. We all do. There is nothing embarrassing or shameful or conceited about thinking that. And I want to make these changes in my life in 2021. I’m not doing them for anyone else but me. It is okay if I gain weight. I will still deserve love and compassion. I won’t be any less worthy if my clothes fit a little snugger, if my face is a little rounder. That shouldn’t even be the focus to begin with. I want to change how I have been eating regardless of the outward effects. I want to do it because I love this body. It does so much for me, and I have been treating it terribly. Telling it that it doesn’t deserve the nutrients it needs to keep me going. Telling it that it’s healthy weight is too heavy, hideous, unworthy. Stressing my heart with disordered behaviors. Isolating myself to accommodate those behaviors. I would never stand for someone else abusing me this way. Why should I be allowed to continue abusing myself?
I want to enjoy food again. To cook fun healthy meals, knowing that they will provide my body with everything it needs to make me happy and healthy. I want to eat mindfully, to eat with my friends and family. To allow food to be a part of my life again, instead of my whole life. Come what may.
I have a lot of other changes I want to work on as well. But maybe for now I’ll just focus on making a plan and tackling this one. I always expect too much of myself, then beat myself up when I inevitably fail. Not this time. This time I’ll give myself all the time I need. There is no deadline. There is no punishment for struggling. There is no “failure.” It’s just living my life. It’s just getting up every morning and trying my best. That’s more than enough.
As the new year looms nearer and nearer, my faith in myself and my plans to make big life changes has already begun to falter. When fear bubbles to the surface, it is so comforting and easy to tell myself I don’t have to change if I’m afraid. I can keep going on the way I have been. But then I realize after a moment of relief, that I also fear that path. Perhaps even more.
It always feels easier to give up on myself before I even try. I’ve done it countless times in the past. But I’ve also forced myself past my limits and surprised myself many time as well. I want 2021 to be part of the latter set of experiences. I just have to keep my true goal in mind when my fears start to tug at me.
My mind has gotten so clouded with things that I’ve decided will give me happiness. A skinny body, endless self-destructive pleasures, distraction from anxiety, a sparkling exterior life. But most of these things I have already tasted. I got down to my lowest weight since middle school this summer, but I was desperately unhappy. I was not satisfied at all. I didn’t view my body any more favorably. I just found new flaws to fixate on in the mirror. Even those around me didn’t give me the attention I expected. My weight loss was noticed, but I was not congratulated. I was looked at with alarm and concern.
Even though that didn’t bring me any happiness, I still fear getting back to healthy eating habits. My mind tells me that I wasn’t attractive thin, but I’ll be absolutely grotesque if I weigh more. I’m afraid. My mind tells me I need my unhealthy coping mechanisms to keep the anxiety at bay. It tells me I won’t be able to face that anxiety any other way.
I mustn’t listen to that part of myself. I have to remember my goal. My ultimate goal was never to “be skinny” or to “avoid anxiety.” My goal has and always will be finding happiness and peace within myself. I foolishly allowed myself to follow this destructive path in a desperate attempt to find some sort of superficial happiness, but I can see there is nothing here waiting for me at the end of the road.
Maybe the next path I take won’t lead me to happiness either, but I still have to try. Because it will at least rule out one more option. It will at least give me new insight, a new direction to follow. Besides, I genuinely believe I know the path to my happiness. If I can only find the strength to pursue it.
Happiness is inside of me. All I need to do is take care of myself, love myself. Stop clouding my mind and my heart out of fear. Stop running from myself. I truly have nothing to lose. I’m ready to nurture myself, listen to myself, allow myself to flourish. I know what I have to do. I’ve just got to believe in myself enough to try.
As with everything else in this life, our perception of change is something that we get to choose. I think for most people we have a tendency to fear change or view it as a threat. Humans are, for the most part, creatures of habit. We become comfortable in our routines. Even if the routines themselves aren’t always pleasurable or good for us. We like to know what to expect from one moment to the next. Even when we are expecting the worst.
Better the devil you know, than the devil you don’t
Try to remember back to when you were a child though, before you were set in your ways and developed all sorts of expectations for the world and the other people in it. Change was exciting! Curiosity was a more powerful force than fear. We were desperate to learn and experience it all.
I’m not sure what precisely the ancient yogis intended when they created the phrase “beginner’s mind,” but this is what I imagine it to mean. A child’s mind. A mind that is open to everything, curious about everything. If only we could have all held on to that. Even so, just thinking back to my child self is quite pleasant and nostalgic. I used to be so happy and excited about the littlest things.
For example, I used to love to clean and organize. I even loved washing dishes the first few times I helped my grandmother with them. I paid attention to each little detail. The warm water, the white soap suds, watching the dirty pile shrink as the ones that were clean and drying grew. The satisfaction of completing a simple task. Whereas now my mind is a million miles away as I frantically scrub away at the glass and ceramic, trying to be done and on to the next thing as fast as humanly possible.
We tend to lose that presence, that mindful, curious wonder at everything in life as we grow older. And I think this is why we begin to fear and hate change. We don’t want any changes to force us out of our daze. We worry what these changes will mean for the future. We fear we’ve lost something, leaving our old ways behind in the past. We avoid being present and curiously examining change as it comes.
We take for granted the way things are and forget that we need change. Lest we fall prey to stagnation and decay. Change is the inevitable, beautiful, unfolding of life itself. A constant current that we are a part of. Something we should remember to be grateful for when we get the chance to witness it.
One of the ways I plan on preparing for a new year full of change is to adjust the way I perceive it. I’ve been thinking, “I’ve got to make these changes starting next year” or “it is going to be so hard to stop doing x, or start doing y.” From now on, rather than that, I am going to be thinking “how exciting, I get to try something new” and “won’t it be fun to see how these changes play out, to challenge myself?”
Even now I am getting excited by these thoughts. I am imagining my inner child, eager to experiment, to play, to learn, to experience something new. What a beautiful thing to know I have the power to write my story any way I like. We all do. So if there have been a lot of changes for you this year, or you have a lot of changes to face in the next, get excited! What a dynamic and interesting existence we all share! Let’s be present for it. Let’s enjoy it.
I want to use these last couple of months before the new year arrives to really clarify and meditate on what kinds of changes I’d like to manifest in 2021 and why I want to make these changes. Once I’ve got a clear idea of the differences I want to see in myself and the intention behind them, I can begin working on a detailed plan to ensure I will follow through.
I’ll start off by making a general list, then follow up with the reasons each item has been added to the list. I have a tendency to make my lists too long and end up discouraging myself before I even begin, so I’ll try to narrow it down to the few I find most important.
Goals of 2021:
Stop Smoking
Spend more time with friends & family
End disordered eating habits
Start therapy
Be kind to myself
Okay, you have no idea how tempted I was to rattle off like 20 more things I want to accomplish. I know those are all already going to be challenging for me. Focusing on anything more would be overwhelming and inevitably lead to failure and self-criticism.
Now I need to take each one of my new goals and remind myself why this is important to me. Hopefully this will help me see the value in what I’m doing even when it gets hard and I want to give up.
Goal #1: Stop Smoking
I want to stop smoking because it’s a ridiculously reckless and self-destructive habit. It is a huge waste of money. It makes me feel bad physically and mentally. It increases my anxiety. It damages my body. It shortens my lifespan. It will make me age faster. It is subjecting my loved ones to second hand smoke. It will yellow my teeth. It may result in cancer or other serious, possibly deadly health outcomes.
Goal #2: Spend more time with friends & Family
I want them to know how much they mean to me. It will lower my stress levels. It will add more joy and happiness to my life. It will encourage an overall healthier lifestyle. It will prevent me from isolating myself.
Goal #3: End disordered eating habits
I am tired of these unhealthy, insane habits consuming my entire life. I no longer want to concern myself with my weight. I want to show myself love and compassion. I want to nourish my body and make sure that it is healthy. I have wasted too much time and money on these habits already. Even reaching a lower weight than I ever imagined I would did not make me any happier. I was more miserable than ever.
Goal #4: Start Therapy
I want to stop running from my problems and finally face them. I want to get the help I need, the help everyone deserves, even me. I want to learn how to become the best version of myself for myself and for my loved ones. I want to eventually stop taking Paxil.
Goal #5: Be kind to myself
This goal is truly the main overarching theme I want to bring with me into the new year. It is one of the reasons I want to pursue all of the other goals I’ve listed. I am so tired of being my own worst enemy when I could be my closest friend and ally. I want to be happy. I want to live a life full of joy and love and laughter. A life that everyone deserves to live. I want to use my energy, my existence, to make the world a better place and that begins with myself.
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I feel better and more inspired already! This post has been mainly just something I wanted to write for myself, but I hope that it can serve as a suggestion of how to plan some goals for yourself. It has definitely been very helpful to write out the reasons behind each one. Let me know if you decide to make your own list. What are the things you’d like to achieve in 2021? What is the inspiration behind them?
There are only a handful of weeks left to us in the hellacious, year of our lord 2020. It is around this time I feel it’s appropriate to start making plans for the new year to come. I know most “New Year Resolutions” fall to the wayside and are forgotten after a few weeks at most. But there is something deliciously invigorating about the illusion of a fresh start, a clean slate. It may not ultimately help you follow through with or achieve your goals, but it does make it a hell of a lot easier to feel inspired enough to a least make a plan for yourself. And that is worthwhile and important in it’s own right.
I personally am in desperate need of a plan for myself. I have been drifting listlessly for what seems like a very long time now. Every time I think of making a change, it just feels hopeless. Why bother? However, knowing I’ll have a few months to mentally prepare myself makes it seem more manageable. (Not to mention still getting to enjoy a hedonistic holiday season.) Don’t get me wrong, it’ll still feel daunting when the day finally arises at my doorstep, but I’ll at least hopefully feel more ready. Having a clear plan in mind is always helpful.
So what kinds of things do you want to change in 2021? Start a new habit? Kick an old one? Spend some of this waning time in 2020 to get a clear idea of what you would like to do and how precisely you plan to do it. Having a detailed plan is key. Vague goals are the most slippery. Much too hard to actualize.
Maybe even more important than making your plan specific is making it incremental. Don’t expect yourself to wake up on January 1st 2021 and lead an entirely different life. That isn’t going to happen. I’ve always been afraid of being “too easy on myself.” I worry that if I’m not strict and rigid, I’ll fail. But perhaps that is exactly the reason I have already failed so many times in the past. I think it’s more important to be kind to yourself along the way. You will mess up. You will have days, maybe even weeks, when you feel like you’ve given up, that you’ve failed. But there are no rules to follow in this life. There are no disqualifiers. Keep playing. Start again as many times as you need to.
There is no shame in what we perceive as failure. Only an opportunity to rest. To collect ourselves. To be gentle with ourselves. And begin again with new strength, new determination, new wisdom. So make your plans. Make the small improvements something to take pride in. Expect to mess up. Expect to start again many times. But remember one thing above all else. These are your goals. You are the only one invested in the outcome. And do you know why? Because beneath it all, it is your self-love that moves you. The belief you have in yourself. The deep desire for you to be happy, healthy, prosperous. You’re doing this for you. Inspired by pure love. So don’t forget. Be kind to yourself. As you would be to a child that you only want the best for. Comfort yourself when you fall, and help yourself back up again.
It is time for another transition. It is time for change.
I stumbled across an article the other day that proposed an interesting thought experiment that I’d like to share with you all. I get so excited when I find a point of view that I’ve never even conceived of before. There is nothing better than reading or hearing something and experiencing almost a physical sensation of a shift inside your brain. Maybe I’m the only one that gets that sensation. Never-the-less I am eager to try out this new perception in my every day life. I am hopeful that it will be helpful to me and anyone reading this.
Through my readings on meditation, I have often come across the idea of imagining sharing your love and happiness to loved ones, strangers, and even enemies. This is often considered loving-kindess meditation. I’ve practiced this quite often when I meditate and it has certainly been transformative often leaving me with tears of love and joy. However, these types of practices, while helping me to grow more loving and patient, haven’t really helped me deal with and accept the times in my life when I am overwhelmed by negative emotions. I knew I needed to find a healthy way to acknowledge these feelings rather than avoid them.
The article that I read proposed that whenever you are feeling things like uncertainty, fear, pain, or sadness to imagine you are experiencing these things in the place of someone you love or even someone you don’t know. This was such an amazing idea to me. Although I don’t literally believe that I will be sparing my loved ones suffering by experiencing it instead, this helps me somehow. It has always been hard for me to lean into my unpleasant emotions. Thinking of them in this way allows me to accept those feelings more easily. It is helpful to think of others in this world that experience these same things and send them love and relief for a moment.
I am so excited to be entering this new year with such a wonderful new tool in my mental tool box. I hope that this allows me to live my life with more ease. I am so grateful to have access to so much information that I am able to use to improve my experience on this earth. I am also grateful for the chance to share what I learn with anyone who wants to listen. This year let’s all try to not only share our love, our happiness, and our success with others, but also our suffering. Let us lovingly take on the burden of another to lighten the world’s.
Protect the Innocent 