For me, it all started almost a year ago on my birthday, when David Bowie died. On my birthday... I mean, how fucked up is that? One of the most talented, wonderful, alien-like creatures and one of my favourite musicians dies on the day I was born. Well, it went downhill after that as we all know. These almost consecutive deaths of beloved famous artists were most devastating, in the way they were often so truly unexpected. It became especially creepy when at the start of the year's final week three more widely adored people died in three days. George Michael, another personal favourite, died on Christmas day no less, forever lending a depressing note to "Last Christmas". Carrie Fisher, who I had just seen in an interview, the eternal Princess of effortless cool, of female bad-assery, of liberation, of taboo issues, and one of the most iconic characters of all time, I could go on... left us the day after George, followed by her wonderful and just as iconic mother. If that isn't horrifyingly eerie, I don't what is. I spent those days in bed, having mild panic attacks, a product of my ever-lurking anxiety and general dread over most things. What else is going to happen, I thought. Is this the part where we all die? Cause at this point that doesn't sound like such a shit idea. The planet is falling apart, Trump was "voted" President of the most influential country in the world ; the man looks like a thumb, dipped in Cheeto dust with a dead rabbit on his head for crying out loud; and all the cool people seem to have abandoned ship. You know, my theory is, they probably aren't even really dead, maybe they're just in some alternate reality or a parallel universe WHERE SHIT LIKE THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN! One can hope.
2016, also claimed my beloved Grandma, and I'm not saying "also" as a sort of afterthought, like "oh yeah, also my grandma, who raised me like a daughter and was essentially a mother to me, died, whatever", it's just something I haven't really talked about. In my dream, she was so angry, livid that I didn't spent more time with her, that I left her alone and all I could do was cry. That about sums up my feelings about her death. But not about her. She was fiercely loyal, loving to the point where it was pathological, but gentle and generous and kind. She may have seemed weak or submissive but let me tell you she was cunning and strong, an intense personality. She used to tell me, the hand gets weak and cowers but the eye is mighty and brave. She said that when I was too lazy to write my essays for school but I've carried it around with me. What a wise thing to say to a writer! I loved her and she loved me and we had each others backs, always. Some of my fondest memories are from when my grandfather yelled at us for some stupid reason and we would pull out the couch in the living room and have slumber parties. Just the two of us.
Other things happened, generally everything kind of went tits up but we ain't got long enough honestly...
What an abysmal year! What a wretched fucking garbage-fire of a time!
Here we are, left raw, damaged and desperate for it to end.
The New Year is just a day away and if by some miracle the apocalypse doesn't come, we'll all be thinking about our new year's resolutions. They always felt like bullshit to me. A self-punishing tool that will set you up for disappointment at the end of next year or a pat on the back as if to say "we'll do better this time". I'll turn back the clock on all my wrongdoings, I'll eat less pizza, I'll be a better version of the person I was. It seems that motif is a bit of an oxymoron. On the one hand it leaves little room for error but mostly reads like a repetition of all the same ones. As someone who is usually very unforgiving of myself and tries to set expectations very low, I tend to be a little more forgiving at New Year's.
You see, we make our list of pros and cons, punish ourselves for all that we did or didn't do and prepare to pick up the pieces and put them back together. In the puzzle that is us, as you pick up the pieces, you are often trying to place things that no longer exist. The way I see it the puzzle is evolving and in its ever-changing pieces we find our experiences, our pain, our desires, the landscape shifting with every new moment and memory. Instead of correcting what we perceive as flawed isn't it better to make space for the new bits of ourselves we discover? Aren't many of those existing pieces obsolete as they no longer seem to fit? After all this death don't we owe ourselves renewal? I certainly am not the same person that I was at the beginning of the year, and to reassemble myself as an improved version of that would certainly prove fruitless. It is impossible to turn the river back into a stream as is impossible to go back to an old self that has evolved. So take any pieces that you are capable of molding into something new, create your own sequence, your own fluid architecture and lose the rest. The pizzas consumed, the hours at the gym not logged, the missed opportunities or wrong forks in the road taken, those things don't matter. They are passed, they aren't something to punish yourself over and they aren't a part of where you are going. Fuck new year's resolutions. Let those go and be who you're going to be in the new year without prejudice over past mistakes. Be who the puzzle of yourself is creating, who you want to be.
I believe that's what I'll do.
Happy New Year! Love E.
