When you realize you can never go back to being the person you were twelve months ago – yes, 2024 was kind of that year for me. The highs felt so surreal that more than enjoying the moment I feared how none of it will last forever, and the downs were so low that I can’t even begin to explain. Yet despite all the odds, I’ll have to say it was the most significant year of my life.
So much has changed. I started the year as an 18 year-old teenager, determined to prove myself, whether I was at home or at college. The whole year all I did was try to be the best and the strongest I can be. ‘Best’ not in the sense of scoring the highest marks on an exam, it was more than that. Being the youngest in the family, I’d never known much about responsibilities before. I completely thrived in all the privileges I have. But 2024 changed everything.
One thing about being the youngest child is that nobody takes you seriously. And on top of that, when you’re a girl, you have to work harder than anyone else to make your opinions heard because one mistake and then you’re just a stupid kid who is delusional.
So I started taking responsibilities and stopped waiting for help. The results didn’t show immediately but some incidents that occurred in late November and December made me believe that I did the right thing and I truly felt proud of myself.
The incidents I’m talking about all took place around this fest we organized at our college in early December. And I hosted an hour-long programme, a game, all by myself. Well, at the starting I had a team by my side but two days later I began work while listening to ‘You’re on your own kid’ by Taylor Swift on repeat. The day of the fest turned out to be one of the biggest days of my life and I’ll probably write a blog post on it.
Another incident happened a couple days before the fest, when we were so busy with the preparations I didn’t realize that it was already dark outside and I had to go home by myself on scooty. Now the thing was that I had never driven scooty at night before. Let alone in the busy streets in the middle of the city. And it wasn’t that I was afraid of getting into an accident – nope, I’m confident with my skills and hopefully not really that unlucky. But I spent the next 40 minutes driving and dreading the earful I was sure to get once I reached home.
To my surprise, nobody overreacted. Yes, mom was worried because the roads are definitely not safe, especially at nighttime, but she was just relieved to see me and I didn’t get any scolding like how reckless you are or how you shouldn’t stay late outside or blah blah blah. That’s when I realized that they finally have confidence in me and they believe that I can take care of myself. Maybe not completely, but it’s still a good start.
But among those big-small, yet definitely significant wins, where I saw myself building into something more, step-by-step, 2024 also made me feel pain, grief, loss and regret like I had never before. Not a single day goes by when I don’t think about where did it go wrong or what if I had said something else instead or if I’d been better, could I have saved it? And it hurts because no matter how much we pretend that everything is okay, everything is the same, we know that the scars will always be there to remind us that we lost something along the way, and it will never be as it was.
Funny how some decisions that we think are for the best, are often the ones that are going to haunt us for the rest of our lives.
But maybe these are the reasons why it’s important to acknowledge that slightest change in the calendar at the end of every year. Going from December to January is no big deal, it’s no “New Year, New Me” thing, but maybe just that simple partition is enough. It gives us the most scary, yet the most beautiful feeling there ever is – hope.
Hope that this new set of 12 months will be better than the last one. Hope that I will pick up that guitar again and won’t put it down before I learn that one song (before it stops trending, of course). Hope that I will get out of my comfort zone and make that video where I talk nonstop until I’ve spilled it all. Plus a hundred-thousand other hopes like that…
And a hope that I will fix what’s been broken and even if doesn’t work, even if it just can’t be the same anymore, I won’t stop trying because maybe we can’t be perfect again, but we can still be better.
Happy new year!
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