learning to flow

I’m hesitant to turn the last pages of 2023. These past few months have been so clear, so serene; I’ve seen the full picture for the first time. I’m no longer shackled to my emotions or blinded by my narcissistic gaze. I’m walking around with my golden cracks glistening, my mending. It’s fierce and terrifying and peaceful. I’m clinging with raw, exhausted fists to this joy; knuckles white, grateful the bones are too dull to break through. I beg: please please don’t end…

It may end. Almost everything does. But before it does, I want you to know this —

Every year matters. Every year has a purpose.

Every year. Every you.

Harvest years, when the fruits from all your sleepless nights and all the pains of your dark, brooding heart blossom into a kaleidoscopic garden. Years, when you’ll welcome yourself home with soft eyes and a knowing smile.

I hope 2024 is a harvest for you. For me. For us.

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Jordan K. Lancaster via Instagram.

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My heart is buzzing with pride. I'm looking back at the last twelve months remembering how I sank and how I soared, and I’m feeling grateful that I tried — feeling grateful for learning that trying is the core of it all. It is the essence of my body, my movements, my choices. It’s the atoms of my existence vibrating. If all anyone utters about me is “It looks like she’s trying,” then I’m whole. I’m upholding my end of life’s twisted bargain.

And with my fear of opening a new book and leaving behind all this sparkling goodness and fresh understanding, New Year’s resolutions feel odd. And maybe a little inauthentic. Or maybe I’m just too embarrassed to admit that I don’t want anymore or any less. That where I’m standing now and how I’m standing is already more than I’ve ever imagined for myself.

But I remain wary. I can feel myself tensing and bracing against the unknown tide creeping in. And the thought of setting up anything additional, any arbitrary goalposts, scares me.

But if I’m being honest, resolutions are my scapegoat. They aren’t really what keeps me up at night….

I’m scared of crawling back into the caverns of my twisted mind. To reverting to who I was before 2023. I’m scared of existing in a body that feels like a mangled up crash test dummy. Though, I’m not ashamed. I honor old me. I carry her with me in a pocket-sized archivist-approved box (always acid-free). She’s fine to look at and analyze and write about, but I never want her eyes to meet mine in the early morning mirror. And I’m afraid, that if I do, I won’t be able to unwrap myself from her seductive grasp.

But I also know that sitting in fear has gotten me mere inches in this life. So, I’m trying to unclench my fists and I’m fighting against my impulse to run around town screaming “fuck resolutions and fuck a new year. I want to stay here.” And instead, I’m planning to spend this weekend slowing down. Slowing down for the now. Slowing down to acknowledge all the things I have survived and accomplished. And I’m not talking about the types of accomplishments that are visible. I mean the ones that only I could ever know were mountains for my climbing. Slowing down to remember the moments when I softened in places I normally stay rigid. The moments where I said no when I’d usually force myself to concede. The moments where I said how I felt instead of knotting up.

I’m reflecting because maybe the seeds I planted this year can grow into something beautiful. Maybe all the internal work I’ve been doing is ready to be reflected outside of me. Maybe I am ready for more, because in 2023…

• I apologized to myself for being in spaces where I knew I wasn’t respected, valued, or loved.

• I apologized to myself for failing to honor my boundaries. For failing to treat myself gently. For failing to understand my emotions. For halting myself from evolving.

• I apologized to myself for the lies I’d told and the lies I believed. For learning too late that not everything in life is meant to be a beautiful story. Not every person we feel alive with is meant to make a home within us. Some people arrive to teach us how to love, and others teach us how not to.

• I learned how not to settle. How not to shrink. How not to be a pumpkin letting others knife me apart and spoon my insides out.

• I learned that not every hole I fall into is my grave.

• I learned the value of what remains. That what remains is good.

The unraveling, the learning, and the loss led me here and I think I’m ready. Frightened but ready for the next story.

And despite my aforementioned aversion to traditional resolutions, I guess I do have one, and it’s to keep moving as I am now. To continue to take life day by day. To continue to allow experiences to flow through me and not crush me. To release myself of the what-ifs and invisible grief. To surrender to the lessons I’ve learned. To know that I won’t be the same person that I was because I’m not supposed to be.

I want to glide into January believing that every second that I’ve spent in this mad, mad, mad, mad world has been a blessing. To start living my life as though I am a river, always flowing and moving and changing.

I can and will make it through. I must. I must be the river that runs through…Because a place is only as good as the people in it. And I’m nothing if not willing to try.

In 2023, I learned that I was made for mending. It was the year I learned that while I may never be fully healed, I can be fully whole. That I am good. That I always was.

In 2024, I’ll be carrying 2023 me, and I’ll be inching closer to the parts of myself that are infinite.

I’ll be intricately me, intricately whole. I’m hoping you’ll do the same.

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