A year in review. What does that mean to you? Do you look at simple experiences or do you integrate emotion into those experiences? Do you feel the intricacies of how every significant situation made you feel, what you learned from it, what hurt you, what became a blessing from the hurt?
Some years I go into this time of reflection with fear. Truly. Fear for what I have experienced, and not wanting to relive those experiences. Afraid that I wont know what I learned from them, or worse, that I hadn't learned anything. You get over that fear though. A walk down memory lane becomes less dark, but rather a path lit with realities you created along the way.
In years past I see that there have been struggles along the way, and the path lit was straight and narrow. Taking all the right steps, making all the right turns, where bumps flattened out, where trees fallen had been lifted. Its a path fulfilled, its a path clean, its a path fresh and ready to transition me into a new year.
This year it's different. This year has been the hardest year of my life. Not only in experiences, but in true self discovery. Watching old family home videos the other night made me realize how quiet of a person I am. Maybe not always in the way it seems, but I catch myself in my own head. My words are the most powerful thing I have, Scribbled, and strung along lines of paper, waiting for someone to come along and understand them. I use this as a motto for my life, a channel for my creativity, and a token of my hope for every uncertainty my life holds.
I learned not only what it meant to hold onto someone, but I learned what it meant to let go. I learned that those we want to hold onto the most, are the hardest to keep a strong grasp on, they are the ones we fight the hardest for, at whatever expense {physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually}. I learned that holding on only brings tears. It's an inevitable abandonment. It's your worst fears come true, it's everything you wish so hard you could push away, without the strength to do it. I still don't know where that very thin line is. The one where you lose strength in holding on, where your emotions cause that vigor in which you retain a grasp to be translated into weakness, and where the right kind of strength takes over. But it happens, undeniably. Sometimes it takes days, other times, months, and in my case, years. Being caught up in your own head is a channel for flaws to arise, and instability to result. A clear mind, and a heavy heart cause that burden to finally lift, and you can let go. Sometimes I still wish I knew exactly how it happened. I wish I could diagram the process, but the inconsistency of the mixture is a disheartening recipe.
This year, I learned what it meant to love, but not be in love. I also learned what it meant to be truly angry. Anger so intense that it clouded everything, it stopped my feet, it sank me like quicksand. The only anger that has ever caused me to wonder if I could ever forgive. An anger that broke me, for however short a time, that fueled me in all the wrong ways.
And these are just the small lights along the way, the flickers on my path leading to catastrophe, to complete darkness, blackness that sank me into its depths and in its refusal pushed me to fight the hardest I have ever fought for anything.
The most important lesson I learned this year, has to do with what it means to exist in a world I don't control . I found success this year, a success that I have wished for so long I could experience. A life of mediocrity evaporated into my life where invincibility was a norm, and where the light that led my way was bright, far from a cry of perfection, but I didn't realize that brightness was blinding me.
Its like a train you ride for a while, vision clear, but the speed you take blurs the imperfections in the world around you. Your vision, so unfailing during that time doesn't see that, it sees the colors that come together. But that train never stays above ground for long, and at the blink of an eye you enter a tunnel. Dark and cold, your vision is no longer your own but put into someone else's hands.
You lose control.
This is the year that I found my faith. In the midst of threatening circumstances, in the midst of fear so blinding it takes your sight and extinguishes it, in the midst of a locked door with no key you find a way to move through it. God is the only way. He is the way I have moved mountains of fear this year, he is the only way I have taken back the right kind of control, and let him light my way.
Lessons within lessons within lessons.
Family and Friends are the glue that hold me together, the strength when I am weak and the light when everything around me goes dark. They are the support I need when my knees give out, they are the channel of understanding that keeps me sane, they are the truth in a world of lies.
I have learned a lot in the last year, but as I look back, I don't see that clear and finely lit path, but rather a collection of obstacles moved barely inches for me to pass. A messy stream of realizations that, rather than a light on the path my realizations form a star pattern in the sky which leads me to here. It's never going to be easy, a single blink can be the difference between light and dark.
I am a woman on the verge of something great. Something life changing, and yet uncertainty is the only thing that is certain. I live my life faithfully and without burden, but with a beautiful blindness that proves one lesson to remain true:
I would rather follow a collection of stars leading me through a messy and beaten path, than to hold onto darkness.
