Ch-ch-ch-changes...

the year when everything changed

For the last few weeks, I’ve been… exhausted. A lot is changing; a lot has already changed. And the heartbreak of each splinter, of every grief and of every letting-go, continues to compound until I feel incapable of lifting my head from the pillow.

New Year’s Eve is my favorite holiday. For years I’ve anticipated yet another January by plotting and planning—coming up with goals, projects, and wishes. But for whatever reason, this past December, I had no way of seeing into the next year. My usual tools—Susannah Conway’s Unravel Your Year workbook, for example, which I’ve been filling out yearly for over a decade—simply had no energy behind it. When I looked into 2023, all I could see was opacity. My parents had, for example, invited me to visit Kyoto with them this year; once the topic came up in January, however, it felt as impossible as vacationing in Antarctica.

By the time February came around, I knew what it was that had turned 2023 so pea-soup foggy. It was C’s diagnosis of cancer. It was the threat of death. It was not knowing what the rest of the year would look like; it was no longer looking like I would finish the novel that I had on deadline. Months slogged by when I rarely left our apartment, trying to keep C as safe as possible from whatever infections or pathogens might threaten him. On a seemingly ordinary check-up, I was diagnosed with sudden deafness, which would have turned into permanent deafness if not for emergency treatment. The online writing school that I’d been so excited to build dropped in enrollments, and then dropped some more. My one employee and dear friend, Chloe, told me that she’d be quitting by the end of the year, not because she didn’t care about what we’d built together, but because I wasn’t able to provide the salary she needed to live comfortably in a time of economic stress and strain. I was diagnosed with a complex cyst, which I’ll need surgery for by the end of the year. My psychiatrist dumped me. I don’t know if I’ll be allowed to continue with the cocktail of medications I’ve relied on for years. I am tired.

When I posed the question of hope to Instagram yesterday, I received a beautiful response from Jessie, of the username @blackgirlreading:

“Hope is essential. Even if it’s hope of human connection, the feeling of the sun on your skin, a warm memory passing through. I promise that feeling grief and sadness is not about how much worse things can be. It’s about your spirit being honest with your body about how it feels in this moment. You do yourself and those you love a service by leaning into it without guilt.”

I’m grateful to all of you.