Lovely Magazine is an Internet fashion and beauty magazine run out of Boston. Check out my essay in the January issue.
Lovely Magazine
Here's the original essay. The version in Lovely Magazine is slightly edited.
This Time Last Year
Yet another year has fluttered past and as January is about to wrap its cold arms around us the upcoming New Year looms as an undeniable mile marker. New Year’s resolutions have never really caught my fancy. Especially over the past two years I’ve come to realize that one lofty, and often un-kept, resolution or goal for the coming year is a flimsy, one dimensional way to inflict change. It also does not lend itself to helping me realize and understand the changes, both positive and negative, that have occurred in my life and in myself.
Things have changed a lot for me over the past couple of years. After a long time I am no longer a student. I have struggled with, re-thought, and transformed my ambitions and goals. My relationship with my family has changed and I have begun to want a family of my own. I have come up against difficult and often painful obstacles in my job, in my friendships, and with my boyfriend. I have experienced a kind of sadness and longing that I had not known before.
Sometimes while driving down a stretch of highway, or waiting on a subway platform, or lying in bed in the morning as the minutes tick by, I ask myself, “Where was I this time last year?” When I ask myself this question I slide back into the past for several minutes. Where was I? Who was I with? Most important is the emotional quality of the memory: tenderness, anxiety, bittersweet love, longing, rage, hopelessness, tranquility. This exercise is not always pleasant; it may be a painful process, cumbersome, bitter, grievous, oppressive, and even pitiful, but its saving grace is that it allows me to observe change. I don’t do this to paint a grandiose picture that each New Year is filled with hope and promise, but simply to remind myself that change comes. It comes in painful waves. It comes in gentle currents. It comes in the form of joyful noises and incomprehensible cacophonies. But surely it will come.
It is hard to recognize subtle change in ourselves as we go about our everyday lives. My failures and accomplishments stand out as bold lines on the grid of my life. But these emotional trysts with the past are clear and palpable ways to place my emotions in this greater context. Such reflection makes it possible to see the curve in the arc of my life. Not how I overcame sadness and anger but that I did, and am capable of doing so again. This exercise shows me how far I have come. What changes I have made. What changes I have failed to make. It shows me that longing is often misplaced, that sadness does diminish over time, that strength can come at totally unexpected times and also be mistaken for weakness, that I may not always know myself as well as I thought I did.
Reflection need not always be a soul searching and difficult process. After all, this time last year I was no doubt sitting at this very desk, drinking from this very same mug, and writing as I waited for the heat to kick on and warm my numbing feet. This year I won’t make any resolutions, but surly I will visit that decision again as I look back on the memory of writing this essay.
