Walking Towards 2016
What a real treat to have these past few days off - my pillows are on the floor and I’m a little overslept. My fingers are quivering on these keys eager to make sense of my rather chaotic thoughts, drunk on caffeine and high on rest. 2016 is finally here and as much as we’d like to say that we don’t need a new year to make changes, it definitely feels like a clean slate.
The first half of 2015 was so different from its second, they seem like completely different eras, years apart where strangers were made into friends and then lovers, and then back to being strangers - where places looked familiar and then, oddly foreign, where experiences were eventually made into nothing else but memories settling; and as I looked back on some photos, throwing stuff on social media to share highlights, I realised that it truly was a year of chasing dreams, healing, recovering, exciting changes, growing, traveling, and ultimately, being accustomed to, and finally comfortable with my insides and what it longed for that reflected on the physical. So before I say my wishes, I’d like to spread out, thickly - my thank you’s. To the many adventures we braved, the heartaches we powered through, changes we embraced, and the people who made them possible; those that held our hands and pulled us when we can not, thank you. Those that we lost and the sum we retained, maraming salamat. A single post will not be enough to list them all down, many of their names I’ve forgotten, some of their faces no longer familiar - but how we make people feel truly is the only thing we can ever leave them with - and you have made me feel like one of the luckiest girls in the world - so wretched and fickle and unsure of herself, so hard-headed and stubborn and far too much of a dreamer and an artist for her own good, but despite and in spite of herself, loved so undeservingly, by you. So, thank you.
As we closed down the year that was, I noticed so many expressions of leaving, or at least - wanting to leave, and walking away from the many people and experiences we had. But truly, walking away is never as important as what we are walking towards. And as this year begins to unfold, I wish you nothing but great experiences to walk towards. May you walk away from mistakes and make better, bigger, braver ones, that are mistakes, nonetheless - that teach us what we want and don’t, what we can and can’t do, who we want and do not, that reminds us that life is nothing but a constant forward movement that includes bumps and reroutes and u-turns, and reminds us that we are in a perpetual process of do and re-do. May you walk away from people who love you only when it is convenient, and fall into the arms of those that still choose you even when you are difficult and smelly and uninteresting. May you walk away from being comfortable and bored with your life and task yourself to completely ditch the box and whip out a triangle and decorate it with glitter glue and screw drivers and photos of your loved ones, because life is too short to think outside the box, when ultimately, you can make a triangle out of whatever you want and live out the escapades you always dreamed of.
May you be gallant, and kind, and when you need to be, wise, even when you think you are not, and may you always have people around to remind you that you actually are, or at least, you can be. May you walk away from the idea that you have to be a certain type of person, that you always have to choose what makes you happy, or that you have to fall under a certain standard for you to be happy, and understand, rather, that we all become better by lifting each other. May your soul continuously heal as it is surrounded by a broken world - that your walls will be up, but always ready to be brought down, that behind it lies a calloused but soft heart, always willing, always ready, to learn about and with, life - and to love so over-flowingly, too much, without any need for reciprocation. May you walk away from sorrows heavier than tar, then walk back, and remember that being sad is okay.
May you never forget that we are surrounded by the past, and that there is no point wanting to escape, or go back to it - there is only the future, that is to be shaped by the now. May you see the world in stained-glass eyes, with brisk seawaters flowing by, and glorious vermillion sunsets, and mountains that are ready to be conquered and moved. May you always be reminded that although sometimes moments in life seem infinite, they are, quite unapologetically, finite. These are the many things I wish for you - and for myself; to live life with purpose, and love so relentlessly, it changes - not necessarily the whole world - but somebody’s.
Kick it off the right way and keep the flow going. Happy New Year, darling.