you certainly outdid yourself, didn’t you?
Honestly, I can’t think of any other year leading up to this moment in my life that has left a bigger impression than you.
You were supposed to be my year. You were supposed to be everybody’s year. You were supposed to be the year my brother broadened his palate. The year my mother organized her office. The year my best friend landed the boy of her dreams. The year I fell in love and got fit and ate healthier and generally figured my life out.
You weren’t exactly what we all hoped for, to say the least.
I made so many mistakes. Goodness, how I messed up. Regrets lie like the piles of old clothes I dug out of my closet this morning. For the girl who doesn’t say much, I sure opened my mouth a few too many times and didn’t filter what came out.
I don’t remember if I had any resolutions, but I know if I did they wouldn’t have survived past January 4.
January. I started to come out of myself. I did the thing–I brought something to my school, something I believed in.
February. I turned the age when everything is supposed to begin. A monumental milestone in every woman’s life.
March. I spent spring break with my family. Rock City and Lookout Mountain. And I honestly had so much fun.
April. I went to my second spring formal. It was lit.
May. Sophomore year ended. My friends and I said our goodbyes for the summer. It was a typical May.
June. The beach. Need I say more?
July. I think I finally enjoyed summer for the first time. The heat. The bees. It all finally started to make a bit of sense.
August. Though it may not have been the start of 2016, life started over in a way it only can at the beginning of a new school year. And the countdown to graduation began.
September. Retreat. I had forgotten how much fun it could be to let your guard down and let your friends and peers in.
October. Peter Mansfield, you made it onto the blog. You gave me a much-needed night of talking about nothing and everything, and you will forever be remembered for this night of an old friendship brought back to the surface at the moment I needed it most.
November. Technically, we visited Emory aka Dream School on Halloween weekend, which is basically November.
December. More words than pictures for this last month of the year. But I do have one. Our dysfunctional, timeless family. What began as a joke not long ago has become something more tangible, something more real.
Twenty-sixteen. You gave me boldness. Or at least the sprout of boldness. The beginning. The spirit of desperate wanderlust and the desire to be something, everything more than the world says I can be. Endless potential, endless possibilities, endless opportunities to dress up and mess up and say the wrong thing and be the wrong girl so many times until one day, I’m not. And truthfully? That is exactly what I needed. Just the start, the birth, of a confident life.
Twenty-sixteen, you have not been easy. I have grown more frustrated, more confused, more angry with the world than any other year combined. I haven’t understood why influential people died, why my own grandfather died, why people do the things they do and say the things they say when they know how much it will hurt someone else. It’s unfortunate how many times I fell in and out of infatuation this year, and how many times my heart shattered. It doesn’t make sense why good is suffocated and bad is glorified. It’s incomprehensible why troubled souls with so much life to live would throw it all away and fire their anger aimlessly at innocent schoolchildren. It’s disgusting how badly everybody wants to be seen only on the surface, through a screen. It’s disappointing how chivalry and being bold and taking a chance on that person you’ve always sort of had a crush on has turned into meaningless texts and DM’s and waiting forever for that guy to make the first move when he could be hoping you’ll do the same. It’s surprising how everyone thought Hillary was a shoe-in to be our next world leader but then got the rug pulled out from beneath her feet.
It’s completely unpredictable what twenty-seventeen might hold.
I guess there’s only one way to find out.
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