This morning I woke up happy. One factor is the sunshine, for sure, as well as having been able to get the right amount of satisfying exercise yesterday, on the first sunny day in weeks.
But there’s also something deeper: I love New Year’s! I love the symbolism around shedding and leaving behind what we don’t need, being grateful for all we received and learned, and facing the oncoming year with hope. I’ve always enjoyed celebrating New Year’s and since my move to California, it has become even more important in a positive way because it feels like the turn of the year then ushers in my own personal “liberation” that occurred a couple weeks after New Year’s in January 2016.
Every year, I ask myself: what do I want to leave behind, and what do I want to bring along with me into the New Year?
Last year, I spent New Year’s completely alone, for the first time, because of the pandemic: it was unexpectedly lovely, and that’s when I started to come into myself fully, eventually leading to my coming-out this summer and feeling so much more whole.
This year, I feel it’s particularly important to ask myself, “what do I want to leave behind, and what do I want to bring along with me into the New Year?”, also because of my upcoming move to Colorado with its ensuing changes and possibly new opportunities.
So, what do I want to leave behind, and what do I want to bring along with me into the New Year?
In the call with my stress management counselor yesterday, we were talking about my feelings, my worries, my stressors, and my depression — the latter being something I have never experienced before in my life. And I suddenly realized (and said to my counselor) that there’s nothing I really need to change in my current situation: I have all I need to survive and could live like this for ever, or at least for a long time. But I’m not happy in my current situation. This isn’t new to me: I have been unhappy and changed my situation already several times in the past. The difference now is that I can only see my failures and the difficulties that lie ahead of me, instead of my achievements and the opportunities. Basically, I’m seeing the glass half empty, while in the past I’ve always been the kind of person who sees the glass half full: so in this sense, I don’t recognize myself.
When I said this, the counselor asked me when the shift had occurred and why I thought it had happened. After some reflection, I realized this shift occurred mostly over the course of the past year (2021) and then I slowly listed the causes: the glass-ceiling that was made explicit to me at work at the end of 2019 (even before the pandemic was a “thing” here) and that caused so much anger and pain in me; the pandemic hitting hard in February 2020 with the ensuing lockdown, and then my own COVID-19 illness in March 2020; months of extreme isolation & loneliness for me, and an extremely long recovery from having had COVID-19; teaching from home throughout 2021, which was stressful (I’m grateful I had a safe job but I did it only for survival); and on top of all this, intermittently for two years, a weird, confusing but intense and somehow deep relationship with an “unavailable” person, that ultimately caused me a heartbreak.
So, what am I leaving behind? I feel like I need to leave behind two years’ worth of burdens, shedding or turning two full years, not just one…
I’m going to leave behind the actual places and people had caused me pain, to avoid becoming bitter. I’m going to leave behind a job that is relatively safe but not stable or good enough, and not gratifying enough. I’m going to leave behind an unhealthy relationship. But especially, I want to leave behind the glass-half-empty perspective on things that is not truly mine.
And what do I want to bring along with me into the New Year and new State? This answer might need revisiting in a few weeks or months…
For now, I want to bring along the lessons learned; the beautiful memories; my whole self as I’ve discovered it so clearly during this pandemic; the pain inasmuch as it heightens the joys; the parts of my job and professional connections that are good; gratitude; openness/open-mindedness. And especially, the hope of being able to regain my glass-half-full perspective on things.
The Little Prince and the Fox 