December is, by far, my favourite month of the year. Everything about it is to be loved. It is unlike the scorching Junes or Julys that unleash the sun’s worst and burning all it reaches. Neither is it the weariness of Mays and Aprils, bearing upon many the longing for the calendar to reach is halfway mark as a comfort to year-long hardship. It is also most certainly better than the half-hearted festivities of the earlier Januaries, Februaries and Marches – rather than finding an impossible balance between new beginnings and reminiscence, one can truly celebrate all that has transpired in 12 fully fleshed months. December is the month of returning, introspection, healings, salvation and ends.
I’ve been making the unfortunate decision over and over again to not bother with writing; It has been serving as an odd personal therapy of sorts for a few years already, but administering it regularly has been especially difficult this year. But can I be blamed for all that? If writing was art, then purpose and meaning are the muses that I’ve lost touch with come the year’s many senselessly played out events. A glance of the year reveals pain and disappointment in many steps leading up till today.
Failure has been a constant reality in my life this year, much more so than any other before. I’ve struggled before, but hardly this much! An alarming number of times this year I’ve felt myself denied the sense of accomplishment and completion that I used to thrive on. Every day I am losing ground in a war on my own principles and values. A closed eye here and an exception there add up over time. I’d be near ashamed to meet the person I was a year ago and sharing the decisions that have gone seen and unseen. Is it me picking up what I’ve seen is considered the market rate of morality and principle? Or my own patience eroded till my inner sloth has been revealed in worse conditions than I’m used to working and leading in? Does the reason even matter? I am a worse person either way.
There are so many questions I’m looking to end the year with without any answer to hold on to, and with no ear I’m able to entrust them to. I have lost so much of myself in this year and cannot find it within myself to say for sure that I’ve gained enough in other worthwhile ways to make up for it. In a year of supposed tragedy I can almost see the words “The End” emboldened definitely against the otherwise untouched paper a few pages down. It’s a tough read.
Simply hammering this out has already been laborious. Nothing much this year is worth reliving and taking apart in my head - who wants to dissect a rotting corpse anyway? It feels like ages since life has been good, even though it’s only been a short year when I’ve went from being a dynamo of volition to the bitter cynic I am now. Perhaps the only thing worth being grateful for are the people who remind me that there are things and people worth working hard for, who do not calculate and reciprocate by nature and not obligation. Time is precious, and I thank you for sharing yours with me.
And so the new year ends with myself at a loss of justifying what I’ve lost in myself with very little to show for it. What’s important to me has only drifted further, diminished with neglect, or disappeared despite my best efforts. I am a lesser person, and have never been more happy to see the end of a year, because the naive, arbitrary notion of a new start is the only hopeful thing I have left.
With guard duty tonight, I will welcome the New Year in patient waiting for… nothing. Nothing usually happens and nothing should happen. Nothing should be there to greet me except the gate that I will not need to open because nothing of importance should be waiting to enter at the times I’m there. But should whatever or whoever I’ve been waiting for for so long arrive, I must be found waiting and ready to receive.
And so it is with the new year.
