2023
14:37 on 7 january 2023
running a fever in hotel new ueno
tokyo, japan
A month into our japan trip, i had taken ill. If you’d have told me then, the depths and pinnacles of emotion I’d feel by the time 31 december came around, I would have thought it a fever dream. What with the drawn curtains that kept daylight out, the Paracetamol I popped and the steady almost-silence, undertone of a humming radiator - the whole mix meant I slept for most of the day and was otherwise in a state of semi-lucidity.
Returning home, I would go on to start a new job, grieve some loved ones, take on another gig on the side, make many new friends, picnics picnics picnics, finally get that tattoo and learn - learn indeed - many lessons I thought I had already gleaned, annotated, flagged and scored on my textbook (which should be appropriately titled Another Clumsy Twenty-Something).
2023 has written me into a different person. Everything I had I gave and I received the equivalent in return.
I’ve learned to ask for support when I need it.
My birthday in May was especially difficult. Apart from a couple of my favourite people moving away, I was acutely aware of the disparity between where I wanted to be at 28 versus where I was, where I was headed. But in retrospect, much of what I was tortured by was ‘choice’ - the privilege of imagining a different future for myself. Being lost is a perquisite of the free. Now all I see is possibility where I had seen peril. It’s a beautiful thought to consider that some of the most delightful moments in our lives are yet to arrive.
That was also the month I started, amongst many other things, making it a point to look up at the sky at least twice a day (thank you Yvette), it’s done me a lot of good.
I’ve lost count of the number of times this year I’ve felt adoration and adored in return. My well kept filling up!!
In June I noted in my journal how in spite of (or perhaps in view of) swimming against the current, many creatives are colourfast - dyed in colours that will not fade and will not wash out - holding their own and only becoming increasingly saturated. I set myself a new goal, not to lose my colour or to dilute.
In July I experienced the joy of having my only worry be, the longevity of the routine and rhythm I had built. It was like breaking the surface after a long time underwater and all I had to focus on now was repetition and replication. Breathe in, breathe out. It was the best worry I ever had. Is this what the late-twenties feel like?
I was reminded more often than I’d like of the passing of time and how some things will never be again.
In August I observed how despite squabbling incessantly with Ah Gong, Dad would spend hours on youtube learning to cut his hair because Senior can’t stand having his longer than a couple of centimetres and has decided he’s too good for the salon downtown. I wondered if it will be with the same heart down the line, that I clean the edges of kopitiam tables for Mom who has sensitive skin even on her elbows and picking out the carrots from the frozen veggie mix she dislikes.
In September I wondered if my chronic anxiety meant I’m irrevocably flawed, headed directly for misery. But discovered it had over time become the cornerstone of my self-starter personality which I’ve come to quite like about myself. I also thought it exciting how I’m bound to evolve and not before long find me in the thick of another self, fully in character. All that to say, I’m going to make peace with this anxious undercurrent, trusting it’ll be in my favour on the route charted.
I didn’t get to read very much this year so words no longer find their way to one another easily. But in that time, I’ve been able to meet many new friends and reconnect with old ones.
The year’s biggest lessons:
The downside of the ability to meet others where they are is that sometimes you see them where they’re not ready to be seen. Perhaps then, a lot of adulting is learning to pretend you hadn’t.
Grant others and yourself the permission to be who they are / you are naturally.
To hold loosely onto things and people.
The week before I ran a temperature in tokyo, I had resolved that the year would be one of distillation, to grow into my own person, to take up more space, of becoming less high-strung, more forthcoming, to develop an inner buffer; a quality unaffected by outer circumstances and characterised by constant overcoming, to then have a lot more room and give in my heart for others. 2023’s granted me a good degree of that.
And perhaps what i'm feeling is the joyful satisfaction of having given it my all, that I gave of myself unsparingly. Yes, that must be it.
Here’s to another year of revisiting lessons because the same trials seem to reappear disguised in so many different forms. And to another year of learning more about God’s heart and my own.
Happy New Year love
and thank you Jesus
