If you are an office dweller like myself, today is your first day back on the grind. It is the sobering moment you arrive in the office with an honest attempt to be on time and look like you are not considering jumping from the window returning to the recently departed freedom of winter break offered.
It is also 4 days in to the resolutions many have set up for 2016 to be the best year, maybe ever. I have not set such standards to meet, rather I welcomed the year with revelations in lieu of resolutions.
The end of the year was punctuated with a trip to see family, a new nephew, a proposal, and enough wine to sink the Navy. Yet, through this all and with the help of the dimly lit and always rejuvenating dance floor of Joe’s in Camden just days ago, I got to a point of oneness with the onset of 2016.
Being in love is harder than I thought.
Realisation 1: I thought I was more free than I was. I wanted to be able to say ‘I am going to go do me for a while and what is meant to work out always will’. I hide my shaking voice each time, but it doesn’t become more believable. He can see my armour cracking. I can feel my heart cracking.
“My man’s got a heart like a rock cast in the sea”
Realisation 2: Doing what is easy can also be hard. Through rejected visa letters and assessing what I can leave and what I can take, the easier path is to go back to America. But it is also the hardest. It is saying good-bye to a life once more. It is feeling like I disappointed myself for a quest to be a nomad. It is the firm hand of adulthood which I feel forcing me to unpack my bags at the end of young adulthood.
“But it’s too late to say you’re sorry
How would I know, why should I care?
Please don’t bother trying to find her
She’s not there”
Realisation 3: Not knowing who you are and what you will do next is also OK. Addressing my avoidance of resolutions and instead settling for some insights to help guide a new year, I realise I still have more to work on and the fact that I can still look around to friends and hear the insecurities they have, the fears we share, the uncertainty of the coming year, it is not a lonely trail as much as lacking definite direction. It is having faith in the riptides underfoot and being open to where you will come up for air next.
“But she’s not there.”
Realisation 4: Joe’s has the best soundtrack of any dance club you could ask for. Also, there is no substitute for sweating through your sorrows to songs like this on a dance floor.