A Rough Start, Soft Edges, and the Will to Continue

The last few months of the year were busy, charged, and full of possibility. And then, almost comically, just the day before NYE, everything seemed to explode. My body crashed, and my mood followed like an obedient understudy. A year ended. Another began. Technically, It’s just another day. But emotionally, it felt like a seismic shift.

I’ve spent the first week of this year ricocheting between resolve and despair. Between telling myself to get it together and allowing myself to sit with the disappointment of not having delivered everything I wanted to. I didn’t build the professional roadmap I’d hoped to. I didn’t arrive at clarity with a bow on it. And somehow, in the midst of trying to move forward, I lost a bit of myself. Or left it behind in 2025.

Now a week in, I think I’m in mourning. Not the dramatic, black-veil kind though…

Mourning the ways I haven’t been the daughter I hoped to be.

Mourning the people - important and incidental - who didn’t make it with me into 2026.

Mourning promises I gave too easily and couldn’t keep.

Mourning a version of love I almost had, or maybe just wanted badly enough to believe in.(Love… I still pause on that word, wondering if it’s something I’m fully equipped for, or simply something I’m yearning for without knowing the grammar of).

But what unsettles me most at this juncture is the fleeting nature of our emotions. Rock bottom can look like a summit moments later. Or collapse just as fast.

Feelings as we know them, behave like push notifications. They arrive loudly, demand immediate attention, and can be dismissed with a swipe. We’re all trying to juggle popularity, self-awareness, ambition, health, and that slippery abstraction we insist on calling love. Most days, we feel like we’re doing justice to none of it; just surviving by participation. Other days, we thrive in a way that feels suspicious, like something must surely go wrong. So sometimes, we sabotage it ourselves.

If nothing is guaranteed from one moment to the next, then how does one explain connections that remind you you’re not as composed as you’d hoped? What makes us feel so uplifted, even when we’re terrified of the aftermath of connecting deeply?

Maybe that’s why detachment feels so seductive. It promises safety. Control. A way to move through the world without bruises. And yes, mastering detachment might get you far. It might make things easier.

I claim to want ease, but consistently choose everything but ease.

So here I am, starting the year a little bruised, a little behind, and undeniably uncertain. Still sad about what I didn’t finish. Still grieving people and possibilities. Still unsure of the exact path forward. But also, still standing. Still willing. Still capable of treading forward, even without a perfect plan. I just hope that’s enough, because I won’t know what to do if it isn’t.