The pride of living another year

Without the roundups or resolution

It’s an unfixable myopia, this time of looking back. Peering over our shoulders at 365 ups and downs of the sun, and labeling it a Good Year or a Bad One. Like 2022 is a hollow melon we’re knocking in the fruit aisle. Oh, not this one. Not juicy enough. Isn’t it silly that we do this every December?

Clinging to the easily captioned moments: the accomplishments, the graduations and promotions, big city moves and heartbreaks. These appear the clearest, after all. Maybe it’s because we’re more likely to take pictures of these moments, post them on our feeds, have people like and comment? Maybe because it’s easier to assign clear value to the things we’ve been told to chase or avoid. A graduation is good. All that change and discomfort: bad. These things are our yearly barometer, the things to which we attach value and compare and say, I want the life she’s having.

It’s an annual desperation to feel we’ve gone upward when, actually, onward was always enough. Not in the way of moving forward, simply in the way of moving at all.

I did things I don’t have saved in my camera roll, but which I honour just the same, with you as my witness. I continued to cultivate family. I worked harder than I ever have to rethink what it means to be related to one another, sometimes by blood and by chance, but also by choice and by care. I refused, in my own way, to be treated badly. I challenged myself. I did the brave and scary things. I fed myself well, and felt stronger for it. I daydreamed—a lot. Of marrying the love of my life and inviting our friends over for dinner, all of us at the round table under the warm hanging light, passing the butter and sprinkling the flaky salt and sharing in the momentary magic. 

I cried many times. For loneliness and for joy. For frustration and confusion. For so much searing love in me that it had to come out somehow. I would think of how my heart felt and some days, it felt heavier. I know now that this also meant bigger. Heavier as in burdensome, as in tired and sometimes sad, but also heavier as in holding more. Making more space. 

I wrote these letters. I shared myself. I became more than my career and saw my life expand infinitely beyond the hustle. I made clothes for my body with my own two hands, weaving yarn together where before there was nothing. I cooked delicious meals for my delicious love. I hugged my friends and called them on a random Tuesday, from another city, as if to say, I am still here. Thank you for still being here, too. 

I look back on January and each month thereafter and remember myself with fondness. I remember that I chose love at every turn. The easiest and most difficult choice and yet, I chose it—every morning, like cream in my coffee, without fail. 

When I think about this year, I recall that I felt too much, too big, all the time. I am overwhelmed by all I felt and in awe of how I moved beyond it. I’ve been called sensitive so many times that at some point, I started to believe it was a bad thing, the way they said it. But this year, amid all the things I find difficult to face about myself, my ability to feel fully is not one of them. I felt my feelings, and those of others, with my whole self—I cared fiercely, in my actions and my words, and I felt the sharp sting of true growth, and I moved through pain rather than around it. 

I hope that I continue to be sensitive against this life. I hope I never harden to its edges. With this comes other hopes, for no one’s ears but mine. Not for the next year, that arbitrary marker of time, but for the next season, measured in moments or in months or in whatever we have left.

I hope this little letter at the dawn of 2022 can be your reminder that you, like me, like us all, are too vast in your possibility to fold neatly into a resolution.

I hope your intentions become reality, and your challenges become growth, but I hope too that you can find the greatest pride and pleasure in your ability to simply wake up and go on. I’m so happy you’re here.

Part of peace, for me, is expecting difficulty and discomfort and being met with a stable and certain ground under my feet.

This December, Mo and I celebrated two years together.

When I first met him, I continually braced myself for the exhaustion that comes with explaining yourself to someone. I was willing to be vulnerable again, but I steeled myself for how hard this would be, and the inherent risk when you lay yourself bare.

But not very long after we met, we had what was, for all intents and purposes, supposed to be a hard conversation, and I marvelled at how easy it felt. I felt wrapped in relief like a warm coat. There were some conversations I would rehearse beforehand, because I wanted to say and do all the right things with this man I was falling in love with. But he met my vulnerability with his own, my fear with safety, and it created a special flavour of peace. Nothing has changed since those first days except my capacity to love him.

As we celebrated two years this month, there is so much peace in what we share together—in every pocket, at every turn. A solid and stable ground beneath our feet as we stand, always on the same side, looking excitedly ahead. Our little life together gives me a profound peace that I did not know was possible or think I deserved. It has made two years worth a lifetime.

Making Amends by Holly Warburton

Thank you endlessly for joining me here. I’ve been doing this for a few months now, and it’s been so special to share this space with you.

If you enjoyed this little love letter, I want to know! Shoot me a message on Instagram: @ramnasafeer. If you have another question or comment or sweetness to share, you can also send me an email at ramnasafeer@gmail.com. Let’s chat!

I hope you stick around and subscribe—we’re cool here.

Sending love and rest, this December and beyond,

Ramna