The Love Letter to a Most Painful Year

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31 December 2022

My dearest 2022,

Months prior, I’d always envisioned myself writing a lengthy elegy to a most painful year. But now, with pen poised over the paper, I find my well of words has dried out. Without a shred of doubt, I know you’ve taken me to the darkest depths, often with the feeling I’ll never make it out. Despite that, here I am, standing on the doorways of yet another beckoning year, ever-beaming and optimistic about whatever life will throw at me.

Dearest 2022, you came with invaluable lessons I now realize I needed to learn. However, life isn’t a kind teacher, is it? With those lessons came deep scars, and at multiple points, I felt as though my spirit was severed and rent into fragments beyond recognition.

As I reflect on the journey I’ve taken, I’ve come to view you with far more empathy and tenderness. I welcomed you with my heart burning with someone’s love, and now I bid you farewell with that someone gone. Nevertheless, I’ve learned to build a fire for myself, one that provides me with much-needed warmth independent of anybody else.

Last April, the life I built for 15 months crumbled mercilessly under the weight of time. After all, I knew I was constructing concrete buildings on glass foundations—the ending shouldn’t have come as a surprise. In hindsight, the act of persevering despite anticipating the end no longer seems foolish to me. Rather, I consider it now as an ultimately courageous act.

Life ebbs on and love finds me in strange places, but welcoming that lengthy relationship despite the challenges of an enforced physical distance is equal parts heart-wrenching and rewarding. And yet, contrary to the position I would’ve taken during mid-2022, I’ve long accepted that that chapter has served its purpose, and it’s pointless to continue writing pages when the ink has run out.

As luck would have it, I met someone in June who drew stars around my scars, only to walk out of my life in September. It was short-lived, whimsical, and bright enough to reignite my hope, but I suppose I was meeting people with whom I differ with respect to where we were in our respective lives.

Stitches brutally pulled from newly-healed wounds cause graver pain than if the injury was left alone to begin with, but I was well aware of the risks I was taking at the time. It felt foolish, taking a gambit again on love after I’d just recently cut my losses, but it felt so right. And although the spark was harshly doused by monsoon rains, I never regretted any of it. Far from it, even.

In the aftermath of two consecutive heartbreaks, I turned inwards. Relationships defined the majority of my 2022, and for each one that ended, I grieved not only the person I could’ve spent my life with but also the part of me who died with them.

It’s a little funny now, realizing that with no one else to turn to, I finally sought refuge with myself and got introduced to the person I’m becoming. Where death falls, life springs anew, and that has never been truer than with the relationship I’ve decided to start seriously building with myself.

Dearest 2022, what I once saw as rejections, I now view as blunt redirections. There was no other way I would’ve taken my goals seriously were it not for the pain that came with each choice I either had to make or experience the consequences of.

Perhaps, my heart has grown weary of the monotonous cacophony of the dating scene. But on the flip side, perhaps it’s an invitation to pursue incessantly the things I most desire in my life, the peaks I intend to conquer and besiege, and the name I want to build for myself.

Recently, the thought of being self-made whispers like a burning echo that never lets me go. I know now there’s no way I would ignore the l’appel du vide inviting me to leap faithfully and wholeheartedly into the unknown. After all, I’ve lived my life emerging either victorious or wiser from each war the Universe has given me. What could possibly go wrong now?

As I move on and step into the version of me birthed from this year’s hardships, I dedicate one last glance to honor the path I’d taken. Bridges might have been burned by my own hand or by forces beyond my control, but may their fire light up the way ahead.

I now part with you, 2022. But trust that all your lessons and experiences wouldn’t have all been for naught. I’ll carry them with me as badges of my inner strength, tenacity, and the will to always carry on regardless of the obstacles and regardless of the cost.

I leave you stronger, wiser, and better than when I first met you. I lost things to you, but I daresay I’ve gained far more valuable things in return too. And for that, I truly am eternally grateful.

In gratitude for all the sweet and bitter fruits of the harvest,

Lex