I am still not sure if there’s any point to writing a post like this because no one can know what will happen in an entire year, but I thought it may be valuable for my future self to have a record of my sentiments at this point in time. My 2020 post sounded a little angry to my current self, so I’m curious to know what would my 2022 self think of the me now?
Last year I wrote about pursuing non-pursuing, in a way I couldn’t have foreseen I guess my intentions were fulfilled? It was a year I couldn’t have pursued much anyway. I had to cope with all the inner depression, frustration, grief and angst that had no external channel for escape.
I think I learnt to sit with myself a little better, though I think it is only the beginning of the journey. My goals if any, are mostly the same as the last few years though: I seek emotional freedom.
I am aware that I have a recency bias and for now I don’t really want to sift through my previous posts, but it feels like in recent times I have begun to be a lot more aware of how my mind imprisons me. It still does so, very much. I am in a lot of anxiety every day, though objectively I am probably a lot better than before. Some of my thinking is simply not flexible which is a surprise to me because I had always perceived myself as a very open-minded person. It is funny to me how inaccurate our perceptions of ourselves can be.
I wish to be less tortured by my self. That the climate of my thoughts and emotions can become a bit more neutral. To a person with chronic trauma, the only options that seem to be available are either flight, fright, or guarding each moment with extreme vigilance. I have no idea of what true relaxation really means, what does it mean to be present with the moment instead of being afraid of what the next moment may bring.
There is improvement though, however slow. I find reading through my old journals and timehop entries amusing and enlightening. Reading these things used to make me upset, but I am in a place where I can laugh at my old deluded selves now. The big reveal was how much I used to live in a world full of my own concocted stories.
It made me go through a writing slump because I was really afraid to write anything that would make me sound stupid to my future self, or worse, write something misconstrued as “advice” to people who may read this blog. I am a lot more careful to insert caveats into my writing – that whatever I’m writing probably only applies to me.
I do want to continue writing in public despite my misgivings. This is my part – however naive – in trying to express something into this world that is a little bit more authentic, even if the idea of authenticity itself feels inauthentic. Once in a while I stumble onto people’s sites that make me feel a little less lonely in a world filled with so much noise, and I hope that my little footprints online will leave a trail that would comfort someone out there, or someone like my younger self. I had derived so much courage and comfort from people’s writing online, especially during my teenage years when the world was a lot more unaccepting in many ways.
For 2021 I would like to learn to chill a bit better and a bit more, and I hope to continue tending to this website like a garden, and maybe I’ll develop the courage to pick up my newsletter and patreon account again in a way that doesn’t trigger my anxiety.
Maybe 2020 made it really clear to me that I am truly afraid of life and everything that comes with it, and I wish to be a little bit braver, and a little bit more at ease with the world and myself, a little bit less paralysed by my anxieties.
I think having many years of recorded writing taught me that a journey to wholeness is not inevitable or linear, it is a path that one must struggle to keep walking on, because without deliberate intentions and awareness we tend to walk in circles that gradually grow smaller, circles that may eventually become invisible chains that will slowly drain the aliveness out of us.