2024, a year of love

reflections during the awkward days after Christmas and before the New Year

My sweet wonderful reader,

It’s been 13 posts since I started this newsletter in January and I am feeling nostalgic and reflective. If you have been here since January or as recent as today, thank you for reading my words and spending your precious few minutes ingesting what I can only describe as scraps of my soul.

The end of the year always feels odd. Like a long winded farewell where we all linger by the door, trying to say goodbye five, maybe ten more times, only to get distracted by another conversation, another small anecdote. It is a slow release and I cannot fathom any other way to release the absolute chaos of this year.

The last few days before the new year always feel somewhat reflective. I can’t help but look back at all the moments of intense emotions. How all of it left its mark. Every infraction mattered just as much as every triumph.

Last year was a study on falling in love.

I fell in love with performing. The lights, the people, the characters to get lost in. The way the energy of the crowd felt like electricity powering your every step. How the stage was a place to be seen and heard. A place I could take up space.

I fell in love with my friends who acted as my lifeline and reality checkpoints. The late night voice notes, the whispered secrets in the passenger seat, the admission of faults in breakfast dates. The endless acceptance of who I am, the love in spite of every flaw.

I fell in love with the idea of a person, more in love with the daydreams than the man behind them. I watched as the spiderweb fractures tainted my fantasy projections until reality was the only choice left to look at.

And as the year closed out, I fell back in love with myself. My relentless determination to pursue bravery. The rose tinted glasses I continue to choose viewing the world with. My voice, once unsteady, getting stronger as I find myself a bigger space to occupy.

The thing about loving is it isn’t about the kiss or the spark of two hands intertwining. Love has always been about acceptance and deep knowing. It’s within the confines of this criteria that I gave myself the strength to love again and again.

This year, all my crutches for distraction slowly chipped off until I had only my own mind to play with. I wish I could say that I am always ready to tackle the intensity that is my own psyche. Unfortunately for me, my own head has a tendency to get overcrowded and every so often I try to exit it.

But lately, I’ve reconnected with the parts of me I haven’t had time for. The little-st parts of me I shelved due to lack of interest or lack of wanting to operate. And in it I’ve felt more and more myself. I’ve found love in between the pages of my favorite stories, in the scratch of charcoal to canvas and the echoes of a song my voice throws around the kitchen floor. And of course my favorite flavor of joy is the one I’ve found in the clicks of a keyboard and a page full of words.

Right now, loving myself has been synonymous with wanting to engage with what I find joyful. I’ve been feeling somewhat lethargic these last few weeks, living with chronic depression does that to a girl. In between what feels like a chasm of darkness, I find these pockets of radiant joy and it makes the void look more like a starry sky.

I think my idea of loving is still growing. I’m still finding new ways to love and be loved, but as my world shifts and grows I find that love is the powerhouse behind it all. Everything that matters is splattered with it. It’s in those splatterings I find myself the footholds of hope.

Wishing you a new year filled with loving,

Dhan xx