How To Move On

T H I S Y E A R W A S D I F F E R E N T

"If you knew me based on who I was a year ago, then you don't know me at all." - anonymous

I'm a living testament to that. For the last 16 and a half years of my existence, I've never been the same person for a long time. I was never static. I changed a lot. I always wanted to reinvent myself. Sometimes, I don't even see it myself. It just "happens", and I look in the mirror one day and realize, "this isn't who I was, last time I checked".

So far, the difference between who I was last year and who I am now seems to be the greatest change I've endured so far. Some changes were intentional, some just seemed to "happen". To understand that, let me describe who I was in 2015, as much as I can remember.

I was a whole lot more sensitive. I cried often. Every little thing set me off, like the way my parents scolded me for something I did or didn't do, or when the person I was infatuated with didn't reciprocate any feelings for me.

I guess I believed that everything in my life revolved around me. I felt that I was a victim of a lot of injustices. I felt that I had friends because they were there to comfort me, and to reassure me that I was worth something. Not that bad of a thought, but still a little selfish. I was there for them, too, but I looked at our relationships thinking about how I was affected.

The way I felt, or I guess my emotions in general, was dependent on what other people felt about me. I clung to my friends (and my infatuation) way too much. I cried too much. I gave too much of myself, without leaving parts for me.

I valued my hair way too much. I know this is trivial, but sometimes even I can't fathom why I kept my hair so long for all those months. It was against the rules, and the guidance counselor would call me out for it every single time. I do remember that there was a purpose to it, and that purpose was to have as much hair to bleach and dye by the end of the school year, and at the start of summer. I thought it was a waste of bleach and dye to only have a few inches of hair to cover with it. So I kept it until it reached past my nose. And mind you, I have a huge forehead, so my hair was undeniably long. To hide it, I used a lot of gel (LOTS OF IT, LIKE COUNTLESS BOTTLES OF IT) and for a time it worked. But then it got too obvious, and all good things must come to an end.

I guess all these things had something to do with my pride, one way or another. It was too high, at times, and I payed the price for it.

As a prelude to this year's version of me, it might be accurate to say that who I am now, is almost the exact opposite of all the things I was last year.

I haven't cried much this year. I was, in a sense, desensitized. I'm a lot less sensitive now. I accept things the way they are, and I mostly keep my mouth shut about it. I'm a lot more understanding about things, like the things my parents say to me, even when I don't like it.

The world doesn't revolve around me, I realized. I see myself in the center, at the sidelines, and sometimes I'm not even there at all. I'm everywhere. And I see things at a myriad of perspectives. My mind is much more open.

I'm not as close to the friends I had last year. I've been connecting to new friends, to different people, mostly the people that were just at the sidelines of my life, the ones that didn't make much of an impact (before). I haven't lost touch with the people I was close with before, but I can feel the distance between me and them. We're far from where we were a year ago. But maybe we'll reconnect next year, or in the years to come.

My emotions are finally my own. I choose what I feel. I have greater control of what I feel. I'm still sentimental at times, but not as much as I was before.

I've been keeping my hair short. I've gone from 4 to 5 inch long strands to almost bald. And it was refreshing. Also, I've never used any hair styling product in the last 6 to 7 months. I used them for a whole 2 and a half years of my life, so not using them for this long has been a real breather for me.

I'm guiltier of a lot of things. Mostly of all the things I never should have done. I am very aware of my sins and my shortcomings. I beat myself up for it almost every day for the latter half of the year, but my prayer life was always my antidote. I connected and bargained with God more than I ever have in my entire life. And I'm slowly learning to resist my demons, the ones that have been holding me back for as long as I can remember.

With all of these said, I guess my pride has been at an average this year. Sometimes, it plummeted to new lows, too. I've hurt and offended a lot of people, and maybe my pride went up at these moments. But I was quick to recognize my fault, and I did what I could to make up for what I did.

I don't know if I'm happier now than I was last year. With all the things I've achieved this year, from winning in foreign singing contests (or actually joining in singing contests at all – I've never done it before!) to travelling to places I never dreamed of reaching, I should be. But happiness is such a fickle thing; it comes and it goes. I've been euphoric in all the times we won as a batch, but I was at my lowest, when I realized all that I had done wrong with my life. The question is, which outweighs which?

If I've learned anything major this year, it's that life is never constant. I'm always changing, and so are the people around me. My environment is changing, and frankly – the whole world is. I'm more aware of the seconds that pass me by every day, even now as I write these last sentences. I know that I'll never get those moments back. I can't keep thinking about the future, if it means that I'll keep losing the present. I just have to cherish what I have now, and trust that God has the best planned for me.

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