Once Upon a Year Gone By

Oh 2014, I hardly knew you! Only one day to the very end of this year and I am just now tasting the shocking realisation that it has, in fact, been 12 months since the beginning of the year. It's been a blur. The 365 days have drifted by without my conscious awareness of their passing. I took the idea that the concept of time is man's creation quite literally. The distinction between night and day to me was not black and white, it was (still is) grey. I ate supper at midnight, I took vodka -sometimes- at two in the afternoon, I drank coffee at eight in the evening and eight in the morning became my ungodly hour. Time, after all, was my conception -the conception of my ancestors and, therefore, mine. And like the Idiosyncratic Hedonist that I am, I didn't follow the norm. It is no surprise then that 12 solid months have gone by and I feel that the year has just flown by.

It is not uncommon to look back at the years past and talk about something significant that happened in a particular year, for instance: school graduation; meeting a stranger who later becomes a lover; breaking up with the aforementioned lover; going through grief; moving out of the parents' home; starting a new job; these are just some of the major life events. I don't think I'll look back at 2014 and mention any of the above. However, I feel like I did grow tremendously in a short period of time and this growth has gone unnoticed by everyone but myself. I feel like in the space of 12 months, I have traversed so far from what I am used to. I find it difficult to put into words these bits and pieces of transition and transformation. The peace that I have felt, the wanderings -both imaginary and physical, getting lost and subsequently finding myself in a good book, being moved by great music, the magic of the night air, the stillness of the morning just before everyone wakes up, the letting go on my yoga mat, the sound of silence, the surprising emotional balance. These are things I might not be able to tell people in future, yet it is their combination that makes me feel completely and utterly metamorphosed. The abstractness of their very nature makes them difficult to explain.

Oh 2014, I hardly knew you, yet you gave me the time to know myself, and for that I am grateful.

The title of this post is from the song Paradise by Vanessa Carlton