The End of the Year
A year ago, I was desperately sad. I’d graduated; I didn’t have a job offer; my relationship was going south; my appointment for antidepressants had been postponed; I’d been rejected from the one MFA program I applied to; and I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself.
I still don’t, really. It’s been a year of kicking things around, trying them out. I moved, took up a job I thought I’d hate. I adopted a cat and spent a month frantically figuring out how to care for it. I took karate classes and painting classes and Pilates classes and didn’t continue any of them. I gained weight. I lost weight. I made friends and lost them. I spent too much money on frivolous things and not enough on important things. I cut my hair. I drove to Maine. I drove to Chicago. I bought furniture and sold furniture and bought it again. I had a break-up.
Despite all that, 2025 was one of the happiest years of my recent life. I like my job. I live alone in an apartment to myself. I spent rent money on a couch that my cat tears up with his claws, and I let him, because I adore him with all my heart. I got into another relationship. I got off the antidepressants. I saw friends I hadn’t seen in years. I ate at restaurants that changed my life, by myself, and loved it. I bought a diamond necklace. I joined a run club. I applied for graduate school.
All of a sudden, the world was open to me. It was wonderful and terrifying to figure out living with myself: getting pulled over for the first time, servicing my car, changing my license, comparing credit cards, hosting a dinner party, navigating health insurance, taking my cat to the vet, investing. I made so many mistakes and so many frantic calls to my parents, who were always patiently on the other end of the line to answer my silliest questions. I cobbled together a life over the last year that is, for the first time, becoming my own.
My writing practice slowed, and at the same time, my Substack grew. I was published in The Yale Review and Meridian, two dream journals, and nominated for a Pushcart for fiction for the first time. I participated in a reading for the first time in two years. I was shortlisted for a fellowship with the first poet who ever inspired me.
My job has become most of my life, but I’m getting good at it. I had truthfully never thought I’d find work outside of writing worth doing. Now, however, I enjoy it so much it scares me.
A year ago, I had entered the year dragging myself across the line. I had no goals, no aspirations, no hopes except to be a little happier, or at least less sad. Now, I have ridiculous and grandiose dreams the likes of which I haven’t had since middle school. I have Plans, capital P. Some of them may not happen this year; some may not happen at all. The thing is to try.
I’m not sad to be older. I’m glad for however the time passes. I used to impose personal timelines for my achievements, impossible ones, and tear myself apart for missing them: novel by 16, marathon by 18, PhD by 25, etc. Of course, none of it happened. But no more of that. I want only to make use of my time this year, however I can—to wake up with something to do, and go to sleep with something done. Even if it’s almost nothing to anyone else. All that matters is what it is to me.



really enjoyed this—also loved your poem for the Yale Review! wishing you a beautiful 2026 full of writing and friendship and all that is good in life…
One year is all it takes 😤