I’m over starting over, riding on a broken down roller coaster.

I want to tell you the story of the best year of my life. I want to find a corner in a cozy little cafe overlooking the beach and sit down with you and talk over soy lattes. I want to reminisce over the last year — over all the memories and moments that brought me eternal joy. I want to talk about the people I met; I want to share their stories and tell you what I learned from them. I want to tell you that this was the happiest year of my life. That I finally kept all of my resolutions and crossed everything off my list of goals. That I was successful. I desperately want to tell you that 2014 was that year.

But that’s not the story I have for you today.

I want to talk about heaviness. When we take ourselves apart and dissect every minute detail of our existence, we find that even the tiniest pieces have weight. Each page of our story, even the least threatening, can get heavy. 2014 was heavy. I found myself standing on a thin rope, putting my arms out for balance, and hoping I wouldn’t fall over. Hoping I wouldn’t succumb to the weight. Hoping I wouldn’t break. That tight rope never changed in width or length, but the weight did. With each step, bits and pieces piled on top of me. Every day, the load grew heavier until I found myself struggling desperately with balance. That’s the thing about weight: when the load gets heavy, something has to break. Eventually, your legs will give out. Eventually, your lungs will be desperate for breath. Eventually, the weight will come crashing down. You will come crashing down. And you’ll be faced with a choice: give in or get strong. I chose the latter. 

I want to tell you about the heartache. About the demons. About the mountains and rivers and valleys that defined 2014 for me.

In 2014, I felt life break my heart over and over again in unimagineable ways. I felt my heart break for others. For myself. For friends and family and acquaintances and strangers. I felt pieces of my heart shatter over stories of illness, stories of loss, stories of life, stories of grief, stories of love. I had so many moments fighting through the chaos under the pressure of weight where I wanted to stop dead in my tracks and scream, “what’s the point in all of this? Why does everything break me like this? What’s the bigger purpose?” I don’t mean that in the morbid way that it sounds. But if you’re the kind of person with the propensity to feel just a little too much, then you’ll understand exactly where I’m coming from.

There is so much tragedy in this world — as a whole, and in our own little universes. So many broken pieces. So much pain. 2014 taught me how easily it is for someone’s life to break. To shatter. To end. Just as quickly as you figure out the proper footing to walk across that tight rope, something can end. Your heart can break. The weight can get heavier. I learned that no matter how much weight is on your back, the world still moves on. It’s like when you’re sick and are forced to be surrounded by people who are well. You curse them for being able to get a sentence out without coughing. You want everyone around you to suffer in the same way you are. You want them to have a scratchy throat, or feel like they have an 8 ton elephant sitting on their heads. But it never happens that way.

When someone you love walks away from you, your world stops. Your heart can get ripped out of your chest, stomped on, and dragged across town. You can look to the people passing you by at the mall, or sitting next to you in class, or working in the office across the hall from you, but their lives don’t stop because yours did. Their weight isn’t your weight. 

And that’s what broke my heart the most in 2014.

While I was incapacitated in bed over closing one chapter of my life and struggling to find the strength to pick up the pen and start writing the next page, the world outside my window kept on spinning. The sun still rose, the birds still sang their songs, and my neighborhood didn’t crumble the way I did. When I watched a family member slowly deteriorate in a hospital bed, crippled with fear over impending heart surgery, the world outside his hospital window didn’t stop. They continued with their Memorial Day Weekend plans, and their barbecues, and their start to the summer season, all while he laid weak in bed, hoping for the chance to see another Memorial Day. When a friend of the family got diagnosed with cancer and slipped away in such a short amount of time, I looked for people around me to just get it. To somehow even feel an ounce of what I was feeling. But everyone kept living. They went about their Christmas shopping, they continued to bake their cookies, they continued to enjoy their holidays with their family. No one got it.

Our weight may never be the same, but the load is still equally as heavy.

Sometimes, we’re lucky and are able to dust the rubble off our shoulders. Other times, the pieces keep adding up. But we keep going. We have to keep moving. We have to find the fight within us to dig ourselves out from that valley. To fight the demons. To swim those rivers. To climb those mountains. To transition the weight so we don’t fall over.  

2014 was about transition. It was about learning to transition my life after every tragedy. After every change. After every heart ache.

2015 will be about movement, and progression, and being present. This year will be about steady and graceful balance. Taking both baby steps and giant leaps into the blind unknown. It will be about showing up. It will be about building relationships, maintaining old ones, and being present with the people in my life. It will be about continuing to balance on that tight rope, rolling with the punches, and expressing gratitude. 2015 will be about transitioning into this next phase of my life. It will be about unrelenting strength in the face of the unknown. In the face of all odds — and isn’t that what life should always be about? 

Here’s to a happy and healthy 2015.

“Be kind to yourself in the year ahead. Remember to forgive yourself, and to forgive others. It’s too easy to be outraged these days, so much harder to change things, to reach out, to understand. Try to make your time matter: minutes and hours and days and weeks can blow away like dead leaves, with nothing to show but time you spent not quite ever doing things, or time you spent waiting to begin. Meet new people and talk to them. Make new things and show them to people who might enjoy them. Hug too much. Smile too much. And, when you can, love.”
-Neil Gaiman’s 2014 New Years Eve wish

The title of this post comes from lyrics of the song ‘Just Watch Me‘ by Kate Voegele