I usually love being melodramatic on my year-end review posts. So this year for a change, I’ll try and write something fun and lighthearted, because the world is already a dumpster fire. Like telling you how one time this year, while lying on the floor crying to sad music, I choked on my own tears.
Other notable places I’ve cried at this year are as follows: in my car on my way to Lake Simcoe, on the rocks at the Port Union waterfront, in the lake at Wasaga Beach. Yes, I was a public nuisance this year.
When I wasn’t crying, I was calling the New Yorker about the free tote they owed me after I paid $6 for a subscription just for the special 95th anniversary tote. Took me half a year to get it, but it wasn’t even the right tote. It also took me driving to the library on five separate occasions to finally return a book. If not that, I was doing song challenges on my IG story, annoying everybody I know, or making spreadsheets for fun.
Outside of spreadsheets, I kept myself occupied with looking for my first-ever tattoo inspiration. Ideas I have toyed with include lemons, willow leaves, a crayfish, a heart, a tarot card with a whisk on it, and a can opener. I’m very serious about the can opener.
Things I tried and got reacquainted with this year include running, guitar, and writing songs. I wrote lyrics to a trap beat where I opened it by rhyming “eye to eye” with “just a disguise.” Also made a 2-minute demo of a song sung with only 3 notes on the ukulele. We’re basically in the makings of the next Taylor Swift, who was my top artist of 2020 at 145 hours of listening time, followed closely by Lauv at 22 hours.
To replace my hobby of going to the mall and especially going to Winners to sniff candles, I went on long drives and frequented lakes and forests. Highlights include catching a double rainbow, eating kimbap at Lake Huron, almost leaping into Lake Simcoe at night by mistake, and making miso soup in a dark forest parking lot.
And finally, after six months of buying and testing perfume, hoping each one would transform me into the woman I want to be but only to return it, I landed on a scent I kept. Speaking of perfume, I’m pretty sure I found my soulmate in one of the Fragrantica reviews I read. She loves my favourite perfume, lives in Amsterdam and her name is Monica, same as the name of a cow I drew for my greeting cards that I am now selling.
There you have it. My life absolutely felt like a sitcom this year. I cried and laughed and learned that apparently, I’m much more than just sad or lazy or brooding or cold-hearted like I had believed myself to be for so long.
I am not a sad girl. I am just a human who is sometimes sad, sometimes exhilarated. Sometimes lazy, sometimes very hard-working. I brood but I also dream. And after years of thinking I’m cold-hearted, I am learning that I am very capable of love.
Those negative adjectives had caged me in like an itchy sweater that I had grown to tolerate and accept. But not anymore. We’re only wearing soft things from now on. In 2021, we’re going to unravel that sweater and turn it into a dish rag. And I’ll do it with all the love and warmth I can summon out of my tired, aching body.
I only hope I won’t choke on my damn tears in the process. But knowing me, I just might.