2023 was the year I learned how to cry. In no particular order: I lost my job, sunk into an abysmal depression, my husband and I ended our marriage, sold our dream home that we’d purchased only a year earlier, I developed a new resentment for a city I’d moved to in order to fall back in love with, had some difficult realizations about my relationship with my family *INHALE* and experienced a number of other smaller, consistent heartbreaks all along the way. I’m not at all someone who subscribes to the idea that everything happens for a reason, so throughout much of this I found myself regrouping in real time, grasping for firm ground to stand on in the falling debris around me. I learned a lot about community this year and how necessary it is for survival, so I share what I share here for the collective benefit of me and whoever this reaches — but more than anything I had to write these things down because I don’t ever want to go through this shit again.
At the top of last year I wrote to myself that I wanted to experience radical happiness. I didn’t know what that looked like, but I knew needed some movement from where I was. I want to tell you how terrifying it is to have so many foundational parts of your life stripped down, just to reveal how far away you are from the things you really want. I say that because some days, my mama and therapist can confirm, all I had was hope by sheer force of will, and the reassurance Today Me is sending back, so that Me-From-6months-Ago can feel like he’s going to be okay.
Earlier, I’d started to see how over the course of the (then) 17 years my partner and I had been in each other’s lives, and throughout all of the phases of me, that relationship saw less of who I felt I really wanted to be. And with each passing year I felt greater and greater distance between myself and the markers of things I thought made me, ME. These weren’t even things he’d asked me to give up, but if you’re not careful you’ll quietly forfeit in the name of peace and collaboration (or for no reason at all!) things in a relationship that are the very qualities that make you the person people want to fall in love with. We recognized that when we realized we weren’t comfortable sharing certain interests; or because of time spent, holding an idea of each other above the reality of who we actually were. So much so that it became hard to expect, or allow each other to act any differently than we’d known the other to, and being uncomfortable or unsure when that inevitably happened. I saw myself do this, and I felt it when it happened to me. Also, and this would show up in relationships that evolved later in the year, my desire for other people to find happiness in me would often supersede what I was personally comfortable with, and instead of driving toward a mutual satisfaction, the places where my needs were met went empty and I was full of disappointment.
For the family bit, I grew up in love with mine. My cousins were my first siblings, my aunts and uncles were active and involved. Growing up laughing and genuinely feeling held by people related to me has been something I’ve been proud of and held onto for a really long time as a Black gay kid raised in the south. But as I’ve gotten older, as much as I wasn’t paying attention, time and distance did to us what it does to everyone. My father died and to my surprise that made things even more difficult. A lot of the things I’m writing about will be a first-notice for some of the people who used to carry me to bed, or stayed up with me listening to “grown folks talking” in the summer when we should’ve been asleep.
And now I had my own “grown folks problems”, things I’d never experienced. They were also things I didn’t immediately know how to talk about, let alone deal with, so when a close friend casually mentioned (and other friends agreed) “Oh yeah, I mean we usually talk to you about stuff, but I think we all just kinda accepted that you don’t open up…” it ROCKED me. I hadn’t realized I hadn’t been letting my friends in, and so effectively that it’d changed the shape of our relationship. That’s not the friend I wanted to be! All these people I loved, and I mean genuinely loved, I hadn’t trusted them to stand in for me in the ways they’d allowed me to stand in for them. Looking at things now, it makes complete sense that the minute I started sharing out loud with them, it’d be my own voice I got back to me asking myself why I was missing from all the “life doing” I’d done. And things fell apart.
In the wake of us separating, I was compartmentalizing so many different things, to varying degrees of success. My shame, grief and loneliness from our marriage lived in one room. The white-knuckling it took to be intentionally vulnerable with close friends while I was already so raw lived in another room. And in another room still, I was trying my best to be transparent about what was in those other rooms, while also not letting it spill too much into giving someone new an experience of me that our budding relationship called for, deserved. I don’t think it surprises anyone that I didn’t handle these transitions as well as I thought I was lol. I’ll share more about that at some later point, I’m sure, but what I’ve been doing since is cleaning up messes. Ones I’ve made, others I’ve allowed. And trying to move forward in some radically different ways that find the center of my joy in the only place my joy should be. I’ve been writing more, I’ve been resting more, I’ve been saying “no” more, and I’ve been working at being the active friend I’d thought I was being for so long.
The hardest lesson I had to learn at 35 about hurt, anger and disappointment was how to keep my head clear so my mind could get the answers my heart needed. At 36 years old today, I’m 3 years away from middle age for Black American men and that’s sobering as fuck. So from here on out I only want to be all of me, wherever I am. I only want to be told “I love you” by people who are strong enough to carry the weight of what that requires of them, even if I’m not around. And I want to make the people I love the happiest I can without sacrificing parts of myself to do it.
I’ll always remember the shadows of the deepest pits I lived in this year. Recognizing their shapes is how I keep them out of my future. But fear isn’t the only motivator, 2023 had a few smiles too. For now, I’m so thankful to not be losing an irreplaceable, (soon-to-be!) 18-year relationship. Instead, it’s transitioning and evolving into something new. That’s life and that’s beautiful too. I let myself fall this year (didn’t have a choice) and Brandon, Bobby, and Shar (and so many others from far away) showed up as my chosen family and loved me back onto my feet. I’m also keeping myself open for changes that may still happen in my birth family, I’ve felt it already. In a new and very different relationship, I’ve been able to explore and expand and learn in ways that are exciting, and that set it apart as its own brand of unique and fulfilling. For myself, I’ve never been clearer about what it is I want to be and do, and how I want to feel about it in my life. So with the start of this new year we’re refined from the years that ask questions, and walk boldly, expectant and prepared, into the ones that answer them. And most importantly, 36 is starting off feeling just…more me.
