2018 was a year. Calling it by its technical, actual name makes it feel as if it’s more real than it seems, or at least it attempts to do so, because I have no idea where all the time went and what the hell happened to it in that place. I am embodying a stereotypical fake woke teenager, or a woman in the midst of a mid-life crisis (I could, in a way, be either of the two) when I write about the fact that time slipped away from my hands and the unreal thing that is that twelve months passed already.
It feels as if celebrating the arrival of 2018 in a backyard was just yesterday or even a few hours ago; the neighbours trying out homemade fireworks and us fearing it would not end up well, a video of my best friend’s New Years Resolution (to which, by the way, she stuck) and me naively going into the biggest year of changes, possibly in love and certainly without a care in the world.
Putting together everything I’ve been through and accomplished in just twelve months puzzles me a little because everything felt so rushed and weirdly consequential in real life; it was the ordinary way in which events were meant to happen. It just weirdly felt as if they were not happening at the time, and what I’m left with now is a series of memories and faces and sometimes just… ideas.
2018 was the biggest, most important year to date, for two reasons.
The first, most apparent and superficial one, was that it was the typical year that theoretically and, well, eventually technically, marked a series of important life changes. I finished high school, graduated, moved out, started university, turned 18. Putting them in a list diminishes all these steps to make them seem insignificant, and in retrospect they do seem almost irrelevant to me now; but I remember too well the excitement and crazy mix of emotions I felt at the time. How every single one of these little steps seemed like the end of the longest journey and the beginning of an even longer one; how much I had waited for each one of them, how uncontrollably fast they came and there was nothing I could do to stop them when the realisation hit me. Even if these immediate, “official” changes flew by so fast they could have gone unnoticed, thinking about them shows how much they shaped the second category that made my year so important.
This second reason is a series of personal changes. Thinking about the Sof that entered this year and how everything, and nothing at the same time, about me changed is quite confusing. Not to say that 2018 started on a negative or toxic note; on the contrary, I was incredibly satisfied with my life at the time and even looking back and trying to be as critical as possible, I find very little to roll my eyes to or to want to embarrassedly conceal.
I keep on telling myself that no one really has their life together at 17, or 18, or even 25, and that all these years are a constant transition even if we are absolutely positive that we found ourselves every single year. I know this perfectly, but still, after 2018 happened, I am mostly convinced I found myself. Not in the close-minded way that will prevent me from changing ever again; there is a general direction, a pathway, vision, mission for myself, however you want to put it. I have a sense of where I am going with most aspects, aspirations, people around me and what I love. They’re probably all wrong, or not as clear paths as they appear in my head: but if this year gave me something is the ability to be confident in the messy, real, raw instances and yet I am ready and excited at the sole thought of my expectations and perceptions changing once again.
There is a big part of me which truly believes this change into certainty and, possibly, maturity: maybe because 2018 was the year of experiencing a lot more freedom than ever before, with the summer and then moving out to London. For the first time, my identity was independent, not just metaphorically as it had been for years: this time, I recognised a tangible possibility for my life to change and for it to be however I wanted. That thought at the back of my mind made me feel a lot more in control of myself; the confidence probably stemmed from a combination of that and my strongest desire, to be the happiest and best version of myself.
In 2018, I dare say that my life made a 180 turn and I started being confident and comfortable with myself in every way. I don’t know which one triggered the other, if it was the independence that made me confident or the confidence that created the independence, but they have been the most amazing mix of energies I’ve ever felt and shifted my perception and actions on myself and the surrounding world.
2018 was transition and stabilisation at the same time, one the product of the other; a series of decisions which were right and fitting for their time and some which weren’t really; small hoop earrings, canvas bags and fresh tattoos; attempting to find a place, a space, at home and far away, and then disrupting the concept of home all over again; falling in, out, and between love, crushes on the very raw nature of human beings or their facades; setbacks and old feelings, mundanity of days wasted away; being in a gloomy city dreaming of the beach and fantasizing about the rain while laying on the sand; new faces and throwing away the old me I’d grown into: they stand against a fellow new face.
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