Looking Back, Looking Ahead

This is a slightly different take on reflecting on the current year, whilst readying myself to embrace the new year in two weeks’ time!

Is it my pensive mood today that speaks or is it a general sense of resignation that has pervaded my being, as I grapple through the crises and the odds over the past couple of months? I clearly have no answers, but, writing my heart out and sharing my thoughts here feels cathartic, given how emotionally exhausting the year has turned out to be.

Some days, I feel a sense of numbness and a vacant feeling grips me—I feel hollow from within, as if nothing is left in me any more. Do sensitive people feel this way when nasty things happen to them? I often hide in my shell of emotions when I interact with others, lest I give away my true feelings…the world, as I know, will never be interested to know what I feel, but I’m glad I have this blog to bare my soul and give these emotions a form and substance.

2024 has been quite a year! In a nutshell, it’s been a mix of some absolutely wonderful and some outrageously bad stuff—wonderful discoveries, expeditions and travels not just with the family but also alone, as in solo travel and a terrific year at work, too, particularly leading up to the success of the conference that we hosted this year.

But, on the personal front, it has been a huge disaster — as a year, it has not only weighed me down but has also been a very difficult year for the entire family for having to navigate through an extremely volatile and toxic situation at home, with our lives having turned upside down. It took us quite some time to get our lives and our peace of mind back, but it came at a price—the casualty being our physical health. We are on the road to recovery but have come to realize once again, that healing from trauma takes a long time.

As I sum up the year, I do so through my free verse—more of an outpouring, really…and something straight from the heart!

This Year Came Like a Storm

This year, life came like a storm,
clouds heavy with questions, I had no answers to,
winds that howled louder than my courage,
and rain that poured through the endless nights, 
blurring the lines of all the places where I stood once.

I stumbled—
over mistakes, missteps and what not,
over the weight of things I had no control of.
the days felt like long, overgrown shadows,
stretching and tugging at me, ready to see me snap.

Yet, through all of this, in between all the cracks,
light found its way—
some days, it was a soft beam,
at others—just a flicker,
it held me through the pushes and pulls,
saving me from hurtling down a dozen times,
and always, a whisper now and then, inside me said, 
"Not yet—not now. Keep going."

I learned to halt and speak to my fears,
in a language they did not understand,
But I kept at it and it worked—
I learned to carve out hope from the wreckage
of broken bonds, 
to build and severe bridges with trembling hands, 
straddled between the knowns and the unknowns.

It was not easy
It was not graceful,
and it was not perfect,
but it was mine,
borne out of promises that I had made to myself, long long ago,
to stand up for the things that were mine.

And now, as the year draws its curtain,
I stand, with mixed feelings,
bruised and scarred, but standing.
grateful for the fight,
and for all the falls, that came before and after,
and for the rise.

Marching into the night,
armed with just a map drawn in shifting sands,
I brace myself for the the not-knowing,
and the dance that lies between risk and wonder.
Hopeful, doubtful, bewildered and eager,
with only my intuition leading me on,
I'm setting off—
Another road it will be,
and another journey, yet again—
into the unknown!