As incredible as it sounds, today is the last day of 2018.
I know, right? Crazy. It seems like the older we get, the faster time flies. Ten years ago, I never would have even thought of myself as a 31-year-old living this insanely busy and anxiety-filled life. Then again, when I try to conjure up the image of myself in the future--as a 41-year-old woman--I can't come up with anything. Just fog.
But here we are. I feel as if I just wrote that depressing-ass letter to myself about 2017. But it's been a whole 365 days. An entire 365 days of this roller-coaster of a life.
I've been thinking a lot about what I want to write on here, if I should continue the tradition of remember all the ways the year has brought me to my knees. Strangely enough (or perhaps, some would say, by the grace of God), I can't find the words to articulate the pain this year has pummeled on me. In fact, I keep racking my brains for a single recollection--nay, a wisp of a recollection-- of the things that kept me up at night, the moments that eroded my cheeks with streams of tears. I know the suffering was acute, but I can't, for the life of me, remember why. All that remains is the soreness.
I don't know that this is good news. I don't know if my coping mechanisms have taken over my memory. I don't know if I'm better off than I was a year ago. What I do know is that, just a week or so ago, I was talking to some friends who were eagerly complaining about the crosses 2018 presented to them, and that I found myself exclaiming--to the disbelief of everyone, including myself--that 2018 was a pretty great year.
And that's the thing, reader. Looking back on this year I only find the ghost of despair being quietly exorcised by the immensity of white.
I don't know if you've ever experience anything like this, reader. White everywhere. Below you, above you, all around you. An all-encompassing whiteness that is peaceful and overwhelmingly terrifying. Terrifying because you are completely isolated from humanity, and, it feels, even isolated from the world itself. I knew I was standing up. I could feel the pull of gravity. Yet the whiteness made it seem like I was floating in a sea of nothingness. I could not make out anything ahead of me, and every time I yelled, all I heard was the opposite of an echo, like my voice was being swallowed by the whiteness. I stood there for a long time, as the snow fell down and soaked through my clothes. I felt the weight of the thin atmosphere. I felt the lightness of total solitude. It was, I believe, like being alone with God, in a very physical-mental-metaphorical-metaphysical-psychological kind of way.
You're probably wondering what pills I'm on? Here's where I was:
That is the Gornergrat observation deck in the Swiss Alps, and that famous peak behind it is the Matterhorn. The spot where I was standing is exactly where this picture was taken. Except, when I was there, it was not nearly as clear a day as this. It was more like...
Yes, that is a horrible picture. That's what the road looked like. I don't have any photographs from the spot itself because...well, it wasn't a time for pictures. It was a time for nervous laughter. A time for screaming into the void. A time for singing Salve Regina. A time for breathing in cold air and violently coughing it out. A time to just be.
This past summer, as I stood at the highest point of the Gornergrat, I did not wonder what was my purpose in life, or what had I accomplished during these 31 years, or what I would do with my future. I just stood there, wet and cold, and laughed at the revelation that it is all soooooo incredibly small and insignificant in comparison with all that monumental whiteness. The plans, the worries, the anxieties, the goals, the failures, the triumphs, the heartbreaks. My own self. So little in comparison to the enormity of that whiteness.
Now, mind you, reader, I've chosen my words carefully. Small and insignificant. Not unimportant. Not meaningless. Braving the snowstorm, I planted myself at the highest point of Gornergrat and faced that intimidating nothingness. The nothingness that so often has plagued my heart, my mind, and my soul with fear. The thing I'm most terrified of. Having nothing. Doing nothing. Leaving nothing. Loving nothing.
There I was. like David against Samson, facing it with an accelerated heartbeat and weak knees (literally). But, unlike David, I found that I didn't need to fight it. It was overwhelming. But it was not devastating. It was gentle and cleansing. It was, I think, something similar to what the prophet, at the top of the mountain, must have felt when he found God in the breeze, not the fire or the storm.
That is my most vivid image of 2018. It isn't painful, and it isn't exhilarating. It just is. And once I mull over it, and really ponder it, and set it aside, all the memories that come after it are quite rosy: a sunset over the Pacific Ocean as I stroke the surgery wounds on my leg; the feeling of hot tears rolling down my cheeks as I see the fireworks over Cinderella's Castle; the ache in my stomach after a fit of laughter with my baby sister as we drive through Florida; the sheer joy of holding not one, not two, but my three nephews (Benny Boo, Damiaan, and Lil Red) in my arms; the empowerment felt the first day not using my crutches; the salty taste of my sweat after a session of physical therapy; the love flooding my heart as I held my best friend one last time before she entered the convent; the utter relief when seeing the final grades of my first-college-semester-after-four-years; the soreness of broken bone and tissue that ushered a new wave of hope after surgery. These are the snapshots I see when I look at 2018. Or, at any rate, these are the ones I'm choosing to see this time. I hope, dear reader, that you stick around so that I can unfold each one of those snapshots in front of your eyes one day. Hopefully in the near future. I really do need to write more, eh?
In short, I hope you are able to find the beautiful snapshots of your own 2018, reader. May you take them up in your arms and hold them close to you. Happy New Year.
