Resolution

Change is hard. It’s hard to shake off the comforts of complacency, hard to take risks, hard to get hurt. It’s hard to fail. To fail and then to keep trying and to fail again and maybe eventually succeed a little bit and fail again and then… It’s hard to know we have limited time, limited abilities. It’s hard to compromise. Hard to try.

But, if I’m really honest, it’s hard because there are not easy answers. If change was as simple as saying “I want to be different,” we would do it. We would change in a heartbeat. We wouldn’t even need to “change,” we would just… be.

But change is hard because in the face of every new direction is a swarm of ambivalence. Part of me wants to message that cute girl on OKC. But part of me is afraid of what will happen if she doesn’t reply. If none of them reply. Worried about what it will say about me, worried about what it means for my life. And then, part of me is afraid she’ll actually respond back! What unique brand of horrors that would be. She might like me. I might like her. We might… god, I don’t even know.

So it is with yoga (and awkwardly flailing about in a room filled with limber angels). And meetups (EVERYBODY IS A PERSON AND I’M A ROBOT). And jobs (you want me to do WHAT for HOW LONG with WHOSE TAX DOLLARS?!).

It’s fear, sure. Of failure. Of success. Of the incredibly stilted pain in between. Of actually trying and worrying about what you might find when you do. Of not being ready, of never being ready. Of everything. It’s the accumulated sadness of decades of disappointment. It’s anger and hurt you buried so deep you hoped it would never rise again, only to find that it’s right there in the way. New faces on ancient monsters born again.

***

But there’s another side, too. This past week, I returned to Knoxville for Christmas. And while I was there, I took a little bit to visit my old elementary school. I walked around the fields we played in, the space where the Playground That Probably Should Have Killed Us once stood. I saw old classrooms, old ball courts. Imagined myself back there, 20 years ago.

And the thing is, it was so different than I remembered. The field where we ran the mile, which had seemed so daunting then, was now so *small*. The huge play spaces we ran in were cramped. The kickball court was half a parking lot. I now noticed the neighborhood it was built in. I remembered safety patrol and friends I’d forgotten and what felt like agonizing waits to be dropped off in the morning which couldn’t have been more than minutes now. I climbed a fence that would have been a wall.

And I did the same with my middle school and high school and college.

I even visited my dad, for the first time in years. And I was still scared. And I was still upset. But I wasn’t as scared. And he wasn’t as bad. And he said some nice, sympathetic things about me. How I wasn’t a disappointment. How he appreciated the choices I’d made. I got to see my old room. And how small it now was. I found my old stuffed animals. Even left a few behind, to keep the place safe.

And I kept on seeing how things were different. How I wasn’t a child anymore. How the people and situations I was in weren’t as I remembered them. How I was bigger, the world was smaller, life less mean. How I could make choices now I could never dream of then.

And none of that is to say that it was great. I still had some distinct periods of wanting to go back to Seattle and swim and swim into Lake Washington until the shore was a dream and I could swim no more.

But it was new. And different. And hinted at a world of possibility terrifying and so so beautiful. That maybe failure wasn’t as bad as I remembered it. Maybe success wasn’t either. Maybe love and touch could be endured. Could be lost and still found again. Maybe I was not so powerless, so broken. Maybe none of us are.

So when I think of New Years and times for new beginnings, I think not of willpower and discipline, but of change. Of reframing the old, envisioning the new. Of persistence while faltering. Of doing things different because I want to. And letting that be my guide.

Maybe all that will mean is going to yoga for a few weeks before I get so self-conscious I can’t stand it. Or it’ll mean messaging two or three people on OKC before disabling my account again and idly wondering “Hmm, what *is* X up to?....” for another year. But maybe it’ll mean more. And many other new things too. And maybe no matter how any of those things go, it’ll be ok. Who knows? Maybe it’ll mean picking myself up from disappointment and trying again. And again and again and again.

At least til 2019. ;)