27/12/2024
I keep waiting for the next year to be gentler, as if crossing into January will somehow wash away everything that feels heavy now. I convince myself that maybe if I just hold on a little longer, I’ll finally step into a year that loves me back — one that doesn’t ask for so much or leave me feeling so small.
But the truth is, I’ve been saying that for years. I’ve whispered to myself, “Next year will be better,” like some kind of prayer I’m too scared to admit is really just a plea. It’s easier to place hope in a future that hasn’t arrived than to accept the weight of the present.
I sit and wait for softness, for happiness, for the kind of peace that feels like sunlight on my skin. I wait, and I wait, and I wait.
But somewhere along the way, I stopped noticing the little moments that have already been trying to hold me up.
I stopped noticing the way my friend stays on the phone a little longer because maybe they can hear the exhaustion I refuse to talk about. I didn’t realize how often love shows up when someone says, “Message me when you get home,” even if the drive isn’t far.
I forgot that sometimes softness isn’t grand or obvious. It doesn’t always crash into your life like a big event that suddenly makes sense of everything. Sometimes, it’s in the way people stay, in the way someone remembers your coffee order or sends you a song because it reminded them of you.
I keep telling myself that next year will bring something new, something easier. But maybe I’ve been asking the wrong question.
Maybe it’s not about next year. Maybe it’s about now. I just have to open my eyes and appreciate every blessing that i have.
Because the truth is, the love i am always hoping has already been showing up for me, just not in the ways I expected. It’s been tucked into the spaces I overlook — like how my mom still calls to ask if I’ve eaten, or how my friend insists I take the last piece of their favorite food even when i say that i am full.
It’s in the simple way people say, “Text me when you get home,” or how they laugh at my bad jokes just because they know I need to feel lighter, even if only for a moment.
I don’t need to keep waiting for a softer year. I just need to open my eyes to the fact that softness is already here — in the people I love, in the way the sky shifts colors at dusk, in the small mercies that go unnoticed until I remind myself to look for them.
Next year isn’t some distant land where everything falls into place. It’s now. It’s today.
And maybe, just maybe, I don’t need the future to save me. I just need to remember that there are pieces of joy hidden in this moment, even if they’re simple or unnoticed. even if they don’t look the way I thought they would.
Maybe the softness I’ve been begging for was in today all along—I just had to stop and appreciate all kinds of blessing that has been around me.