Our End Of Year Reflections <3
2020 is coming to a close — a year of highs and lows, beginnings and endings, shifts and stagnation. This year was defined by isolation and self-confrontation for most of us. Weeks spent out of routine, with the privilege of physical freedom taken away from us. There’s no doubt that 2020 is a turning point in history, individually and collectively.
Affirmations;
I trust that the right path will reveal itself with love & ease.
I trust the signals that my body & the Cosmos give me.
I remember taking my dog down to Flinders Beach in mid-March before everything went haywire. I was feeling better after a tumultuous 2019, I’d started a new job a few months back and my last semester of Uni had begun. Feeling okay was a new and welcomed feeling.
I don’t think I have to say much more about what came next, studying from home, having stressed-induced nightmares/dreams, only leaving the house once a day, staring into the abyss. I counted myself lucky to live in a place where I had a lot of space around me and I didn’t feel trapped. In the later months, I would sit around the fire next to the dam and counted myself even more lucky that I had nature around me. Nature became a saviour for me. Nature is a cure and a balm to the things that go haywire in life, and this year only solidified this for me.
Sunflowers are currently sitting on my desk from my friend Gee. I count my blessings when I see them. They remind me that even though this year was hard, the people in my life that I was meant to be close with have showed up for me and brightened my day. It’s the simple lessons that have guided me this year. One of them is to listen to people’s actions more so than their words. While words are nice, oftentimes they are hollow when their actions don’t match. Sunflowers aren’t necessary (although very nice), but friends who really care are.
I learnt that boundary setting is key for me to live a happy and energised life. For so long, I bent to everyone’s needs. This year I learnt how to say ‘no’, but also how to express when something someone did had hurt me. I decided that if someone was truly my friend, they’d want to know if I was upset. If I didn’t feel comfortable expressing my feelings, perhaps they weren’t really my friend. I learnt that I didn’t have to make myself available to everyone, reply to every text, and let people into my life that didn’t deserve to be there. Your energy is precious, protect it. You are still a kind person even when you refuse to engage. This only leaves more time and energy for you to invest in the right people.
Recently, I was sitting on my friend Kayla’s couch in Chelsea as we watched Little Women together. We were both engrossed, content with the silence. Kayla is a friend I deeply admire. She is loyal to a fault, kind, supports her friends and has a strong belief that she can do anything in her life. An ED nurse and a brilliant confidante, she’s moving interstate. Two things are true: I will miss her, and I know she is doing the right thing by her. On the way home from her house, I felt happy and energised. I didn’t feel like my energy had been depleted. Kayla leaves people better than she found them.
My 2021 goal is to live life a little bit more like Kayla.
— Bridey Ellis (@brideyisobel)
Journal Prompts;
What were your intentions for 2020? How did the year play out in terms of these expectations?
Have you allowed yourself time/space to process any recent changes?
What is your intention for 2021? First in one word (e.g. presence), and then in longer form.
What is your most fond memory from this year? Now dive deeper — what were you doing, who was there, how can you recreate this more often?
What are the three most important lessons you have learnt this year?
Who are the people you value most in your life (& why)?
Who are the people you need to set more boundaries with (& why)?
Held at the border and the water was too wild to remind me of you. The officer had a browned face, thick eye-brows. He said, next time you won’t get somebody as nice as me. It’s funny how we are so dependent upon our phones, how they wouldn’t take anything other than the depths of data encrypted on that device as truth.
I know that I am physically in the scene but at the same time I feel so distant, so removed from everything. Like my entire life is on the cusp of being an out-of-body experience. Eyes need to cry and hair needs to dry after swimming in the rock-pools. The butterflies pass close but not close enough and my hand is nothing but a silhouette on the next page.
The year is spinning away from me too soon. My world is red when mediated by the screen, all fire and desire, but no outlet to expend myself through. There is a month’s worth of sand in my sheets, the scent of beer and deflated expectations in the air around me. My skin is itchy, feet are itchy, heart is itchy for anything to be reciprocated. The birds flit past me as I run & breast-stroking legs draw nearer as I swim. This time — girl swallows Universe, just before Universe swallows girl. Heathen, plum lipstick, breathing into my lungs. The world is the back of her Toyota Corolla, kitted out in plastic and plasterboard, scarcely enough room to stretch legs out but we make do. The sun is amber over the head-land as our feet leave tales untold on the shore.
