2022: The year of love, loss and love lost.
2022 was the year of love, loss and love lost.
I’m gifted with a mind that works overtime where I relive the same experience at least thirteen times until my mind is exhausted. I catch myself doing it again as we drew the curtains close on the year 2022.
2022 was the year of healing and compensating for the two years robbed by a virus that shifted our paradigms and altered our realities, pushing us to redefine what going back to normal meant.
Starting the year with a promise to be present in my environment and absorb what I have around me, I paid extra attention to those I love. I saw my grandmum several years after Covid without realising I was saying my last goodbyes. She was home to welcome me from my time at university with the same love, richness, and admiration she showed when I was her 5-year-old granddaughter. I used to patiently sit beside her while we watched television dramas every evening, and she sliced fresh apples and fed them to me bite by bite with the gentleness only a grandmum like her could have. Yet, despite her growing older and tired after the life she had lived, she still sweetly sang to me endearingly calling me “nani ki rani”, which translates to ‘grandmom’s queen’. A few months later, she was no more.
You realise, the grief is so heavy to surmount, it’s one of those things you would never comprehend unless you go through it. This loss felt as if I sat across a table with an angry dealer and he had dealt me all the wrong cards. The cards in which he ensured I lost her. Yet, in the act of losing her, as a parting gift, she brought our family so much closer together with the strength to deal with our greatest loss of the year and perhaps our lives as we’ve known it to be.
2022 was also the year of establishing boundaries. It was the year of finding my way back to myself and taking leaps towards a future I’d be proud of. It was the year I became disciplined and found my balance. They want you to have it all so young. With the privilege some of us are granted, it’s the bare minimum. As I turn 20, The validation in acknowledging the platform given to me and finding a professional path I love was an awakening I needed to embark on. In retrospect, it was also a year for finding love for travel. Freedom diminishes as we get older yet with the lack of responsibilities set on me, I revelled in the exhilaration found at university to be able to pack a suitcase every weekend and travel to a city unknown to me and spend weekends with friends from home. Although unsettling to consider that we may never live in the same cities again was overwhelming, those hazy evenings of love, conversation and travel formed experiences that I intend to preserve forever.
Upon assessing my emotional balance sheet for 2022, it was the year of lost friendships and love, which simultaneously meant it was the year of enormous growth. It was a year that genuinely challenged every fraction of my perception of my own identity. It raised a lot of questions, the who, where, when, and what’s on everything. It was a year of contrasting identities. Every post or story I made on social media gave the impression that I had accomplished something or had proven to the world that I was fine. They made up for all the tough emotional or hard conversations with friends and love I thought would last me a lifetime. The endless loop of contact we solidified over the pandemic ended as life changed with our newfound radical freedoms where as soon as the gun went off, everyone sprinted as young adults in different directions.
We discovered ourselves in the year of heartache, lessons learned, and love lost to the outside world. Personal growth is authentically steered in a path that fills you with love, not drains you, by learning one's boundaries, determining how far you can bend before you snap for friends, drawing the line, and making true connections that don't foster destructive environments.
So, in 2023, I’m going to hold onto my loved family and friends a little tighter, while also taking better care of myself. The loss of what no longer serves me will be embraced, not lamented. As for the love lost, one that departs was never one that was going to stay.
​
​
We will become whole again, grow and love deeper.
I’m excited for you, 2023 <3
​
​
​
​
​
​
​