Mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, I stumbled upon a post that read January tastes like the remains of last year. A seemingly inconspicuous sentence. Tiny, short. Not much to it, right? Yet it kept tugging at me, for reasons unknown to me, reasons that continue to evade me even as I write this. Is it because this January is particularly heavy? Or because it brought with it changes so unfathomable, that last year seems like an entirely different timeline, lived by someone else? 

In walked a person who was going to change the course of my January immeasurably and didn’t even know it, while I bid goodbye to someone I assumed would be a permanent fixture. Perhaps taken for granted, yet the loss hasn’t hit. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. A January to remember. Maybe this is the time to perform autopsies on conversations long gone, even though it won’t bring back what slipped through my fingers. Maybe I’ll keep waiting for the regret to arrive, currently wallowing in the sorrow of its absence — because what does that say about me? Cold, emotionless, unfeeling? 

From searching for invisible strings to intentionally severing any connection, the December to January pipeline has been an eventful one. Everyone keeps walking, blurring past, and I’m at a standstill, waiting for the rest of my life to finally finally begin. Will it now? 

The door is locked from the inside but I can’t find it in me to open it. Who will I find on the other side? What if the next version of me waiting outside is someone I come to hate? The first memory I have is one involving my sister. I have always been an older sister. I always will be. Maybe that’s something to rely on — the surety of knowing this cannot be snatched away from me, though all else is up for grabs. 

With every piece of myself given to a person, I get larger pieces back: if the goodbye hurts, you know you’ve spent the time well. This January, I took Gracie’s words to heart — no chance I’d waste my 20s on random men, not one of them is cooler than all my friends. The village is there, if only I’d think to ask. Will I? Maybe this is the January I learn to. 

A shadow of December, Januaries are metaphors for new beginnings, restarts. I used to laugh, refusing to make resolutions. If anyone truly wanted to change, they’d do it, instead of waiting for a day that’s been idolized for their convenience — easier to tell yourself you’ll start doing things differently once the New Year arrives, rather than risking discomfort immediately. 

Now that the discomfort is knocking on my door, do I run? I could. Itching to invite it in, though, ask it to stay until it turns to comfort once again. Funny how things work out — is this the end of my bildungsroman, or is this the commencement? Everything that I once thought was off the table is now on it, overflowing, more than I know what to do with. Do I take everything to be a sign? 

Like finding out someone posted something tennis-related on my birthday, two years before we met. That has to be a sign, right? Right? Or that every single friend I seem to make here lives in the same 5km radius back home and we never met. Or that leaving this one person behind forced me to reach out to so many I lost touch with. So it was for the best, right? Or am I reading too much into all of it, desperately searching for meaning in meaningless coincidences just because I want to?

So many questions, no one to answer them but time. My January tastes nothing like the remains of the previous year. My January is completely unprecedented, untouched, unimagined. Tomorrow I’ll look back at this and cry at how horrible the writing is, but if it brings a shred of comfort today, I guess I’ll write it, whether anyone reads it or not. This January, I’ll finally unlock the door and step outside, because the comfort has already been lost. What more is there to lose?