I moved in with my boyfriend (which, let me assure you, was one big slightly harrowing but hugely exciting step) and got a little taste of unemployment (I don’t care very much for it, I’ll own). I acquired debt (plenty of it, which I am slowly struggling away from) and found myself working for one of history’s oldest hierarchies (which has not come without its own challenges and pitfalls). I’ve been keeping company with doubt and stress, who are not very personable but tenacious beyond, sometimes, my capacity to deal with.
I’ve also helped found a drinking club (which has helped inject a ton of new people into my life) and seen one of my favourite bands (effortlessly epic) and grown a whole lot into this idea that I’ve finally become an adult. I’ve thrown a few awesome parties (seriously though, memes) and began to set my ideas, beliefs and principles down in stone, things that have morphed from what family and friends have taught to a core that is truly my own. Whilst I have always been my own person, it’s odd to think that this year alone, I began to truly feel like I belong to myself, just me, and nobody else.
2012 was that year for me. I moved out of my parent’s house two years ago and this year is the first time I’ve felt like my own, independent adult. Grown-up. With responsibilities and deadlines, with dreams that should feel much closer, and the hard work to make them so. With taxes. And a life (a whole big one that still astonishes me sometimes) and all the big and small decisions that comes with that. What I’m not sure is whether that’s a good or a bad thing - I suppose I’ll just have to spend the next year figuring that out.
This has all taken place in a world that spent the year changing. And also not. This year has seen the flexibility and rigidity that makes up society, has shown us that all is not as perfect as we would like to think and reminded us that change, more than most things, takes time, even if it happens overnight. I have been reminded that deep in its heart, South Africa is still fragile, and hurt and dangerously close to breaking. Which speaks to a much larger fragility, felt by people all over the world, that we’re teetering on the edge and it would just take one more thing to send us tumbling over into disaster.
At the same time, there are incredible things happening in the world. I think hope sits alive and well in the hearts of some. Of many. I think there is a powerful capacity in society to take a long hard look at itself and try to do something about the little dips and crannies where the flaws hide. I think, to our credit, society is aware of its evils and is doing its utmost to try and address them. And I know, for a certainty, that we won’t quite tip over the edge yet. It’s been a reactive year for the world, in which things happen, whether bad or good and we respond as a whole. It’s taught us a whole lot and perhaps made us more ready to take a proactive stance in happenings.
2012 has effectively shown me the good and the bad of things. It hasn’t necessarily been in equal amounts, but its impact has nevertheless been the same on both sides. It’s been a learning year for me, about a whole lot of things. Somehow, it’s been a year I can chalk up to experience, if nothing else. I’m a mite tougher and stronger. And hopefully I can take all the lessons learned this year, and use all the little ways I’ve changed, to make 2013 the kind of year that makes all the struggles from the year before completely worth it.
Also, the world didn’t end. I was quite relieved about that.
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