#I am in rural Sweden and I am also drunk

[justfriendsbestthings]

My favourite part about instagram is when old friends from the home country reply to your stories about how you’re living the dream life now because obviously they don’t know you’re crying every other day about your horrible job you spend ~45 hours a week on :)

[katiebruce]

adieu, 2019.

Here we are at the beginning of not only a new year, but a new decade. This past year went by so quickly (why are they always going by so much faster? Is this the true curse of aging?) that sometimes I had to hold my breath in an attempt to secure a quick moment for myself amidst it all. That is, I’m not trying to complain, nor say that 2019 wasn’t so incredibly fantastic to me; I digress. It’s just that I’m finding that the older that I get, the more challenging it becomes to live the life I want to live and still have time for myself at the close of the day, let alone to sit down and write about it. I am still deep in the throes of my Saturn Return, and so I know this is to be expected—and again, I don’t wish to complain about how bountiful my life was the past year. I simply state this in a moment of honest reflection, in hopes that in recapping my year, I can learn from it and make the new year ahead of me adopt a pace that isn’t so exhausting and altogether overwhelming. (It’s ironic that I wrote this pledge to myself a full week ago and have just now found the time to sit down and finish this silly, old little tradition I have for myself).

So, here it is, 2019. A final dance for you and I:

It started in the dark, with very loud soul music. My first NYE with a guaranteed kiss—my sweet prince Taylor. A New Year’s Day hangover dinner with some of the greatest at Parson’s, aka negroni slushies and fried chicken heaven.

My sister and Mom visited; the annual trip. Except this year something was different—Kelly’s hand was adorned with a newly acquired diamond weight. The engagement excitement had officially begun, and our usual visit of shopping, eating, drinking and comedy was suddenly buzzing with the anticipation of a wedding lurking somewhere around the new year’s corner.

I braced for the transition into my thirties—and the week it came couldn’t have been any sweeter. I’d just begun my seventh year as a flight attendant and was ready for a celebration of my twenties, and the journey they had taken me on. Taylor took me out for sushi and Shakespeare and we ended up sitting by the fire at a bar near my apartment when the clock struck midnight, and my twenties officially ended. The next day brought with it the promise of my best friend, Kris, and to my surprise, my best friend Nicole—a surprise trip that Lauren, Taylor, Kris and she had been in cahoots about without my knowledge. I returned home from target (of course) to a decorated apartment, loads of tears, and a hug so loving only your best friend could be the one giving it to you.

We played games, drank, ate, and stressed (something somewhat new to me, at least on my birthday) about the weekend’s plans ahead of us.

What was supposed to be a big night out, ended with me too drunk to finish a single drink at the bar. An impromptu house party and some drugs of choice (as well as the now famous Mom’s Whiteclaw—a combination of vodka and whiteclaw) saw me panicking in the bar bathroom and pulling an Irish exit. Feeling overwhelmed by social obligations, as well as celebrations where I am the center of attention, was new to me—I’d always loved it. But with the start of a new decade of my life, and the new chapter that came along with it, I realized that perhaps this wasn’t the person I was anymore, and instead of making myself feel guilty about it, I should perhaps try and embrace it, and learn from my experience instead.

This was the first of many changes within me that occurred in 2019.

Like, for example, when I fell out of love with eyeliner. Silly as it may sound, my densely winged look had become my signature style for so many years and suddenly it had started to feel more like a costume than a form of honest self-expression. Then it was my hair, my style—an identity crisis in the finest of forms—and still, at the close of this year I find myself uncertain of where I define myself stylistically—a minor problem, all things considered—but the uncertainty that comes along with it makes me lack my sense of direction, my sense of self, and my sense of expression. How can I still not know who I am, and who I want to be? How can it be possible to wake up one day, and suddenly feel so entirely disconnected to yourself, and the life you have so carefully curated for yourself—so separate from your desires, aspirations, and goals? What happens to a person that causes this change to occur so seamlessly? And do we all experience it? How are we supposed to find the time to cope?

I felt plagued by this question and still do. Just because a year ends, doesn’t mean everything has a specific ending. Correct punctation. Symmetrical narrative. Cohesive closure.

So it goes.

Spring came and along with it, Taylor’s first trip to Europe: Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. We drank beer, ate sweets, and visited some of the finest bars Europe has to offer (seriously—Prague has the best nightlife ever. I cannot wait to return and be haunted again by a glorious bartender who changes into the get up of a tarot card-bearing alchemist when a certain drink is ordered).

Our feet hurt and our jetlagged worsened but we were both eager with wanderlust, drunk on the idea that the interview Taylor had had the day before we left might just be the final one he went on, the ending to our nearly year-length long-distance woes, and the start of a new future together residing in the same city again, the stress of visitation no longer so troubling.

Turns out, it was.

A few weeks later, I took a trip to Maui on a whim. I spent the weekend at the beach, eating pineapples and drinking craft beer. I saw the oldest tree in the nation and felt deeply rooted in this new person I was becoming—am becoming—and felt inspired by her many offspring and how they’d all taken root themselves, baring their own identities, spawning off of one nucleus, off one single stump. I felt I was beginning to spawn, myself, and felt comforted in the seemingless infinite possibilities I would have to re-root, myself, in my own lifetime.

May came and I watched as my Kristopher turned thirty, his own new journey beginning, and celebrated sweetly amongst friends in his new apartment in Denver.

Taylor and I flew to Sweden on a whim—through London, of course—and spent an entire week with the flu falling in love with Stockholm… even though over-the-counter cold medicines are illegal country-wide. Taurus season being what it is, we argued, didn’t sleep, and flew home feeling worse than we had when we arrived. But, despite all that it didn’t spoil our trip. Instead it made us both realize that there are things worth fighting for in life, and that our relationship was one of them—we truly fought for it on that trip, and we both threw punches only to immediately tend to each others wounds, embarrassed we’d been so bold as to injure one another in the first place. I felt a sense of peace in this discovery; a sense of honesty that isn’t always pleasant but is, regardless, helpful.

It’s also worth noting that I ate the best veggie lasagna ever created and drank loads of loads of Meade—seriously—Sweden is the fucking coolest.

Summer came and went, and with the temperature hardly rising above eighty degrees in the city, I felt relieved. I helped Taylor move cross-country over the weekend of the Fourth of July and felt both excited and scared about our new adventure in the same city—hoping he’d love it but allowing him room to adjust and make his own judgements, without my influence.

We decorated his apartment, dealt with a lot of issues that come along with settling into a new city, and still we managed to grow stronger.

And then the wedding chaos began.

I planned a bachelorette trip for my sister in Nashville, and as her maid of honor, the stress was real. We planned surprises, arranged flights and travel plans, and found an Airbnb large enough to play home for all of us. I was dreading the trip until it actually came. We spent four days having fun, celebrating love, and listening to lots of emo music. I was incredibly proud of my sister, and excited for her marital bliss to final arrive that she has waited so long for.

Before I could even process it all, the wedding weekend came, and I watched as my sister took the hand of the man who is now my brother. I have never seen a bride more beautiful or had a celebration more perfect. But windy. Oh boy, was it windy.

Riot fest approached, and with it, Taylor and I’s one-year anniversary. In many ways, it was our year and a half anniversary, but that’s a story for another time. We started a tradition of finding gifts for each other at the Renegade craft fair and then ate our weight in Indian food on what was a particularly cool day in September.

October came, and with it the promise of a long-awaited trip to South Korea. What I initially called “Taylor’s pick” (as a form of explanation, when people asked why we were going there) quickly became one of my favorite places I’ve ever been to. We spent eight days learning the culture, seeing the immensely large city, revisiting the tragic history and eating the most delicious food I’ve ever eaten, day in and day out. I seriously cannot express how much I loved Seoul so simply; it was an experience I will cherish for the rest of my life. We visited the border of North Korea and felt the tragedy of a country at war firsthand and then visited the beautiful rural island of Nami and reveled in the fiery, changing, vibrant fall leaves. We played with meerkats and cooked our own barbeque and visited the birth site of the infamous Gangnam style. I drank a sweet potato latte and ate snow cheese. I cried as we spent our final morning walking Namdemoon market, feeling that a great change had come along with that experience, and that I’d never quite get that specific feeling back again.

My birthday was revisited again, in the form of receiving my present: two tickets to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Broadway in NYC. Taylor had got us first row balcony seats for the two-part play, and we spent an entire weekend running around (picture me showing him all of the settings of scenes from Catcher in the Rye—it was his first time in the city!) and crying during what was a breathtaking, phenomenal stage production. We ate chocolate frogs and drank wine and I felt truly in love with man sitting beside me, who was generous enough to make one of my dreams come true just to see me smile.

In November, we traveled to Brussels (I know—so many trips this year—I’m tired just typing about them all) to see Vampire Weekend and explore. We ended up drinking our way through the city, eating chocolate, meatballs and waffles everywhere we went. We discovered our new favorite beer—a kriek—and drank more of it than we did water for an entire weekend. I felt young on this trip, and though tired, excited for the busy weeks that lay just ahead of us.

Thanksgiving came so fast, it hardly felt real. And then, like clockwork, Christmas arrived. Time at home is always so relaxing, but also so stressful—old toxicities arise and are hard to combat in the moment. I guess part of growing is also realizing that facing these problems head on may not be pleasant, but is ultimately best for both your mental health and the experience of those around you, and that some demons never go away but instead just become tamed in the back of our minds, and we need to accept that.

I watched as Nicole, my Nicole, turned thirty and simultaneously dealt with some particularly hard times. It can be so hard to want to keep our friends safe in our arms, away from the rest of the world and its harms, without realizing that we each have to face certain things alone and experience the growth that that process allows. Adulthood really is tragic, and I want to be—you guessed it—the catcher in the rye, saving all my friends from succumbing to it, falling of the ledge of adolescence, and all the woes adulthood brings along with it.

So here we are, on January 8th, and I’ve finally found the time to draw this to a close. At the end of this particular year, it’s hard not to only reflect on the 365 days passed, but at the decade as a whole. In 2009, I was a horribly depressed twenty-year-old who suffered from terrible insomnia and a heartache I wasn’t sure I’d ever recover from. The past decade has seen me both drop out of and return to college and then get into grad school. I have watched so many around me fall in love, get married and even have children, and even more break up, fall apart and divide themselves. I moved to Chicago and began flying, and though I’m tired of it now, I can truly say the experience of it all changed my life and who I am entirely. I traveled to over twenty countries, some even by myself. I fell in love—three times, to be exact. One is now married, one lives over 4,000 miles away, and one is sleeping next to me, forever snoring his way into my heart and wherever the future may take it. I struggled to deal with who I was, who I had been, and who I was becoming. I grew. I grew so much, sometimes I’m not sure I would even recognize the former version of myself, though I’ve left her pressed between the pages of certain books, in certain countries, to be forever immortalized in her own glory over time—even if that specific glory is no longer my own.

2020 has started rough—a long week of work, and six days in, a mental break down that took a fistful of medication and a bucket full of tears to properly silence. In twelve days, the first chunk of my novel has to be written, and in all honesty, I’m struggling. By the end of March, half of it will be complete, and come August, I will not only have my MFA, but the manuscript to a novel in my possession. If this doesn’t produce anxiety in you than I’m not sure what will—we’re talking 80k+ words in eight short months... but I’m trying to focus on a daily word count, and see what I can accomplish on a smaller scale, rather than get swept away by the big, looming picture as I did just a few days ago.

This year I will visit Israel and Egypt—and who knows where even else—I haven’t had the time to think about it. I will fly my eighth year, and hopefully be able to hang my wings in retirement at the close of it.

In a few short weeks, I will be 31 and I will struggle to accept that fact. Where does time go? Why does it seem to go by so fast anymore—and will it ever slow down? I’m looking forward to a more relaxing year but know that I’m lying to myself in even simply hoping for it. I will feel lost, defeated, and at times, hopeless. And I need to be okay with that.

I know one thing for sure, and it is this: I will write. This year, I will write so much, it actually terrifies me. But that’s what life is all about, and what I want to conquer more of in my thirties: my fears. I will cry, and sing, and fight, and fuck and be tired as I do it all, surely. I will explore, I will stay in, and I may even get a taste of some of that sweet, sweet, legal marijuana Chicago now offers.

I look forward to a year full of uncertainties, and I look forward to looking back on it in a short amount of time and seeing how much I’ve grown from where I currently am now.

Happy New Year, friends—and remember—just because a year has a specific expiration, we don’t have to align our hopes and aspirations along with it. Grow for yourself, and bloom when you can. Who cares if it’s in the middle of winter, or the first week of June. Symmetry isn’t natures strong suit, and we should stop forcing our expectations to line up with a silly calendar. Live how you want to live for you, and the rest is just decoration. This is my resolution for the new year—not to set expectations—and to instead let each chapter unfold naturally, to let each page feel crisp and unread under my eager, oily fingertips. Cheers.