2017 is pretty much the worst.
2017 sucks.
Approaching the halfway mark of 2017, I have taken a bit of time to take a deep breath, cast a backward glance at the near six-months of this godforsaken year, and declared that it is, quite possibly, the worst of my adult life.
Between health, professional, personal, political, local, and global trials and triumphs, I’ve run the gamut of fucked-up, no-good, very-bad shit.
But you know what?
I’ve never been better.
Sure, as I write that, I clench my jaw and feel my eyes pinprick with those weird, pesky, emotional tears that threaten to happen sometimes when you don’t actually think about a stressful/sad/emotional thing (but sort of give it a side-eye by mentioning it somehow.) Sure, the other night, after a particularly trying conversation, I set down my phone, turned my face to the banal HGTV show my husband and I were watching, and thirty seconds later calmly said, “I think I’m going to cry for a bit now,” before bursting into tears for a couple minutes. Sure, I had this weird bout a couple months ago where I wanted badly to murder all the birds outside my apartment because their nighttime songs were making my insomnia absolutely maddening. Sure, there’s probably a third example of how I’m compartmentalizing stress and anxiety — but I honestly can’t think of another pithy anecdote at the moment.
But here’s the thing: I’ve gained perspective into what makes a life worth living more than I ever have been able to in the past, and I wouldn’t have been in a position to do that if this year hadn’t been complete and utter bullshit.
Maybe it’s because I’m older. Maybe it’s because I’ve reached some zen level of cognitive coping that I never quite had before. Maybe it’s because I have a crazy level of support through my friends and family. But I was pretty old a year or two ago, and my therapeutic game hasn’t been upped significantly in the last decade, and my friend and family network has been this strong for a while now — so it’s not just all that.
I think it’s really that the hits kept coming, so fast and from so many angles that at some point it almost became ridiculous, and somehow, instead of breaking, I found a way to reshape how I think about myself and my life. And without that never-ending onslaught of illness and surgery and Donald Trump and all the other baggage that came with my winter, spring, and the trimmings of summer, I wouldn’t have had the cascading dominos of stupid bad luck and bad timing and bad circumstances for myself and others to force me to have to make those changes.
I see my friends more regularly now. I have far more meaningful conversations — in person, over text and email, or on the phone (or other voice-related mechanisms, since us 30-somethings don’t actually usually use phones to speak to others these days.) I set up dates regularly with my husband, I say I love you and I miss you to the people I care about more. I exercise, harder and more diversely, and I revel in the activity. I can talk about the bad things, and yet not dwell on them, even when they might be unchangeable. Even when things will get better before they get worse, I can still find good elsewhere to help balance out the difficult bits and stop obsessing (mostly) over the impending doom.
Having coffee with a close friend of mine today, I said to her, “I really don’t know why I’m so happy because everything is so goddamned terrible,” and we both laughed (because we’re both having that kind of 2017) and sipped our coffees together.
Because I’m alive. Because I’m successful (and even when I’m not successful, being successful is not the sole way I measure myself anymore — which is a huge first for me.) Because I love people, and people love me. Because I got to decide on a Monday, last April, that on Friday my best friend and I would be in Japan and so we booked some tickets and flew halfway across the world in less than the span of a week. That’s not a thing most people get to do — and I did, and I have the pictures of cherry blossoms to prove it.
2017 is the worst. It really is. I can’t imagine a scenario where the next six-and-a-half months can become awesome enough to outweigh the whirlwind of poop that kicked off the year. But even if the trend line continues to be rocky, and painful, and unpredictable, and stressful, and hard — that’s fine. Because what matters is my mindset, and that is moldable, and happiness isn’t the thing we need to be necessarily chasing. Instead, I found a place to be where I feel like me.
And if it took the worst year to do that, then fuck it. It’s worth it*.
*Although I’d really like 2018 to show up with bells on and kick 2017 to the curb like the trash fire it is.
