what are you waiting for?

a retrospective on 2024

it’s awkward to write after such a long while. i thought every week of what to say and yet i manage to arrive here empty handed. the weeks stretched, and time dragged me along as it passed through. thoughts became those pens you carry in your bag, the one where it is only when you reach for them that you remember the ink ran dry. i’ve been stuck in that sense that the road is much longer than you thought it’d be and yet you’re already panting. i could find a thousand metaphors but it’d be better to get straight to the point, no?

this has been a strange year for me. if i am frank, i can’t really tell you what i’ve been doing. i had my wisdom tooth taken off. i was hired and now have a job — there is a whole a process behind this achievement that has likely been documented here in excruciating detail. i invested on my comfort by buying an expensive tablet that i never thought i would be able to — out of financial possibility and ‘permission’. nothing particularly traumatic happened, and this lack of an event that can pinpoint a moment of distraught, where life went completely sideways, feels off-putting. who am i without it? i’ve known storms for so long that having a safe place to land doesn’t pacify me. i can’t rest, be at peace, but neither do i move on…

what are you waiting for? i don’t know. for the crash, for a deep, bone shattering sadness to catch up. why would you want that? i didn’t say want, i said i am waiting. isn’t it the same thing? don’t we wait for what we want?

trying to be cohesive and concise with my life or who i am feels disingenuous. why stick so close to a bunch of lines, acute descriptions? i am only 23. yet without them i’m adrift. i am already 23. where are my goals? the ‘before i turn 25’, ‘before my 30s’? i used to comment with my mom that it was strange to finally have my weekends for myself after i finished university, what was i to do with so much time? abundance isn’t exactly a gift if laid on the wrong hands, and mine are quite small, i can only hold so much. i don’t really have prospects, goals. i gave up making resolutions 2 years ago. i’m content if i’m able to have a considerably okay day — which most of them are, funnily enough, at least when i put the effort to appreciate even the tiniest happinesses.

and it’s enough to keep me going. my cup isn’t filled, it’s half full. this was a year that, without the rocky ups and downs and twists and turns of human relationships, i had the chance to pay closer attention to some other stuff: the awkwardness of trying to make friends in your 20s, finding out what kind of worker i am, taking notes on the kind of person i’d like to become, finding the true owner of the voice in my head that brings me down, down; my loneliness and how demanding it becomes when i don’t take time to simply exist, my doubts, which are too many too list, my deep desire to just… love, my funny habit of avoiding it.

it’s not so much that i ‘avoid’. i’m not running so much anymore. to avoid the truth, to avoid confrontation, to avoid struggle — surprisingly, i found out i’m not as scared anymore, and have done all of these. but i am closing my eyes. i save them for a ‘later’ that never comes around. i am stalling time, just as i postpone sitting down and truly writing to you. i do it a lot. the webpages and bookmarks pile up, i never delete my phone or computer notes — god forbid i might need that idea from june 2015 one day— and i make lists i rarely run though. there are thousands of books, movies, series, quotes, poems, songs that i have yet to meet, that i wish to meet and connect and feel that magic, the one that happens when two hearts touch, the one in the art and yours. and this causes a static anxiety, a friction. i’ll have to come at terms with my finitude one day. with the fact that our hours are numbered.

i want it all, more than i can take, or more than i am capable of digesting. i want and want and want and yet here i am standing still. what can i do? what am i waiting for? there is this inertia that persists and persists, why aren’t you going away? how do i stay so restless and stagnant and fixed and lost, all at the same time?

i pocket my wishes and dress them as feeble hopes and, away from the sun they change in the shade, i can’t recognise them anymore, can’t recognise myself in them sometimes. and i am all too used to following along whatever someone else likes. what we want isn’t always what we thought we wanted. lorde echoes in the liability reprise hat “you're not what you thought you were” after an album where she writes herself as explosive, as needy, as the last cookie on the package, as loveless, as someone that never fully lets go. i read somewhere that decay is just another part of the cycle of birth and death. the leaves changed colors and the air is crisp and cold. change no longer scares me to the bone, but i still shiver.

in one of the most popular radio songs of this year, there is this bittersweet line that makes me ponder: if everything's good and it's great, why do I sit and wait 'til it's gone?. i guess that’s the aim of this message. what are you waiting for? till everything’s gone? until you are gone? the time’s today. what am i waiting for? no one has the answer. the sadness comes when it must, or maybe it never leaves. it’s not the key. what could it be? the other day i read that love is made. it doesn’t just happen to us, or as my hopeless romantic soul prefers to say, not all the time. it is made. love is getting your hands dirty. love is taking the chance, it’s stepping into the light with whatever fear you hold. i don’t want to stall anymore. i don’t want to pile and make lists and become this mountain of just possibilities, of ‘i meant to get into that’, of words that were never spoken, of joy that never got the chance to prove itself as happiness… all because of…what? what am i waiting for? what am i looking for?

i think this year i lost sight of myself, of who i am, in a way that isn’t outright repulsive, that doesn’t have me losing my mind. in a way, i think i lost faith in all my capabilities, my worth got muddled though it’s still there. this was the year to admit and own up to a couple of truths, a year that has left me with a heart that is weary but not heavy, for a chance. i am curious for what the next year has in store. i am rather happy about the fact we have a new year ahead of us, jolly in a way even i can’t recognise, jolly despite the news (all sorts of them). i’m not usually like this. i’m trying not to fight it.

2024 seems to have taught me that life happens while you stand still. i am writing this on my sofa as our christmas eve dinner is cooking. and life happens. life is happening. i am now truly finishing this letter in my room, my hands and feet cold as ice, and life is happening. life isn’t lived in the plans, in the what ifs. even when you’re loosing the threads that make you who you are, even when you’re unsure, even when you’re afraid, life is happening all around you, and life is happening to you. and as long as life happens, there is a chance to create love.

lastly, i’d like to share a poem with you: Rain, by Raymond Carver.

Woke up this morning with
a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
and read. Fought against it for a minute.

Then looked out the window at the rain.
And gave over. Put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning.

Would I live my life over again?
Make the same unforgiveable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.

genuinely, i have no idea what will 2025 have in store. though i tell you i have no aims, i have the hope to create some, and i want to change. i have half the chance to. i want to become a more attentive reader, more present. but i have this strange curse where if i say it out loud, it never becomes true. maybe 2025 can be the year where we all break our curses.

i sincerely hope that you can embrace the next year with open arms, that fear doesn’t hold you back one too many times from the possibility of joy. my heart is also with whoever is particularly struggling right now, the last 2 weeks of the year can be very hard times to get through. everyone, thank you for reading this letter, thank you for reading delicate at all.

可 on twitter

delicate will be back in 2025!