Things I Didn’t Say in 2015 [part 2 of my year in review]

I have been struggling to put 2015 into words. We are nearly finished with January 2016 and I’m still not sure how to frame last year and all of its pivotal importance. I’ve scoured my blog and thumbed through my journal for a sentence that speaks to last year as a whole, but something tells me that 2015 is best defined by the things I didn’t say.

I did not say I would take the year by storm.

I was fresh from the void and still shading  my eyes from potential when I constructed  my tiny list of goals for 2015: attend three blogging events, move Ever So Roco from Blogger to WordPress, become a dot com, get a job that didn’t feel like jail. My ambitions practically fit into my palm and were all completed by August.

I did not say all that came to mind.

I learned to cook my words carefully, not to steep them in sugar, not to base them in bitterness. Because words have a way of manifesting themselves and in the event that I have to eat my words, I want them to taste just right.

I did not say I wasn’t afraid.

I was constantly petrified. But, somehow I crafted my words to redefine bravery over and over and over and over and over and over again.

I did not say I wouldn’t start sh*t.

I started a whole lot of sh*t. Like my YouTube channel and my newsletter and an entire revolution. I started my very own organization and had my first  insurmountable event.  I started reaching out. I started being comfortable with my discomfort.

I did not say my mother was right.

But she was. Were it not for an “Accomplishments” draft buried deep in the annals of my iPhone notes, I would have forgotten that I met Issa Rae in February. Attending her event alone, white initially disheartening, proved to be a vital exercise in the practice of  one of my mother’s preferred panaceas: stand on your own two feet. After that night, I went many places alone without worry or care that I had no one to accompany me. If there was somewhere I wanted to be in 2015, I would be there. On my own two feet.

I did not say it was over.

2015 was the first year of the last six years in which I wasn’t dreadfully reposed, wishing I were alive. Intermingled with my worst days were the days when I declared victory of the struggle for the most noble, most beautiful, most honorable cause of all: me.

Last year I tasted a delectable depression and decided it wasn’t quite to die for. For the revelations, for the notions, for the blessings, and for 2015 as a bittersweet, hard-knock whole,  I am forever moved and forever grateful. 2015 was the year I finally put the pieces to my purpose puzzle together and discovered that I am here to live an authentic and creative life of service, nothing more and absolutely nothing less. I went into the year talented, beautiful, and worthy. I came out knowing I was talented beautiful and worthy. 2016, seriously, watch. out.