the year of surrender.
I started this year sitting on a small chair in my 400-square-foot studio apartment. The four photos I have from that day include a screenshot of my Pinterest board at the time: full of William Shakespeare quotes I knew nothing about but found enchanting, mixed in with cozy vignettes of places, people, and homes I found dreamy, exciting, and mesmerizing. It was my mood board, if you will, of what I hoped my 2023 would look like. There were pretty florals, images of women with bows in their hair, and vintage film photos of couples in love. The title: “to release and romance. To twentytwentythree”.
How curious.
It’s funny how time works, how memories morph and change with each passing day. If you asked me what my focus of this year was, my most recent memory would recite that my focus word was “surrender” yet it seems that the version of myself in January 2023 had different intentions.
I started 2023 with every intention to "release." At the time, I had a horrible habit of online shopping when I was anxious, happy, sad, bored, or anything in between. It was as ridiculous and peculiar as it sounds — primarily because it was never actually online shopping I was obsessed with, it was perusing the niche websites of upscale businesses that were far outside of my budget at the time. I was stuck in a cycle of yearning for things I could not afford without setting up goals to be able to afford them, it was hopeless, I felt hopeless. Ah, the internet.
So I vowed no more online perusing. I told myself there was a reason that I was looking outside of myself to find joy: convincing myself happiness resided in physical objects rather than lived experiences. I told myself that if I could release myself from feeling the pressures to consume, I would finally reach a state of mind I enjoyed living in, one that was as productive and content as it was peaceful.
Yet in my pursuit of “release,” I found myself tightening my grasp on control. Ironic.
I reached a point in early spring where I realized release was an ambitious word to undertake without fully understanding what was happening in my life. I had moments where I forgot to watch my own life, letting each moment slip by. I wanted to release, but what was I releasing from? My anxiety? My lofty goals? My routine?
I had to reassess what it was I wanted out of the year, and I realized if I looked, truly looked, I would find that to release, I must first surrender. A small but rather grand difference.
Surrender.
The dictionary defines surrender as a “yield to the power, control, or possession of another upon compulsion or demand.”
Yet my only experience with this word is in the context of white flags and Maggie Rogers. I have no memory of feeling this word in my body, of understanding it fully. If someone were to ask me what this word meant at the beginning of the year, I would have replied with something along the lines of “to give in or give up.” I associated it with a sense of weakness, of losing a battle. I certainly had not even considered using this word to describe my relationship with myself.
I am of the generation that is told we find the person we are supposed to love when we stop looking for them; when we surrender to the pressures of chasing to start being whole on our own. What if this was true of our relationship with ourselves? What if we finally made space for our true existence? What if we surrendered to the compulsions, demands, and wishes of who we are "supposed to be” and just started…being?
As a Class A perfectionist, the mere thought of surrendering to the expectations I held for myself to be or look or act a particular way felt absurd, yet as an eternal optimist, I grew excited at the thought that I was allowed to exist without the pressures or rules of being anything but the truest version of me.
So I surrendered. I surrendered with compassion and curiosity this year. I let myself wonder what might happen, instead of fearing the outcomes or letting imposter syndrome win again. I let go of all expectations for what I was supposed to be doing, embracing the fact that there is no right or wrong way to exist (how beautiful).
At the end of the day, when my head is on my pillow, there is a version of me that exists, apart from what the rest of the world believes – that was the part of me I wanted to befriend and embrace. There was a part of me I was willing to surrender for.
I discovered gold. I found a creative, wistful spirit inside, one that is rather spontaneous and eager to not think beyond this very moment. A mind that writes beautifully, and a vocabulary that paints life in a beautiful picture. A mind that craves ballet classes, pottery studio creations, photography experiments, and starting blogs. I found someone who embraces life as a highly sensitive human, one that feels deeply and intensely. I found the parts of me that used to all feel so separate and different finally coming together. I surrendered to the idea that I was supposed to be strong, and found beauty in the tenderness of my spirit.
I surrendered to what I thought I should be to find and love who I knew myself to be along.
And in surrendering, I too found release.
Thank you for a wildly charming year, 2023.
