GPOY: Good riddance eleven, hello Twelve.

Hi internet. This is me. Many of you have never met me. I don’t know if I had until this year and I’m here to say bye, for a bit. You’ll all know I don’t post anymore and to be honest, that wasn’t intentional. But this is. Leaving, or pausing. I read all of you, often, actually. But there’s so much I have to say that I have to chew on. Or I have to say out loud. So I don’t send text messages as often, and every day I delete the ones I get. I pick up the phone. I send letters. I’d like to write you and you probably know where to find me.

And what of the New Year and what of feeling different? Two times eleven plus zero is 22 and two times twelve is twenty four, and that’s me. The world didn’t go last night, although I thought it did numerous times this year. The world ending constantly, but what can you do? Trauma binds you.

This year my heart broke a few times and I thought it’d kill me. I may have busted some ventricles to and I’m ashamed for it. But I’m still here, and I learned that this year. And that it’s alright to have notebooks and pads of paper full of poems to be revised and stories that won’t conclude themselves. Someone might find them one day. I learned I need to see the ocean more than once every two years. I learned I need to laugh so hard about nothing with people who do that to me. I learned about running away and telling the world to stop. I learned that I fight a good fight, and I know when to hold bowstrings. And what else? Passable legal Spanish and how to tell someone they cannot make me less of a person, or else. Somehow I learned to do my nails without a smudge, and how to grow my hair. To not be so scared. To listen to my heart instead of my brain while I’m biking a million miles an hour through the South Side. To eat breakfast. To make boundaries. To say goodbye without a goodbye.

I learned that I want to keep learning, forever. I learned I’m a stubborn sonuvabitch. I learned gender is silly and boys are dopes, but I don’t know how much they can help it. Girls are so sad, but what can you do? I learned that I probably don’t want new friends, and how to drink at three in the afternoon. I learned sometimes you just need to let someone spin in their furious anxiety, and all you can do is promise to stick around. I learned how to cook a damn fine roast, and how to eat pozole for real. I learned I can’t be everything for everyone, but I’ll probably try. To not be so furious about people who don’t know better, and instead feel compassion. To not pity. To walk away. To walk.

And so I wish you all the best and I want you to know that in some way, I love you all. I say this not because it is my go-to wish, but because we don’t say it enough and I learned that scarcity is a warning, not a rule. There is enough love to go around, and enough things, and enough hope. I hope you believe that. I read you all, semi-faithfully, and I hope in the Bay and the island of Manhattan, the lips of Florida, the mountains, the mean streets, you do well to yourself and others. Keep writing, please, keep sharing. It means the world to me. Feliz feliz feliz anos and more to come.