2022 in review: A path to the future
One word to describe the year is beautiful. Exactly a year ago (December, 2021) I felt certain that I wasn’t going to recover from the fever that plagued my health — but I did.
Early into the year (2022), all I had (and still have) has been gratitude for life. Certainly, there were times I handled it recklessly but yet again, no regrets.
The year began rather slowly. I was about done with my first year in college (after seven years of trying and failing at it). I had started trading the currency markets, had a little progress but still a huge gap away from being profitable by any measure.
Early on, I had intended just like everyone else at the beginning of every new year that I wanted to achieve a handful of objectives in my health, spirituality, education, relationships and most importantly my finances.
If you took a guess, you’d perhaps guess which one I considered the most important — Money!
February rolled through, I returned home for my semester break with only one objective in mind: Make money!
My game plan wasn't the most solid plan I’ve ever come up with, because I was going to trade the markets and make bank. Sadly, that didn’t happen. And if you have any experience with trading the markets, you’ll perhaps have guessed right — I ended loosing all my money and those of my friends.
That experience, coupled with my failing relationships with friends and lovers, alongside my non-existent spirituality was pushing my sanity to the edge.
I did a few pills, got drunk at liberty and cried myself to sleep on my friend’s couch.
I made more friends, or perhaps got acquainted with a more people and days rolled into weeks and weeks danced into months.
I am grateful for all my friends who went out of their comfort to keep my spirits alive, they were the strength to my bones during the first rough quarter of the year.
By the end of the second quarter of the year, I returned back to college at the end of the holidays. Still broke of course, but very optimistic about the coming months (my good friend had helped me secure a space on a paid project) and that was support enough.
I found out I had gotten an F in Calculus (which was surprising, yet not shocking at the same time). So that meant I had more semester work but I didn’t bother about it. I didn’t have the emotional strength to bother about it.
The year seemed pretty ordinary, outside the drama with no exceptional highlight. Well, not until I reconnected with a friend I had never really connected with. An unexpected connection that would exist for the rest of the year (and still exists).
I can’t tell you all the secrets we shared but I can tell you that it perhaps highhandedly made the whole description of the year beautiful!
I learnt how to feel myself again, how to share selflessly, how to feel extraordinary even in ordinary events. I feel happy even from the thought of all of it.
Life again would happen, as it always does — I broke my phone, which could have felt like the last straw, because again I was just coming off months of trying to replace all my gadgets I had lost to some electrical mishap. But the experience met me at a happy point in the year. So I just shrugged it off.
About a month ago, my friendly neighbor had lost her son (a wonderful friend of mine) to an illness that lasted just three days. Ironically, he died exactly a month to my birthday and this gripped my heart with a different kind of ache. I couldn’t cry, but I could feel his absence.
A happy child who would always run towards me every time I returned from school. The only words he could speak (as I like to remember anyways) was “mama” and “Yee-yems” (an imitation to the actual sound of my name “Williams”).
Some nights I imagine what his body could look like after spending that much time in the earth, and then I catch myself.
There I was, worried on some days, ecstatic on other days and there is my friend, whose eyes would never light up to see the sunlight of any day.
2022 has been an emotional win. I didn’t make any real money, performed poorly in school. Fell out with lovers, found new friendships. Got drunk, got high, got sober, stayed sober. Saw God in my reflection, and the devil in my shadow.
Ultimately, I feel alive, in love and full of believe — and ready for the unveiling of the new year.
~ WILLIAMS FALODUN.
