At the beginning of every year, there is a brief, fleeting moment when there's a burst of optimism. It feels like things might change at last. It feels like, in this arbitrary juncture of time where one calendar is discarded and another is fished out for the purpose of my work-cum-dining table, maybe I'm going to finally do it. Maybe this will be my year. Maybe this is the year I will turn things around, get my shit together, cut off ties with my parents, get my mental health in order, figure out a concrete future career plan that finally involves moving far far away from here and starting anew. Last January, I was writing poetry after a six year poetry writing hiatus. Last January, I was meeting new people, going to the Delhi Book Fair two days in a row with said new people, going out for drinks with said new people, inviting friends over to this fledgling new apartment which is not quite new anymore but continues to feel like home in a way very few apartments have. Last January, I was sending out my poetry to magazines and journals, and even getting published in one. Last January, I was flesh and blood, a living breathing organism who didn't feel like their heart was beating against themself.

This January, though, is barely as optimistic. Perhaps, the reality check that usually comes a month into the new year has come on its second day itself. I have struggled to perfect a knitting pattern for more than a week now - imagine, struggling with knitting of all things. Knitting, the one thing that's proven to be a bright spot in this bleak, kafkaesque existence, and I can't even get that right anymore. I have ghosted someone who has been incredibly kind to me, purely because of my own insecurities and deep-rooted lack of self-esteem. I have let someone I genuinely like postpone a date, purely because I'm terrified of being perceived, I'm terrified of being scrutinised and parsed out until the other person reaches the inevitable conclusion that I'm not worth knowing after all. I am isolating myself again, terribly, terribly. Not answering calls or texts from old friends. Telling people I will meet them but chickening out at the last second. Promising myself I will make future plans, but going back on every promise. Everything feels like a cruel subversion of January 2020, like I'm on the other end of the mobius strip, stuck in an inverted loop of self destruction. I am terrified that I will be stuck forever.

Soon, my time will run out. Soon, I will be 30 and will have nothing to show for it. Soon, my parents will tell me to quit my barely respectable job and tell me to move back to my hometown permanently and I won't be able to refuse them because at the end of the day they're still my parents, and they raised me - no, conditioned me - to being physically unable of disobeying them. This post is getting more despondent by the second so I will stop writing, but I guess I needed to get it all out. Everyday feels like sisyphean cycle of waking up and self-sabotaging because I'm too scared of being not enough, of not doing enough (which I'm not, I'm not). Everyday feels like I can barely breathe, I don't know why I'm still alive.
But hey, at least it's the new year. At least there's a new calendar on my table. At least I can stare at its glossy, unsmeared pages and think, there's time, there's time.