In 2024, I refuse to apologize
"This year taught me how it feels to be lost and ambitious/I’ve been on a mission/won’t stop ‘til I’m done"
“Sleep Deprivation got me at my heels
This year taught me how it feels to be lost and ambitious
I’ve been on a mission
won’t stop ‘til I’m done”
- Chance Peña, song: “Sleep Deprivation”
Last year, I whispered into the wind: “relationships.” I let my hot breath ride the breeze through the seasons, and, like cold muscles, the frigid beginning months of 2023 gave way to the youthful tendons of spring. As I developed friend crushes and made new friends, healing old friends, I watched as the person I thought was me— introverted, sardonic— flaked away. In her place, I found a version of myself that I thought I’d lost. In the past twelve months, I learned to smile easier.
As summer warmed my skin —I’m a July baby after all— the word “relationship” came to me in a new definition. Double, triple entendre, that word came in shades of meaning—each a variation of the same core: to love another. The sun energized me and I could feel myself flourishing. I’ve always thought of myself as a late bloomer, but I now see myself as a breathtaking bloomer. I am rectifying old mistakes and making new ones. As my petals unfurl, I am proud of who I’m becoming.
The fall came, and I felt like a completely different person than the girl who stood in January, shielding her eyes from the cold and wondering “how does one love right?” My ways of loving have been removed from the kiln. They cooled in the crisp autumn air and are mine to keep forever. In 2023, I read the line “Freely we serve, Because we freely love, as in our will To love or not; in this we stand or fall.'“—Milton’s Paradise Lost. Last year, I chose to love freely and realized my capacity for love is deeper than I thought.
Love freely, and it will come back to you.
As the final day of 2023 slipped through my fingers, I laid in a daze. Fever dreams swirled in my brain as sweat dripped down my back. Although the temperature raged within me, mouth dry and tasteless, my disposition remained cool.
In flux, resolution was born. Who are these friends I’ve claimed as my own? Each reminds me of the same thought I couldn’t quite remember, tickling the same secret I couldn’t quite recall on my own. Just out of reach, my fingertips grazed the edge, and in a moment of inspiration, I stretched my tendons a little longer and snatched the thought before it sunk back into the depths of my brain.
They are unapologetic. And, in this sense, they are braver than I. Rather than spending their life frantically covering fault lines, deflecting vulnerable questions, my friends are upfront. They are unafraid to live, exposed to the elements. As we continue figuring out who we are, we can’t promise to always be authentically ourselves because, what does that mean? Yet, to commit to being honest (with oneself and with others), rain or shine, is just as remarkable.
At age twenty-one, I’ve started to see the hilarity of life, appreciating irony rather than fighting it with bitterness. I hate the feeling of bitterness. It’s hilarious to me that I’ve been afraid of my own shadow all these years, yelping at such a mundane, harmless trick of light. For a decade, perfection was met with relief and anything less than perfection was met with deep-cutting shame.
Maybe this all-or-nothing binary exists because I lack trust, or fear judgment (are those two things the same?), but, as I exited the feverish haze and my head cleared, the theme for 2024 presented itself to me.
BE UNAPOLOGETIC.
This year, I will achieve success and make mistakes unapologetically. Hustling in the context of professional ambition, personal relationships, and introspection, I will choose to not be afraid. I will be brave.
In 2024, Hustlefizz will document all the little ways I choose to be unapologetic.