New Years

Bonnie McKelvie

As the year comes to a close, I feel it’s the obligatory reflection hour. On my history test just a few weeks ago there was a man who called the year 1827 by its full name, “one thousand eight hundred twenty seven years after the birth of our lord,” (we are now aware that the man referred to as our lord wasn’t born in that year, but white Christian male proclamation has carried as truth in the past). Now, I am not religious.  I don’t remember or wish to revere the birth of a God’s son.  For me, the world is seventeen: young, devious, experimental. On this year, the great seventeenth, I have experienced as much as a privileged teenager ought to. I spent a decent amount of time worrying about the relationships I thought I should have and forgetting about the ones that I didn’t.  I spent an unfortunate amount of time losing things: my mother, my friends, awards, opportunities, bobby pins, and, most importantly, myself.  To be completely frank I’ve been lonely this year.  Backbreaking silence is something that I’ve become accustomed to and I truly have mastered the art of shutting my door.  I’ve found spaces beneath stairwells, benches at the end of long hallways.  I’ve felt like a for sale sign in a desert.  I’ve felt like a piece of warped wood.  And when I remember all of this, the moments I wished I’d taken advantage of and the inclinations I’d failed to act upon, rather than dismay I feel gratitude.  For, this year, the seventeenth year, I felt something.  Masks made of smiles are beginning to mold me at my own hand and my formerly feeble frame is finally prepared to rise.  I feel everything.  I am hurt. I am elated. I am arguably psychotic, but I am so proud to be in a place where I am opening doors inside myself to places I’ve never explored. I am young, devious, and experimental.  I am seventeen.