Austin Tacos

I end this year entirely different than I began it. I guess we all do that, every year, but this year feels significant. Just like every year feels significant.

***What’s that?***
Jaded much? No sister, I call it cynical optimism.

Buckle up – it’s a sad road, but it ends up happy. Ish. I’m talking about this entry, by the way, but it applies to life as well. Funny.

What do I believe? Well, long term, I can’t logically reject that it’s all “pointless.” By all definitions of the word: there’s no conclusion we reach, there’s no happily ever after. It’s been a long time since I’ve believed our endless strife ends in a gliding plateau. The perfect wife, the perfect career, the house with a yard. A family. Over, done with, see ya in the next life. That doesn’t really align with my understanding of reality. No, there’s ups and downs, and I suppose if you’re lucky you might end on a peak and kick the bucket before you reach the next valley.

Okay… The next most realistic scenario, then, is that in your fleeting last moment before you die, you happen to feel fulfilled in everything you’ve done. I know the feeling of fulfillment – it would be nice if that’s how it ended! Don’t have to deal with the next disappointment. But this is wishful thinking as well. Most likely, Alzheimer’s takes over and you head out drooling. If you’re lucky, your last moments will be on the phone calling your relative by the wrong name and they’re too sad to correct you.

No, I believe that everything ends the way it always was. When you say goodbye to someone, you don’t get a perfect moment of closure in which they’re the best version of themselves and they tell you the exact combination of words you needed to hear from them. At best, you get a lingering glance out of the driver’s door of the Prius and a Mona Lisa smile you’re gonna spend the rest of your life deciphering. I don’t understand you, because I never truly did, and everything ends the way it always does.

So while everything ends, there are moments along the way that are undeniably beautiful and justify the journey. And after the ride is over, the memories don’t come flooding back all at once, but in small bursts when you revisit a place that you didn’t even realize was significant when it was part of your life. And all of a sudden, in line at Coffee Commissary you remember her favorite breakfast order and laugh to yourself about how funny it was to hear it in her accent, and curse whoever gives meal orders stupid names that you’re forced to call them to the server because now you have to order something else. Veggie burrito, please.

Ultimately, everything ends, which is sad, but it ends the way it always was, so if it was fun and beautiful and silly and light and full of love then it’s okay that it’s over. The year is over, but it was never really happening, you were living moment by moment even when you didn’t think you were, even when you didn’t think you were truly experiencing everything life has to offer, because you were breathing and you were thinking and you got a dog and you filmed a movie and you lived with someone for the first time and you made 2 EPs but didn’t put any music out and you got to travel all over the world and you quit the vape and you made money for the first time and your sister married your childhood best friend and your other childhood best friend married his high school sweetheart and your new best friend got engaged to his first love and you got the loft you always wanted and you’re in the Uber on the way to some random party to ring in the New Year with people you don’t know and you’re proud of yourself because today was extremely hard but you remembered to eat and call your friends and you didn’t sit inside watching How I Met Your Mother but you showered and put on a turtleneck because tonight is going to be amazing despite how certain you are that it’s going to be as underwhelming as every other New Year’s turns out. But you pay the $50 Uber anyways because even though it’s fucking devastatingly hard moment by moment you never fucking give up, you never have and you never will. And tonight 2024 will end and 2025 will begin and it will all start over again and you’re gonna think the same exact thing next year, probably, just like you think the same thing on the same day every single year, and maybe when it’s New Life’s Eve and the ball drops over the Times Square of your time here on Earth you’ll face the light with certainty that the next journey will be just as hard and beautiful as this one was.

Or something.

Happy new year’s. ‘Til next time -mbk