2022: The Year of “Maybe”

“Maybe” is a fascinating word; it’s bounced around my head like an idle DVD screensaver bouncing around a CRT hung up in a Blockbuster, long after closing time.

At the end of 2021, it felt like I was stepping into a completely uncertain future. I’d just quit my job, had wanted to change the course of my professional life, and was tentatively ready to dive into a spiritual journey. It all felt like everything was in play, but that the pieces were hidden under a fog. I wasn’t sure what moves I’d make and, to tell the truth, it never felt like I was on the right track. 2022 had me asking if maybe I was in the wrong to set the upheaval of my life into motion.

Maybe if I had committed to the bit a tad more, it could’ve paid off. Maybe if I’d never quit my job, I’d be freelancing now. Maybe if I’d landed the contract position I interviewed for in March, I’d by typing this on my old laptop.

The butterfly effect felt like it was kicking up a windstorm for the ages. Part of my initial plan to freelance included trying to find more academics online. That led to me picking up a copy of the book IRL by Chris Stedman. That led to me reading the book on a flight from El Paso to Dallas in April. And that led to me revealing the truth of being a childhood sexual abuse survivor to the world after 13 years. All that untangling, that unraveling, set to the score of The Unraveling of PUPTHEBAND, which was picked up nicely again at the end of April, when the band themselves passed through Dallas.

Maybe if the show hadn’t been as good, I wouldn’t have bought tickets for their show in Oklahoma City in September for myself and a man I was falling for. Maybe they wouldn’t have gone unused.

You never stop working through that kind of abuse, I’m learning. It’s certainly a life-altering process to disclose, to unpack, to understand — it’s hard work to heal.

In between my own emotional toil and profession foils, I began my spiritual journey at a Reform Jewish temple here in Dallas, and I started to slowly fall in love with the faith. When I was discovering those painful, terrifying, suppressed memories, I was able to continue to explore topics that were always foreign to me, like the nature of the world, the supernatural, the divine, and worship.

Maybe if I hadn’t gone to my first Shabbat service on a warm May evening, I wouldn’t know half the hymns by heart already. Maybe I’d have a new Saturday morning routine instead of a Friday night one.

Summer blew by in a flash, which I suppose is what job applications, therapy, spiritual pursuit, and casually dating a man four hours away does to the psyche. Of course, sometimes those wells dry up — responses to emails never appear and interviews fail to materialize. Ideologies drive a wedge between oneself and one’s faith. A tragedy befalls a man hundreds of miles away and breaks two hearts in the process. But the march of time stops for nothing, and maybe that’s a good thing.

Maybe it’s good fortune that a job opening crosses your screen after a three-round interview process at the same company resulted in a late rejection. Maybe it’s even better fortune to decide to reach out to the first hiring manager. Maybe if I hadn’t, I’d still be unemployed.

Starting a new job at the end of August led to a flurry of chaos; one of those phenomena that 2022 managed not to touch. In amongst all the new, a few choice things didn’t change, and even if that was the presence of chaos itself, I’d like to think that I’ve grown acclimated to weathering the storms. The new and the old are forever enmeshed in the dance of life, I suppose. There’s another one of the few things that doesn’t change.

Maybe if I’d made fewer wishes, including one on a shooting star one dark night speeding down I-20, I wouldn’t be writing this from a snowy mountain town. Maybe I’d still be speeding down that highway.

Maybe if I hadn’t checked the wrong email inbox at the right time, I wouldn’t have seen a punny subject line and a familiar name. I wouldn’t have felt my stomach fall out from under me and into the depths of the earth. I wouldn’t have felt the cosmos aligning in just the perfect way to celebrate the Jewish New Year with the return of an old love.

The Days of Awe lived up to their name, and I was awestruck that a man who’d stolen my whole heart — the hole that had never really filled in — was in front of me again. That we had both grown and changed in ways that made us inseparable. That we had found each other again, after I had to blast apart what remained of our friendship last year; hardship and joy seem to tango just like new and old.

These last few months have felt so much like an exercise in lucid dreaming. Reality has given way to surreality, itself giving way to a hyperreality inside my own head. Possibilities stack and stack, until it feels like the only way to initiate a vacuum collapse would be to give myself a paper cut between my fingers. Getting out of my head has become the second step to getting out of bed, and while that’s always been the case for me, it’s never been so alluring to sway gently to the rhythm of my thoughts.

And as the last sweet notes of 2022 fade out into the silence, bracing for the fanfare of 2023 to kick up and drag the world ever forward, it’s tempting to stay in my mind, retracing every step I’ve taken and decision I’ve made. To end up trapped like Narcissus, caught in my own mind and reflection and drowned in the mirrored lake. But, thankfully, that’s never felt like more of an improbability.

Maybe the world will never feel like it did before 2020, and this all would be a completely different story. Maybe the journey from 1996 to 2014 to 2022 would have taken new shape. Maybe it wouldn’t.

But that’s the funny thing about maybe; it keeps us wondering. It’s the siren’s song that has no ending. It can keep us trapped in dances forever, while the world passes us by, and as beautiful as the steps may be, and as intoxicating as the dance floor seems, it dooms us to be dragged through life.

Maybe this is the last year I dedicate this night to looking back. Maybe there’s more room to grow excitement for the future now. But maybe this is one tradition that’ll endure. Who’s to say?

Maybe the world has a little more light in it now than it did on this night, one year ago.

I’m so blessed to say it does for me. And I sure hope that it does for you, too.

Happy New Year, to all my beloved friends, family, and boyfriend. May you all find blessings in the memory of this year.