A Dear John Letter to 2024

Dear 2024,

I approached you with good intentions last New Year's Eve.

I prayed that you would be filled with good things,

small victories,

direction, intention, love.

I greeted you with hope.

I would have liked it if we had been friends.

I would have liked it if you had been

kinder, softer, gentler.

But you have made it easy to say goodbye.

I will move on into 2025, bringing with me

freshly built boundaries that

still smell of damp concrete

and my new found friend, No.

I will leave you with my self-doubt:

feeling unworthy

I will leave you with fragility:

feeling unseen, unheard, unloved.

I will leave you with anxiety:

waiting for shoes to fall from the sky

like chicken little.

Anything that falls on me in 2025

will be but an acorn.

For 2025 I choose to see myself,

to love myself,

to hear my voice and allow it to ring out

with abundance, with exuberance,

with MY truth.

For 2025 I choose to KNOW I am enough.

You can keep the comparison game.

You can keep my ex with you in your now infinite past

You can keep the tears, the sleepless nights,

and the betrayed friendships.

You can keep the mess. I'll keep the beauty.

I'm sure you'll think about me,

But I will be keeping my eyes forward,

For I have mountains to climb,

and poems to write,

and a life to live out love.

With Peace, and Hope

Ellie