December 2025 was a century. A century of holiday rushes and seasonal tragedies that turned the cheery and light month of joy into a total trainwreck. To sum it up in a more concise way, my December was defined by loss and survival.
Everyone has or will at one point in time experience when the world, your world, stops moving. A moment that feels like tinnitus; the outside fades and you have never felt more singular hopelessness ever before. It’s called many things: rock-bottom, heartbreak avenue, the depths of despair. A wise man once said, “It seems only by the hands of God or death, will [we] truly change [our] silhouettes” (Silhouette, Sleeping at Last). It is precisely in this moment of limbo where the Earth feels as though it creeps to a stand still that we must decide to sink or swim. Will we let the anguish consume us as it assuredly can, or will we try. Just try.
For some insight into this rather vague opening, a friend of mine passed away December 2025. From that moment, nothing in my life felt certain or permanent or guaranteed. In the same week my father was hospitalized, and I had to navigate these tragedies with a broken heart after a recent break-up. It was the most sobering experience, and prompted me into critical reflection about what path I was going down in life. I had spent the last three semesters of college working to the bone with not a smidgen of feeling proud or productive. I pushed back writing this blog, I pushed back writing my book, I pushed back basically everything I loved and wanted to do because of a variety of reasons (which I will get into) all because I believed that I had to go down this specific path for a better chance at success in life.
It is that same “success” that absolutely destroys my soul. Success, in the traditional sense, is a bar that is always in sight and mind and yet always just out of reach. I realized I chased an imaginary and ever-changing goal that never had any real reward to it other than just saying “I did this thing.” I became gluttonous for “just enough.” Doing things I didn’t necessarily care for just because they generally sounded well-rounded and vaguely aligned with what I could tolerate, plus everyone else seemed to go down these paths. I worked an internship position for a job position I knew I likely wouldn’t see myself working in five to ten years. I took on a leadership position for a program in a major I wasn’t apart of that took time away from my real creative needs. I sunk my heart and soul into a relationship I adored but one that was not good for me nor my partner.
And while I don’t regret the achievements and lessons I have learned, I realized my world had potentially stopped moving a long, long time ago. I was only aware that the lights were turned off when the sun went away. I saw success from a window, and just believed if I kept myself busy enough I would one day reap the benefits, leave the room. What those benefits were, well that’s the unknown behind the veil of “success.”
Because I SHOULD
If I could describe DOING IT BECAUSE YOU SHOULD it would be like buying a bunch of empty notebooks you’ll only fill one-third of the way full, trying desperately to claim you’re a writer. In the current world we live in, I believe it is more common than ever to hustle for success. So, it is no surprise that a lot of us will place value in how productive we have been in a day or space in time. We chase the thrill of productivity, and I am here to tell you that will and always has failed. Since getting to college, I started doing productive things that my high school self would gawk at like cooking for myself, doing chores regularly, grocery shopping, etc. and looking back I am certainly proud to be a more self-sustained and independent woman, but I wasn’t winning any Nobel Prizes. I was taking care of myself, and that should be normal, but I expected it to make me feel superhuman. I pursued extracurriculars and activities that I felt obligated to like and do, always thinking: “This is what life feels like,” “I am doing a good thing,” all the while feeling… off.
I read back in a journal I wrote before my first semester of college about all the hobbies and interests I wanted to pursue. I was excited to dance and keep attending hip-hop classes my cross country team used to go to. I was excited to make a blog like this, I wanted to write a romance fantasy novel with one of my best friends, and most of all I wanted to create media like film or other entertainment that I liked. So, what happened? Why did I stop dancing? Why did I take almost a year after college started to write this blog and then hardly maintain it? Why did I stop writing even though I am taking classes for just that? Why am I a film student who never picked up the camera for herself?
Well, because I let the expectations of the environment around me define who I was and what I was supposed to become. I had to suspend my beliefs of the dreams I wanted originally going into a major like Film because I wanted or felt like I needed to fit in with my peers to get this “perfect college experience.”
Because I WANT TO
Bare with me as I explain my journey through personal goals, and hopefully some of you dear readers can relate:
I love K-Dramas. I love all entertainment from South Korea. I decided in senior year of high school to pursue film instead of medicine because that was something that made me happy, and if I could be apart of the creation process for a K-Drama in anyway I would feel like I could die happy and fulfilled. There are sub-genres to this interest like how I would love to work in entertainment for Webtoon, and really any explorative media company that reaches international audiences. I wanted to be apart of new creative media that really impacted people in a positive way. I had silly idealistic fantasies of going to a SKY University internationally and somehow meeting the right people without even knowing the language, which were swiftly reality checked by my dear cousin, but I had that golden dream.
I wanted to create that same enlightening and beautiful entertainment that comforted me countless times.
I applied for Film with the mindset that I was not trying to be some big league Hollywood director or screenwriter, but that it was an entertainment based major that could qualify me for media companies I liked such as webcomics or video games. I found very few people with that mindset among my major’s peers. And that… is isolation I had never felt before, especially as an adult where you think you start to figure life out magically and progressively more and more.
Looking back, I am not sure how or why I started stressing myself out over the fact that I couldn’t relate to my peers. I started adopting their outlook on Film and thinking I had to pursue that path from short film to feature film maker. I stopped thinking about the hobbies and interests I truly had because this was close enough to my interests and if I did the things I actually liked I would fall behind my peers.
And, hey, when you put it like that it is kind of a devastating way to live. My shiny, innocent, starry-eyed younger self didn’t work and dream hard just for my life to be “just enough.” Life should be 100%, not 75%, not 50%, no. It’s far too short and fleeting to get by and not pursue what you truly want. That is so unfortunate to realize in the wake of absolute tragedy, but it is the perspective I desperately adopted in order to survive the suffocating grief I experienced last December.
I had to, have to, try and continue on for him, for my father, and for everyone I love and will meet in my future. I have to prove that there is more to life than the hustle, the success. We do not live just to die.
Now, it’s week two of January, and within the last two-ish weeks I have done more for myself than I ever did in the last three semesters of college combined. I decided I am going to pursue happiness over achievement, and revel in the company of love rather than literally anything else. I started seeing friends more, potentially for survival, but mainly because I pushed so many of them away when I was in my relationship. My friends are and always will be there for me and I kept convincing myself they stopped, but they didn’t. My friends are happiness itself. I am the luckiest girl alive to laugh and live alongside them.
I started editing videos for my friends and local businesses to help others while doing this puzzle-like skill I have really admired and yearned to pursue for a while. It has been so fun and I get lost in the edits, creating content I first and foremost enjoy.
I started reading again, another source of media that brought me great comfort throughout my life as I could escape into novel worlds when life got a little too tough. I was trying to read a memoir to “broaden my scopes” which is, yes, important but I am not married to the book, I can read what I like. How silly of me to think otherwise. So, I went to Barnes & Noble with the purpose of finding the most trashy, horribly written romance fantasy book with the most incredible cliche premise to, y’know, heal the soul.
The list goes on and on, but I just stopped having expectations. I stopped expecting my life to go one way or another, I stopped expecting things to go well or right — it just DOESN’T! Things can, and honestly will, get worse, get bad, get ugly. I have learned this December to know better than to expect relief to find me. Expect death and hurt and grief to ease with time. That is scary and some may call it pessimistic, but we have the magical power of control when it comes to our own actions. I don’t expect relief or a moment of rest from life; instead, I learn from these lessons and choose how I react and how I handle them to make the hardships more manageable. I deal with the stress better. I know how to make my own pockets of relaxation by actively discovering what hobbies and interests and friends I get lost in euphorically.
Life becomes simple and yet infinitely richer after realizing this. The reality of life is that there is no one singular way to live it. When you take a moment to look outside of your life, you’ll see people desperately looking for answers in others and the way others lead their lives. Who else grew us with the linear thinking that life is a step-by-step process where you go to school, get a job, get married, have kids, retire, die? Like everyone. Of course we think that way because we grow up learning from others, but becoming an individual and an adult means that you aren’t your mom, you aren’t your sibling, you aren’t the person sitting across from you at Chipotle — you are you. At some point, you have to choose you. Not the you your parents want you to be, not the you your peers expect you to be like. You have to be uniquely you. You have to swim. Please, please do not sink.
Honor yourself by giving yourself the happiness that will fill your soul.
I choose what fills my soul. I choose what path I take. I choose how to react.
In that way, I have nothing to fear about life because I know I have the power to choose my own happiness. I think the funniest way to express this is that I have always had the fear of ending up in a marriage with a man I don’t like… girl… you have a choice in who you love and get married to. You have the choice to get married or not at all! It is silly to forget how much control we actually do have in our lives, but I think it is more common that not to forget that fact:
The fact that you have power to DO IT BECAUSE YOU WANT TO.
Avaia L