New Year’s Eve scares me.
Not in a symbolic way.
In a nervous-system way.
Before I even left the house, something old surfaced — the kind of pain that doesn’t arrive with language. My chest tightened. My hands buzzed. My thoughts ran ahead of my body, scanning the room before I was even in it.
I don’t drink anymore. But that night I was drunk on anxiety.
Unsteady.
Over-alert.
Too aware of everything at once.
I always knew where she was. I didn’t stare. I didn’t follow. I just… knew.
A shape at the edge of my vision.
A glance caught and released.
Proximity without contact.
Sometimes she never returned the look.
Sometimes I don’t know if she even saw mine.
When the clock struck midnight, she hugged me.
“I’ll love you forever.”
The words were gentle.
They weren’t cruel.
But they didn’t land.
My body knew before my mind did – this wasn’t the love my heart was reaching for.
Not wrong.
Just not that.
It hurt.
So I broke the hug early.
Offered a smile I didn’t feel.
And stepped back — not to punish, not to perform — but to save myself from the quiet erosion of staying inside a moment that couldn’t meet me.
The year didn’t arrive with answers.
No revelation.
No confession.
No reversal of course.
The fireworks did what fireworks do — they flared, startled, and vanished — leaving the same room, the same people, the same unanswered questions behind.
I entered the year without a verdict.
And the year did not bring one with it.
Later, when we got home, something shifted.
The composure gave way.
Emotion flooded the room — fast, uncontained, spilling out after being held too tightly for too long.
In that flood, she said she was conflicted.
It wasn’t my job to explore that conflict. Not to map it. Not to soothe it. Not to push it toward resolution.
My job was simpler and harder.
To hear it.
To acknowledge it.
To let it exist without trying to make it safer for me or clearer for her.
I noticed what happened in my body as I did that — how I stayed upright and braced. How restraint stopped feeling like strength and started feeling like necessity. Like the only thing keeping me intact.
The violin that night was not waiting to be played. It wasn’t poised for drama or release.
It sat in the corner of the room — still tuned, still whole — while I held it and didn’t lift the bow. Not because the music is gone. But because forcing sound in an unready room doesn’t make the note truer. It only makes it louder.
Here, the violin isn’t patience. It’s containment. Love that isn’t spent just to prove it exists. Pain that isn’t weaponized to force clarity. Sound held back because the body is already working hard just to stay regulated.
There is a cost to that kind of restraint.
This kind of restraint isn’t passive – sometimes helplessness is the hardest work.
But there is also care.
Care for the instrument.
Care for the room.
Care for what might break if pressed too soon.
This is not a story about hope.
And it isn’t a story about despair.
It doesn’t claim growth as a trophy.
It doesn’t promise reconciliation.
It doesn’t ask anyone to take sides.
It simply tells the truth – The year changed. The situation didn’t. And my body knew that long before the calendar did.
There is still no verdict.
Just fatigue. Just breath returning slowly.
Just the work of standing down after vigilance and choosing, again, not to force a sound the room isn’t ready to hear.
And now I rest my eyes, heart, and soul with Sleep Circle by Max Richter playing softly in the dark, letting the night finish what the year could not.