A Complicated Year
I picked a Word of the Year that I actually remembered the whole 12 months. Here's what I learned.
I started this year with a specific Word of the Year, a tradition in Christian women’s circles dating back to the heyday of the “blogsphere.” I usually don’t remember mine by April, but this year was different. This year the word that came to me, or that I picked (depending on what you believe about such things), was “complicated.”
As in, letting myself be.
I refused to simplify myself any longer. I would not pretend to be straight for others’ comfort. I would not pretend to be the perfect gold-star aromantic asexual person while denying the reality of my vague sapphic attractions, while accepting that I would never be fully accepted in the lesbian community either. Aromantic and yet a romantic. A cis woman and yet deeply, intrinsically, queerly, asexually so.
I would not hide that I have nontraditionally presenting ADHD in addition to my variety pack of mental illnesses. I would give up trying to screen and test myself over and over for autism, which I probably don’t actually have but also don’t not have entirely. I would be hyperactive and exhausted, both wrapped in brain fog and begging for someone quick enough to catch up with my twice-exceptional brain that has already put the pieces together. I would live into the reality of my disabilities despite feeling unqualified to use that term. I would respect my body’s needs and differences as my own and not the object of others’ expectations.
I would rest in my contradictions and limitations, my spectra and unanswered questions, my paradoxes and Schrodinger’s faith. I’d unite the two halves of myself: queer and Christian, and allow the evangelicals and atheists to not know what to do with my third-generation Methodist, hymn-singing, justice-seeking mainline progressive self, at once evolving beyond boundaries and a devout theologian, agnostic and contemplative, with orthodox certainty and also jaded literally beyond belief from knowing too much and seeing too much of how the Christian industrial complex is made.
I’d grieve my dying industry with a past career in a world I reject but a job I was made for, my healingly comfortable yet often uninspiring corporate present, and my unknown future in a world of AI. I’d honor my liminal spaces and limited time and finite energy as an introverted extrovert with sensory processing sensitivities. I would live into the tension of my Enneagram 3 efficient achiever and my 4 wing sensitive poet. I would accept that I am mentally unconstrained by that which binds others to linear thought while accepting that I’m physically constrained by the laws of physics, and I do not have superpowers to be everything to everyone all of the time.
I would have to reject not only my own shame but the shame others put on me for not being a thousand conflicting things. I put away the “should”s (or at least, I’m trying) to be more and/or less, better yet humbler, stronger and resilient but open and authentic, more independent and more communal, mentally and physically healthier, faster and patient, louder and quieter, not afraid to take up space while not taking up more than I have earned or deserve, quieter when I’m too much but louder when I’m not enough, to be tough when I need to be but kinder when I overstep, not talking outside my lane but not being too self-focused, not intimidatingly dominating but not submissively meek, not perpetuating stereotypes or too rare to be considered but not afraid to be myself. Should, should, should.
Whether these shoulds are good counsel or couldn’t be more wrong varies minute by minute, with fine-tuned perspective and lenses to see the full picture. Being complicated, letting ourselves be complicated, is not a flaw. It is a clear, well-crafted mirror, a reflection of the truth.
Some might say the ultimate thing is letting go of labels. But that’s not what I need. Names can be sacred. Names connect us to community and resources, and they give us language for that which separates us from the normative and brings us together in our differences. Especially when those differences can make us feel alone in the world.
But it’s never as clean-cut as a single name. It’s never so quick to explain or understand. I wish sometimes it was, that I could say a word and have it be enough. That the metaphorical lightbulb will come on and people will say, “Ah, you. I see and love the full you. I know you.”
That’s no humanity, though. We are all complicated and nuanced, with layers we keep discovering about ourselves. We’re ever expanding and evolving, and we don’t even know ourselves or understand our own needs and desires fully. We have to accept our complications and each other’s, that none of us is one thing, easy to see and sum up.
So if that’s the word you need to carry with you into the new year, take it and cherish it. May it serve you well, as it has me.
Relax, breathe in, shoulders back, heart exposed. And release the urge to file off your beautiful mess this year to ease someone else’s consumption of you.
Let yourself be complicated.
Oh wow. Thanks so much for all of this.