Every year around this time, I brace myself for the flood of Instagram "dumps," long quotes about this past year, and never-ending captions about what everyone is looking forward to in the coming year, and I'm already exhausted. It's actually unbelievable that we are saying goodbye to 2021 and hello to 2022 in just a few short days because mentally/emotionally/spiritually I feel like I'm still stuck in February, 2020. But honestly, what makes this time of year especially difficult for me is all the god damn reflecting and introspection that's supposed to come with it. I honestly, can't deal.

About a month ago I came to the realization that I'm just not sentimental. I don't cherish old pictures, hang on to family keepsakes, and I rarely revisit the past. Which, you can imagine, is why any sort of nostalgic or tender (god, even the word "tender" gives me the chills) look-back or look-forward makes me, first of all, uneasy, and second of all, question whether or not I'm broken.

In November, my mom asked me come over to go through some old stuff I had tucked away in boxes. I opened the boxes that were filled with old yearbooks, photos of friends who I haven't spoken to in 10 years, and suddenly, I closed the box and said, "get rid of it all." My parents looked at me stunned and urged me to go through it and not be so quick to just dismiss it all, but I couldn't. I just couldn't.