I really believed that this time it's forever But older than me now, more constant, more real And the fur and the mouth and the innocence

 For years I took selfies thinking that I was ugly, and yet I took them anyway.

It turns out the entire time, I was just sick. Malnourished, dehydrated, underlying health conditions, lack of sleep.

(Dust filter added for effect, lol)

This photo will be 15 years old in March.

Everyone is being so nostalgic for 2016; personally, I think waxing nostalgic about the year that Prince, David Bowie, Carrie Fisher, etc. died should be long forgotten. The fashion was horrible, the politics were very much not dancing, and was maybe the very last time that social media was fun. The only nice thing that happened that year was my oldest niece was born. Oh, and the music was really great that year.

2016 to was not dissimilar to 2011.

2011 was a year I felt lost and aimless. I felt constantly haunted. It was the year after I graduated college, and it felt like the land that time forgot. 16 hour days, just endlessly on the bus or waiting for one, listening to my iPod, wandering around for hours in between buses, or reading. This was before getting smart phone in 2012, so I didn't have an option to constantly doom-scroll. I drew comics. I painted pictures. I would go to the library to use a computer during the periods of endless waiting. I was exhausted by multiple jobs.  For as miserable as I feel most of the time now, I can say in earnest that this is the least miserable I have ever been in what has turned out to be a pretty endlessly miserable life.

For all the uncertainty and the misery that made up the vast majority of 2011, there was a part of me that never gave up. I crafted imaginary records, made little demos of me just singing--singing anything, really-- on my phone. I listened to albums of my favourite artists and imagined what mine would all sound like. 2011 is considered sucha  "landmark" year for music as a whole, but some truly seminal albums by my favourite artists at the time also shaped my 2011. I embraced for the first time ever loving The Smiths, a band that I had been mocked for loving so much. 2011 was a year where I found myself finally becoming myself.

I remember having spent so much time...up until very recently, just detesting my body. It wasn't until about 2015-2016 when curves ("curves") came into fashion ("into fashion") that I could finally get clothing that fit correctly (because people were getting themselves artificially enhanced to get BIPOC WOC body attributes, but that's a conversational for another day!). It made a world of difference.

Little did I know that the trajectory of my entire life would change in 2012, that I would face life-threatening, stress-induced conditions over the loss of a dear friend and a job that would nearly work me to death. But in the epoch that was 2011, with its hours of wandering aimlessly, the last time I had a flexible schedule, it was perhaps the last time I felt free.