If on January 1st, 2025, you had told me what my life would look like on December 31st, I would have laughed.

And yet, here we are.

This was a year of transmutation. The stability I thought I had achieved—and wanted—in 2022, 2023, and 2024 was completely shattered. Here I was, thinking that if my life looked the same over the years—same city, same house, same relationship, same job, same pet—I would be safe, that everything would be okay.

But my life has always been ruled by the ever-changing tides of the ocean. As a poet once said, I don’t navigate myself; who navigates me is the sea. And then once again, the wave builds, crests, and throws my carefully-built raft of certainties against the rocks.

And so, again, I sway.

Deep underwater, I search for the lesson I should have learned a decade ago, when I left the safety of dry land to venture onto another continent: I am my own boat.

Resisting the waves is pointless, because what the sea asks of us is movement, flow, and the acceptance that change is the only constant. I let the ocean mold me and take me away, knowing that the wave that carries me is the same one that brings me back.