how one year can change everything

2011

January

January held a lot of false hope. it was a quiet time with my photos. looking back, I am sad with the things I photographed. I could have done more. I could have been better. 

February was more of the same. quiet. a quiet disconnection, a quiet war. a lot of little pinprick words on notebook pages.

March was me in my winter-white house, feeling the ground slipping out from beneath me. these first few winter months were just hazy days and black coffee. it wasn't all bad. just mostly. despite all my fears of time leaving too quickly, I turned 18. 

April

April was a straight drop.

May 

May caught me just before I hit the ground. This was the month that changed everything. I remembered why. I started taking pictures like I meant it. I started saying yes to life again. I craved adventure and movement and film. 

June

June was a beautiful mess of trying to say goodbye to everything at the same time and straining for more, to go places and live without inhibitions. 98% of my photos were film and that's how I wanted it. 

July

   

July was everything. I never went home. I watched horror movies and stayed out all night and cut off my hair and went on road trips and made the most of every single second I was given.  I found an apartment in the city. I started packing up my memories. July taught me that there is nothing more important than the time we're given, and the people we spend it with. some of those goodbyes left scars.
I liked the person I was for that month.

August

 I can't begin to describe August. I left the small town I'd spent my whole life in. I found a new place to come home to and a new family to call my own. We had almost no furniture and no concrete plans for the future but we were happy, so so happy. and then come mid-august we broke apart. Suntka left and I started hating airports. nothing has ever hurt that badly. August was one of those first-time-for-everything kind of months. 

September

September was trying to settle into something so new, so different. exploring my new city, skyping in Starbucks and libraries, finding a new job that wasn't right for me but taught me a lot about myself and the way people behave. I was stretching, straining, trying to fit in a life that was like nothing I'd ever seen before. I cried on the car rides home. I learnt. I grew. 

October

October was all film. it was learning how to feel at home in a place I did not grow up in, it was a sudden road trip to Alberta, and it was standing beside one of my best friends as she got married. October had real beauty, real substance. 

November

November was about the changing of seasons, about getting ready for Christmas despite our missing pieces. I started a new job, doing something I'm actually good at. I met a group of people that have already found a place in my heart, I found a place I can stay for a while. 

December

December has been a lot of reconnecting with old friends and learning how to keep up with real life and those other growing-up things. it's strange, being treated as adult, you know? I'm still growing up. 

I think I can honestly say 2011 changed just about everything. and I can honestly say I am thankful everything I have learned. this time last year I was wavering and riddled with fear but this year, this year I have found hope. and I will not let it go. 

Thank you to everyone who has still supported my writing and photos despite my lack of any kind of consistency. I will be better in the new year. <3