Epilogues typically resolve unanswered questions. They offer closure to a multi-chapter story, revealing the fate of the characters whose stories have been told. As it turns out, my 2024 story doesn’t end with a closure. If anything, I am ending the year with more questions than I started with. Even so, I can write this epilogue with beautiful highlights of a year that has given me far more than I could have imagined.
I spent the first three months of the year living in Spain. I do not exaggerate when I say they were the best three months of this year. In February, I travelled to two more European countries. In April, at 30, I started learning to cycle – I could do it on my own in a week. May, I became an African Liberty Writing Fellow. And in September, I finally completed my master’s degree program. These achievements were mere wishful thoughts last year. I’d hoped to travel the world and get a postgraduate degree, but I was never sure that would happen. 2024 proved to be the year of longings fulfilled.
Yet for all the wins the year brought, 2024 scarred me. I have spent better parts of this year in confusion as I dealt with rejection after rejection – even after hundreds of applications, I’m still without a job. They say rejection makes you stronger, but just as likely, it’ll leave you with self-doubt as you confront your inadequacy. 2024 might have given me the best months, but it also shook my esteem. I write this epilogue with contradiction: ecstatic about the year’s adventures yet mournful for what I lost in self-assurance.
After interrogating why I am writing this, I decided I am writing it for people like me who are ending the year with ambivalence. We might think people fit into neat categories: those ending the year with joy and those ending it with sadness. It turns out there’s another category of people: those with mixed feelings about the year.
Your ambivalence might be confusing, but it’s just life. There are seasons of clear positives and seasons of clear negatives. Equally, there are seasons of ambiguity – it doesn’t diminish the joys and losses you experienced this year. If anything, it can strengthen your resilience as you experience life’s unpredictability.
As I write this epilogue, I realise that life rarely offers neat resolutions, and sometimes, the questions that linger are the seeds of growth for the future. The joy, pain, clarity, and confusion are threads of the same beautiful story you’re telling with your existence. If you’re ending the year with mixed feelings, let this season of ambiguity remind you that growth often happens because of life’s unpredictability, not in spite of it.
