New Year Resolutions

People often ask, “What are your resolutions? Any New Year resolutions?” Fools. What should I tell them? That I have so many? I simply say, “None.” The topic is closed. It’s the next person’s turn. Resolutions are just wishes, and wishes, I have many. Not just for the upcoming year, but for all the years yet to come. So many. I would like to be on a ship that gets beautifully wrecked, like the Titanic, yet I hope everyone survives to tell their individual stories a hundred years from now. How wonderful it would be for everyone to go through a tragedy without feeling a sense of loss. I would want to witness the death of a loved one, right before my eyes, and then make them come alive again. Oh, the joy of extreme emotions.

I would love to have my heart broken so beautifully that even Keats or Wordsworth would be rendered speechless. And then, once the poem that was supposed to be written doesn’t get written—because the grief is too vast for words—I’d want that heart to be mended again. And once again, I’d quote Flaubert: “I would like to die, but I also wish to live in Paris.” Whatever your Paris may be. I’d love to read Flaubert in French, but I am too lazy to learn a whole new language. In fact, I am too lazy to live. Can these count as New Year resolutions? These “wishes,” as people insist on calling them. It’s a game and I’m at a party. So, you tell them you’ll join the gym. Yes, yes, I’ll go four times a week—even though I don’t even show up for myself that many times in a week. Or years. I am fun at parties.

I crack a joke and excuse myself from the party. I make my way to the terrace. The sky looks different from here—it’s bigger somehow, more existential. It makes you feel even more worthless. Lovely. I don’t miss the party downstairs. It’s the same as every other party—just like last year’s, or the year before that. The clock will strike midnight, and boom, nothing will happen. Everything will stay the same. In fact, all the words you write or hear are the same. They’ve been said before. This new outrage you’re passionate about? It’s exactly the same as the one from last month. You had the same anger then, too. The joy, too, in fact, was the same. The guy who’s making everyone uncomfortable—he’s the same guy from last weekend, just in a different shape. How are you not suffocated by this? Everything is the same, and will remain so. Come to the terrace, guys. Feel the same dread. Look at the sky. It’s marvelous, infinite, and depressing. Join this party. Leave that. Or read any cheap existential novel. All of this is the same. Trust me.

Sometimes, I feel it’s not me, but my anxiety, that’s writing. I am a chill, fun-loving person, with no passion for writing. It doesn’t even match my personality, this whole writing thing. How can someone so lazy muster up the energy to write something that has no capitalistic avenue? It’s pointless. But I can’t resist. This writing thing. I hate it, yet I can’t control it. So I keep typing, these meaningless words, in the hope that they’ll clear my mind. You should try it, too. I’m only saying this because I don’t want to feel alone in this pointless activity.

Someday, I have a strong feeling—if I ever find a cure for whatever this is—that I’ll stop writing. I might be the happiest person that day, or the saddest. I don’t know. I wish someone had said something like, “I hate living, but I fear dying, so I keep existing.” That would have been the perfect quote for all of us. But I sometimes fear saying something too deep—what if someone thinks I’m crazy? So, I attribute it to someone else. If it’s a bad quote, it’s on the person I faked it to; if it’s a deep one, which ruins the mood of everyone, it’s still on them. I’m safe either way. How selfish.

My spotify wrapped understands me more than anyone else. You listened to metal, ghazal, punjabi pop and some weird shit this year, are you okay, you fuck? Make up your mind. That is my mind, dear Spotify, now if you excuse me, I’m going back to the party. My New Year resolution? I’ll keep going back to the parties. The skies are depressing, and so is writing and so is everything else.