Dear 2018,

I am all too familiar with the concept of the open letter, but it is you, my dear, that I am not familiar with at all. I cannot wait to meet you. I am infatuated with not knowing what you contain for me, at all. I am about to have a mutual break up with 2017, and it looks like you’re my new dancing partner for the next 365 days.

Let me start off simply by saying I am oh so ready to fall in love with you. I don’t mean to rush into things, but I already know that you will continuously take my breath away. I am ready for your excitement, your adventure, your newness, and your freshness.

However, I am not naïve enough to ignore the fact that you will also come with heartache and rejection as well. Everything in this life contains ups and downs, and I’m afraid you are no exception. I am fully aware that you will contain it all, and frankly, I hope you do. I hope you throw everything you have at me, because I do not wish to stay the same.

If you don’t fill me to the brim with a bursting joy and beat me down to a pulp with challenging hardship, I will remain the same, and there is nothing I am more afraid of than being stagnant. I want to change. I want to grow stronger, more curious. I want to dive even deeper into perplexity and wonder about things I never knew existed.

I want to be able to look back at your day one from your day three hundred and sixty five and say, “wow, I hardly even recognize that girl.”

It’s not that I am disappointed in my current state of existence, I just know with all my heart that there is so much more for me. I am in no way, shape, or form finished with my becoming at the ripe age of twenty. I pray with all my heart that who I am now is just a phase, a pit stop, on the way to where I am going and who I will eventually be.

I am in no way claiming that there is a finished product of me waiting at the end of a comfortable year, decade, or time period, I just know that as the years go by, I will get more and more “me,” and you are going to be a chapter in the book of my life processes that are getting me there.

I hope all this giddiness doesn’t fool you into thinking I am nothing but bliss heading into this new year though, because per usual, I am scared as well. As romantic as the great unknown is, it is also daunting and intimidating.

I like having a little bit of a heads up when it comes to my reoccurring ebbing and flowing, but I am in this weird, beautiful stage of my life where nothing is truly constant, permanent, or predictable. I know that because of this, you will also be inconsistent, temporary, and unpredictable.

Yes this scares me, but it also excites me. I love surprises, and I love the fact that you get to be a lovely and new surprise with every single sunrise you contain. I am ready to be utterly obsessed you, follow you into the dark, bask in your light, and be peacefully confused on your overcast and mixed-signal days. I am in awe that your existence doesn’t depend on me or my faithfulness to you at all.

You will be there for me, exist for me, laugh with me, cry with me, comfort me, and surprise me day in and day out no matter what. You will be committed to me despite my faulty and rowdy ways. This comes as no surprise, but I dream of a love like that, and I am so thankful you are here to give it to me.

I am thankful I get to be here in this universe with you as we write our story together. You are mysterious and glorious, and I hope by the day your time to leave comes, I look a little more like you. Thank you for this year we get to share. Let’s jump all the way in. Hands in the air. Reckless abandon on the tip of our tongues.

Yours Truly,

Haley Walker