For the past 7 years, I’ve made sure to stay up all night on New Year’s Eve. The experience is honestly not much different from the all-nighters I pull for any other reason while I'm at school— studying, maybe, but oftentimes for no good reason at all— but it somehow feels profoundly important that I watch the first sunrise of the year at home. It’s peaceful and quiet, good for reflection. My breath fogs up the window while I wait for the sun to climb up the horizon. I wait for things to feel different.

You know that Greek myth of how when Athena was born, she burst from Zeus’ skull, fully grown and armored? That’s the kind of radical, 180-degree epiphany that I expect to have when we cross into the new year. It never happens, but I still wait by my window, bringing my face so close to the glass that I can feel the cold on the other side.

I don’t like change. I joke about that a lot, like when In-n-Out raises their prices or when the weather outside gets half a degree colder, but it’s a real fear. I try stay still, whether doing so means I'm missing good opportunities or dodging bullets. When I do go out of my comfort zone, I can never promise to make those changes permanent. That's why I stubbornly, desperately cling to the terrible coping mechanisms I have picked up over the years, even when I know they’re bad for me: I’m scared to try something else and, to some degree, I’m scared to get better, even though I know I should.

But habits like self-harm and disordered eating can’t just be wished away. The internal dialogue that tries to rationalize that kind of behavior doesn’t just get muted when the clock strikes or the ball drops.

Still, I’ve waited for the carriage to turn back into a pumpkin for seven years. When I sit by my windowsill reflecting on the year and on past years, waiting out those long, lonely hours before dawn, I get carried away with Photoshopping reality. Imagining how my life would be if I hadn't begun to self destruct as soon as puberty hit keeps me up. (The realization that I probably would’ve turned out a little taller if I wasn’t starving during my growing years bothers me all the time, not just New Years.)

But during that hazy liminal space between days and months and years, hardly ever do I think about actually fixing my problems. At this point I can admit to not even genuinely wanting to be free of them. And that’s why Athena never comes, even while I lose sleep waiting for her: because deep down, I don’t want to change.

I wish I could share an inspiring story about overcoming my demons, and I wish I wouldn’t have to be so hypocritical about doing so. But I can’t bring myself to turn wish into action, which is the most important part. It’s like what detectives always say in crime TV shows: you need both a motive and a means.

I’ll continue to slip and make mistakes in 2017, there’s no doubt about that; I can only try to make fewer of them. And this year, I think I might try.

No promises.