“December”—I love how the word rolls off my tongue. It sounds like goodbye, like another ending has arrived.

Yet this December has been both good and bad. My birthday month—a month that rains gifts and blessings, a month I choose to put myself before everything. Presents, chocolates, flowers, and love, all from me to myself.

But December is also a month of contradictions. I let go of people, thoughts, and places, even as I embrace what is yet to be. I feel excited about new adventures, and nostalgic too. Letting go is a big deal. How does one move forward without looking back? Haven’t we all been taught since childhood to look left and right before crossing the street?

Do we just let a best friend move away and go hunting for replacements? And how would one even do that? Sit in bars, like in the movies, nursing a drink, waiting for the stool beside me to be taken up by someone with the same crazy as mine? It can’t be like that—because every year, I’m a new person.

The last few years have been difficult. I have been difficult. Yet that friend held my hands as tenderly as a tulip holds dew drops. Carefully. Lovingly. Away from prying eyes.

And this year, I’ve promised myself to be sassy and loud and boisterous. So my “new” bestie will have to be all of the above too. Still, what about the grief I carry from past years? The new sassy me is also the me who loved, lived, and lost important phases of life. I miss the friend who held me then. Will this new bestie bring that same smile to my eyes?

Contradictions. I break old promises and make new resolutions. Are promises more valued than people and memories? We are expected to fulfill our latest goals, and yet somehow we’re also expected to forget—or at least fade out—those we loved earlier this year.

But can you really “unlove” a person and build new boundaries?

That’s the trouble with contradictions: I want to make new memories, but I also want to keep the old. Why must they overlap? Why can’t they sit side by side and let me choose which to remember?

Why should I forget how my father tucked my blanket around me on chilly December nights when I was seven, yet be expected to remember the day “his” dog turned eleven?

I want to choose my memories, good or bad, painful or happy. They’re mine to keep.

December is full of such contradictions. As I say goodbye to the year that shaped me, I count all that I’ve loved: the books I read, the people I met, the farewells I said, the lessons I carried.

Another year arrives—with hope and light. I pray for sunflowers and daisies. I wish for shooting stars and starry nights. I want happiness and grief. Yes, contradictions.

Because when next December comes, I want to look back proud—having braved pain as well as I bloomed in love.