2021 was a Blender.

Every single year, I revisit my last blog post for the previous year and read about how utterly trash I am at predicting anything to happen in my life.

Yet, for as much as I would have predicted some facets of how 2021 lifted me up and then proceeded to Rock-slam me into multiple folding tables, I really couldn’t have scripted this any more bizarre. One of my friends asked me yesterday about whether I wish I hadn’t gotten injured, or that the accident never happened, and then I would have been at school & in Chicago for the fall. Initially, I felt like I should have gone with the less selfish answer to say “Yes I wish it didn’t happen,” because I could think about how much more present I would have been for my friends, my comrades, and most of all my family. But the honest, selfish, and realistic answer to that question is “No,” for too many reasons.

Sure, health-wise, I needed to know or find out that my ten years of knee problems had a permanent solution (albeit not during these circumstances). I’m really fortunate to be able to get ready to do all the things I want to do physically again, but now without fear about knee troubles. But beyond that obvious reason, I am struggling to think about how I interpret my life and the world without having gone through these last bits of misery. I’m struggling to just move past how it’s all impacted me. I’m thinking about how numb and quiet I…