everything is copy
“When one door closes, another one opens.” That feels right, doesn’t it? Or how about this: “Do not cry because it is over; smile because it happened.” Only recently have I come to appreciate the merit of these words. They’ve become a mantra, a foundation for how I get through each day. To not read the book backwards, to not walk by the places that cause an insurmountable hurt and finally, to let sleeping dogs lie, to not dig up things that have been dead for, all I know, years. This year was apocalyptic, and part of me knew it would be.
I don’t fully remember how the year began. I do recall being down an entire bottle of rosé before the clock even struck 9 p.m., surrounded by two friends I hadn’t seen since graduation two years earlier. One of them held a bag of crystal-green grapes, following the superstition that eating 12 grapes at midnight would bring good fortune for the new year. She devoured them as the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2024.
Looking back, I can’t tell if the grapes worked for her, but in hindsight, I wish I’d joined in—if only to see if the year would’ve turned out differently.
As a child, I had my own superstitions. I believed I could predict how a year would unfold based on what happened on New Year’s Eve. A boring New Year’s Eve meant an uneventful year ahead, but a fun New Year’s Eve meant the opposite. I was never wrong. But this year, something felt off. I wasn’t sure about college, my friendships and relationships were flatlining, and I was caught in a relentless wave of chaos. Every time I surfaced, another wave pulled me under. I spent most of the year trapped in this cycle, under a facade—not just to hide from others but to convince myself that everything was fine when it clearly wasn’t. Looking back, my childhood predictions were nothing more than luck and coincidence. They weren’t grounded in reality. And reality came crashing down in 2024, delivered to me on a silver platter and stripped me of things I held most close to my heart.
Is it fair to cross out the good years, is it fair to tear down an entire sky of stars two people created in just one conversation that lasts 5 words. I still remember the texture of my clothes, the warmth and smell of the air, and the hum of crickets on some important walks I had to take to clear my mind in the months of September and October. Those moments, as small as they are, remain vivid. They remind me that even the worst moments this year, things that I thought would never even come to fruition, were real—even when the ache of being shunned makes me question it. I once read that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it. That’s what I mean when I say everything is copy. It’s the idea that every experience, no matter how painful, can be transformed into material for expression and growth.
The second half of this year found me ricocheting through the different stages of grief, flipping through snapshots of past eras and former versions of myself. I often wondered: would those past selves be proud of the person I am today, after everything that’s happened? Then again, what do I know—I’m only 20. But surely something has to count. Grief, as they say, comes in waves. You can go weeks feeling fine, only for the reservoir to overflow, spilling out all at once and pooling on the bathroom floor. In those moments, you sit alone, sifting through the ache, replaying the “what ifs” and the “how dare they’s”. This year, I encountered heartache in countless forms—through rejection, the loss of a dream that didn’t come to fruition, and a fragile thread that finally unraveled into shreds. Perhaps, in the end, I was the one who cut it. Maybe I was the one holding the scissors with the power to destroy the connection. And yet, the only way out of those thoughts is to move on—or so I’ve been told.
"Move on”. It's such a strange prescription for grief. Imagine telling that to someone drowning in sorrow, someone in bereavement. I heard those words often over the past four months, but they never brought the comfort I craved. What I needed and what I yearned for, was someone to look me in the eyes and say, “everything is going to be okay.” When no one did, I had to say it to myself. I had to wrap my own arms around me and find a way to quiet the restless thoughts that threatened to steal the joy from moments that still mattered. I wrote, a lot. I wrote in my notes app on my way to school, I wrote letters addressed to nobody and everybody, I journaled pages and pages and pages. It was a stream of consciousness approach, it was the only thing that kept me going during the trials of 2024. I hope this doesn’t come across as a pity party but rather as a reflection on how quickly things—and people—can change. My words are meant to capture a snapshot of how I’m feeling in this moment, a glimpse into the here.
When I reflect on this year, I want to hold on to the things I’m proud of. Just the other night, I made a list of everything I did this year to better myself. To my surprise, it filled two entire pages. The memories kept coming, each one reminding me of growth and perseverance. Of course, you can’t fully appreciate the good times without acknowledging the bad. But I’ve come to understand that every moment, even the painful ones, can be transformed. Why let a bad moment define you when you can take it, hold it by its neck, shape it, and turn it into something meaningful—a testament to your resilience and strength. “Azaan I don’t understand how you are able to do all this feeling the way you are” is something I heard a lot, it motivated me to do even better.
As Nora Ephron, author of the conventional term ‘everything is copy’ once said:
“When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh. So you become a hero rather than the victim of the joke”
As the year comes to a conclusion I have started to realize that every struggle, every tear, and every triumph adds to the story. And for that, I am grateful. Reading and writing has truly transformed the way I dealt with the emotional turbulence 2024 brought to my life. I, for the first time did not have the power and was the one in control, I just had to accept. Maybe it is all about the things you want but never get, maybe the red flame is truly burned out, and maybe, just maybe, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.
Because in the end, if we never bleed, we’ll never grow. That feels right.
Carlton Street, October 2024
