I’ll Never Let Go

I don’t want to welcome the new year. Everyone describes New Year’s as a new beginning and a clean slate. But for me, there’s nothing “Happy” about it. I can’t stand the recaps of 2025, the highlight reels, or the “accomplishment” cakes. They make me feel sick, reminding me that 2025 was the worst year of my life. I don’t have a recap of 2025. I have nothing I want to reflect on. I rang in the New Year wrapped in my blankets, listening to my most-played songs, my survival playlist mostly made up of bands keeping me alive at the moment, just to ignore that 2025 had ended.

This new year will be the first one my brother will not enter with me. That thought sits heavy in my chest. Time keeps moving, but my world stopped in a way that doesn’t reset at midnight. A new year means a whole year without him in it. No shared moments. Just the realization that time will continue to stretch further away from the days when he was here. It feels unfair. It feels wrong…

It feels as though he’s being left behind. That he will just become something people say “a year ago” about. Entering a new year feels as if I’m being asked to accept something I never agreed to. It’s a future where his presence exists only in memory. Still, I know time is relentless and will move on regardless.

So, this year isn’t about new beginnings for me. It’s about carrying love forward. It’s about bringing him with me into the new year in a different form, even when I’m not ready to do so. I will not leave Austin behind. His memory will live with me always, and I will say his name every day until my dying breath because he deserves to be loved and remembered with that much ferocity.

So, until further notice:

I have no goals this year. 

My goal is to survive. 

To be there for my family. 

And to re-learn how to live again for Austin.