New Year's Eve 2025: Short Reflection

An irreversible hinge of a year, marked by the before, during, and after of Drew’s death. Losing Drew has shaken my foundations irrevocably and altered the course of my life. Right now it feels like the loss of a limb. I’m not sure how it will feel in the next few months. But tonight, I’m still in shock that Drew didn’t make it to this threshold. He loved life more than anyone I’ve ever met—certainly more than I ever have.

So that’s another concept 2025 has forever detonated: a sense of cosmic fairness and rightness, the sense that things can get bad, but not irredeemably bad. The loss of the illusion of any chosenness, any Judeochristian notion of deliverance, any divine/salvatory frame, that has all disappeared. And this is precisely the space where Old Path White Clouds has entered, where the Buddhist teachings I’m studying are helping me reorganize my conception of the world—not as flat nihilism, cynical jadedness, but a sense of how fragile we all are, how precious our time together is, and the random, incoherent brutality of the universe that shatters any attempt to fully make “sense” of it. 

I’ve faced other challenges this year, but they pale in comparison to what transpired from November 2nd onward, after I got the call from Drew. A broken wrist—a minor setback—impacted my writing, teaching, knitting, ability to be as self-sufficient as I’d like to be. I spent a lot of time on my own, which was agonizing in certain moments, of course, but it also gave me an opportunity to produce some of my strongest intellectual work to date, clarify my dissertation project, teach my first solo course on my published work, and transform myself physically through my strength training. I made discoveries about my childhood that illuminated for me, like a lost key, so much more about who I’ve become as a 32-year-old woman. I mapped my root structure, in other words, during my hibernation. I have a clearer sense now of who I am than I’ve ever had previously, I know what I can contribute to this world, and I’ve done a great deal this year to lay the groundwork for the life and career I want. 

My biggest accomplishment this year: the Wicked article I wrote, which crystallizes my entire gaslighting dissertation project into a close reading of the first film, culminating in “Defying Gravity.” This article, currently a manuscript under review at a major journal, is a seed I’ve planted—one of the many storylines opened this year that remains without closure, but remains an active hope/possibility/future node for 2026. 

So I close out 2025, and this short reflection, with sorrow for what I’ve lost (Drew), grounding in what I’ve learned, and enduring faith that the seeds I’ve planted will blossom in 2026. My illusions may be gone, but not my hope. I feel certain that soon, something will bloom—however small: a sign of what’s still living and what’s still possible here, on the threshold of a new year and a new beginning. 

Happy New Year's Eve.

-- Dianna

(12/31/25, written from 8:00 to 8:41 pm)