New Year’s Day

On New Year’s Day I woke up surrounded by friends who had just fallen asleep hours ago. After watching the sunrise, and sharing secrets, we had all crashed as our adrenaline finally faded. The cold floor jolts me awake, and I feel the footsteps of my companions creeping around. My mind goes to one line, “I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day.” This beautifil lyric by Taylor Swift stopped me in my tracks. Whenever I had previously listened to this song, I envisioned true romantic love, in a relationship with soulmates, people who were there for each other during the good and the bad. However, hearing this song in my head completely caused me to reimagine my perspective. Love songs can be completely platonic. I was not surrounded by anyone who I was involved with romanticaly, yet I had never felt more love. The bond of my seemingly evergreen group of friends. We had all come from different journeys, and had experienced different hardships, yet somehow, we all came together on New Year’s Eve, stayed the night and had entered the start of a new year together. Now when I hear this song, I do not think about how I don’t feel that way toward anyone, but rather, how lucky I am to feel a different way towards an entire group of people.