What Happens When You Don’t Ask

My year resets twice: in September and, obviously, in January, like the rest of us.

I wake up every 1st of January feeling like a new woman; walking, talking, and acting like a brand new version of myself. I treat New Year’s Eve almost like a religious ceremony. I spend it with my family, setting intentions for the year ahead, calm and collected. As someone who is so good at losing her shit, New Year’s Eve is, contrary to everyone else, one night where I don’t take it too far. Not even far, at all. I have this belief that the new year will go the way you enter it, so I try to spend it as spiritually as possible. Boring. 

Anyway, this year was the same. I started setting intentions and making wishes

as everyone around me went 10, 9, 8…

I wished for everything. Everything I had envisioned for myself this year. Many did come true. But I decided not to ask for one thing. Something I normally ask for, something so many people normally ask for. I didn’t ask for love. I left it out.

I didn’t ask to be with anyone. I didn’t want to meet someone. I didn’t want anyone to enter my life. I didn’t wish for love. 

Well, you plan, and then life plans, and all that, obviously. I ended up falling in love. Unexpectedly, but also expectedly, I guess.It was weird because it was love. I was familiar with it. I caught it before. But this was different. Very different from anything I had experienced before. Every step of it was difficult. Minefield. It wasn’t about two people; it was about everyone but them. There were so many voices involved.

When I first met him, I thought we were sharing one mind and one heart at times. Despite being so different, despite being raised in completely different families, countries, social circles somehow - about to say something super cringe but, bear with me — whatever souls are made of, his and mine were the same.

Maybe not the same, but pretty similar.

Sue me.

Months passed, and with every incident, everything became more and more complicated. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone had a part to play.

Love stopped being about two hearts and became about all these people who never really knew what was happening when it was just the two of us. And I think all of that affected us both immensely. How could it not?

How could two people be next to each other all the time and still grow distant? It was weird. I kind of knew it was inevitable. The water was getting blurrier with every intervention, and we were drifting further away from each other. And eventually, we did.

We lost each other while trying to avoid everyone else around us. And somehow, we were both left with the very people we had tried hardest to run away from. I still don’t know what happened, or how it all got here.This year felt like a time lapse. And here I am, standing today with not much explanation, not much clarity, just a few lessons. I think the biggest thing I learnt is something people always say, but maybe only fully understand once it happens to them: Our words are indeed our universe.

Whatever you say has a pretty good possibility of coming through.

I deliberately didn’t ask for love, and somehow I ended up in the biggest love I’ve ever experienced , just not in the way I wanted it to unfold.

My mum used to always tell me not to cut down on the “ingredients” when making a dream. Don’t downgrade your wish. Ask for exactly what you want, because it will happen. And maybe she was right. Because when I asked for everything but love, I received the most “unlove” love I have ever known. Maybe that was the lesson. Don’t be scared to wish.

Don’t make your dreams smaller because you’re afraid of what they might cost you. Sometimes, what we’re too afraid to wish for finds us anyway, only without the beauty we imagined it would have.

So maybe next year, I’ll have the courage to ask for everything.

Including love. But this time, I will try to be very precise about the kind. 

Written by, Lara Kurtulus