Twenty Sixteen: "It was the best of [years]; it was the worst of [years]"

As I alter western literature's most famous antithesis, I realize I am likely in the minority opinion pool here, especially against individuals’ opinions about which I care and honor: 2016 has been the best year of my life to date.
I have always been a person deeply appreciative of failure, trouble, pain, the great human negatives, because at a young age, I learned that these are the best experiences in which we can participate. This was 2016 for most Americans, I’d estimate. But I really had no idea it was coming, neither did most Americans. But I knew at the end of 2015, as I started to change my life completely, that 2016 was going to be something special. In January, Emma Impink said to me: “2016 is gonna be the year of Pat.” With brevity but in accordance to her wit and depth and the ease in her deployment of both, she was completely right. It has been.
The mere fact that this piece of writing is not only in existence but is being shared publicly is a major response and product to my claim.
Ever since I was a younger man, I routinely exclaimed how inherently necessary change is to the human being's social, physical, and psychological development. And routinely - this word again, though non-ironically recorded in association with "change" - the exclamation was paired with my favorite statement of precocious bravado: "I'm not even the same person I was yesterday." While I might have believed that statement for many years, bravado again, as I got older I only began to truly understand how.
And though I would like to talk about politics in association with a piece essentially in some regard of review to 2016, I am going to refrain, because the last thing any audience needs at this point is another white male POV of socio-political discourse.
But in regards to this POV, this "year in review," personal intimacy, I've come to learn this year, is the human being's greatest challenge, but also its greatest reward.
I've always been fiercely independent. Working at a younger age than most millennial Americans, acquiring functional domesticity younger than most millennials, and evolving socially and educationally largely on my own by virtue of my familial nurturing and rebellion to structure (set up undoubtedly by this same nurturing), I have always been autonomous, many times to a fault, as I can be pretty damn stubborn - I absolutely hate asking for help, which is my fatal flaw perhaps. But there are certain aspects of my life that have been lived too much through others. And I don’t just mean in personal relationships.
By no fault less my own, I learned the good old fashioned way to take myself seriously, to appreciate myself as a whole and not just compound appreciation and love into the areas that are "conveniently accessible" or "marketable" to others. Through giving away the majority of my possessions, save for a mattress, a family heirloom, my records, my books, my paintings, and my films (the core of me); downsizing my life into a small room in a shared space with a family of four; getting utterly devoured by a brief love interest to whom I gave away too much of myself (“that’ll do, Pig”); completely swallowed politically and structurally by my budding career in academia and my subsequent firing; mending a long standing riff in my family; and completely picking up and moving to the other side of the world, I developed the personal intimacy that had long alluded me.
I did so, because I finally stopped to listen and allow myself to be wrong, to be less destructively independent, to allow the concept of letting these uncontrollable phases and scenarios be just that, out of my control.
I turned 30 this year, and while I thought, "hey, it's just another quantification of life, a number is all; it's no big deal" I was wrong there, too. I don't know if this milestone influenced my changes or if my changes influenced the enormity of this milestone, but it is somehow, nonetheless, a correlating relationship. And at 30, I can say this at least: The first step to the development of my personal intimacy was understanding, beyond the intellectual, that really, very much, everything comes in waves and phases: Love, pain, happiness, sadness, etc. All waves, all temporary. By allowing myself to be real with me, I understood that peace is the recurring state worthy of personal sustainability.
“The only permanent state is impermanence.” I am forever changed by this statement.
The intimacy gained, too, is the product, therefore, of the intimacy invested. We can develop this in many ways. And while mine was personal, reflexive of the self, I was able, also, to rid myself of the reluctance to share that with others, platonic and romantic. I did this, because the reflexive, the internal helped me completely let go of an issue I was unaware I had, an apprehension lying in wait, the intimacy that laid bare The Deep: Those matters of identity, the intangible, the un-qualify-able, the personally abstract form of which I cared so much about what others thought.
Developing personal intimacy helped me trash that. This piece of writing alone is most indicative of this gain. A 2015 Appreciator issue would’ve never featured something like this from me. As well, I think I’ve used self-reflexive and personal-first language more this year in conversation than the last several years combined. I grew closer with my friends, made new ones, and had stronger romantic encounters, no matter how brief they were. I developed more as an artist, because I developed me more.
In short, I just don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks of me anymore at any social, professional, or familial level. This is the most liberating feeling I’ve experienced in 30+ years of existence.
With the many faces it holds to our respective mirrors of daily life, intimacy is the conduit of change. Intimacy, and a lack thereof, is present in the myriad visages we construct every day. And we tend to construct a form of intimacy with others, but not nearly enough with ourselves; and the latter, by the way, will eventually adversely affect the former.
Our social media expressions today, for example, work to compound our need for connection and acceptance, but they all too often express an idealized or veiled legitimacy of us.
What I appreciate most right now in the new me is my own willingness to understand that intimacy is the driver of real growth and development, but my own experience in this is my privilege to be in the position to recognize and appreciate it, to catch its presence, which is a privilege afforded by luck of the genetic draw: My gender, my race, my education, the ultimate privileges, my winning lottery tickets. These are not afforded to many, to the downtrodden, the maligned, the disenfranchised. Who among these has the time to think about conceptions of human growth and development? Time spent in utterly sprawling survival and strife is overwhelming, engulfing, stunting.
I appreciate that I can appreciate my role in the world and in my own life, that I am in a position to have so many things in my life taken care of, regardless of how they arrived in their currency, that I can look inward, that I can pause and consider, that I can meditate, that I can just be. 2016 on a larger scale has encapsulated the divide between those that can engage intimately and those that simply don't have the time to.
If you are still around, should you not have tl;dr’d my piece a long while ago, thank you for doing so. I am not writing to inspire. I am writing to say that for me, this is truly a depth and dimension developed by a personal reality that may or may not be lacking in you. I am writing to ask you to consider.
I used to laugh at my mother for years for reading yoga texts, works of spiritual individuality, and the Tony Robbins-like writers of the world. Here I am now expressing something of kin. Go figure. But here it goes: Put yourselves out there next year. Say what you feel. Hear others to listen, not to respond. Take the chance of your opinions, even if they aren't "post-able" or noteworthy representations of the status quo. And really consider your lives being yours, belonging to you, not representing you.
And in a year where we have distinctively grown further apart as American social beings, as humans, take the time to grow closer together with you, which will help you reconnect to others. If The Missing Piece Meets the Big O truly is the textual representation of me, I will tell you that you cannot love, consider, and devour all of this life completely until you devour yourself. Because only you can complete you. Understanding this makes everything in your life more enjoyable simply because you are you for you and by you; everything else becomes an addition and not a completion. This idea is powerful and awesome in the true meanings of these words.
All structures in life work from the atomic foundation, the internal center, outward. If 2016 can be conceived as anything to anyone as a general whole, conceive of it as an opportunity to look inward and allow first. The rest will follow. I’ve never been more certain of anything.
Appreciate yourself.

Pat Marino appreciates.