They say the new year is a time for fresh starts, but I’ve never been one to put much stock in arbitrary calendar dates. Still, as I sit here in my apartment on the first couple days of 2025, watching the January light cast long shadows across my bedroom floor, I can’t help but feel the weight of everything that’s happened. The mistakes I’ve made. The people I’ve hurt. The person I thought I was versus the person I turned out to be. The gap between those two versions of myself seems to grow wider with each passing day of reflection.
I’ve spent countless nights replaying that evening with Marianna in my head. The way her knee pressed against mine at the bar, the intoxicating mix of mezcal and desire, the kiss that changed everything. But lately, I’ve been thinking more about what came after. The lies I told Kate. The way I convinced myself that what happened wasn’t really cheating, wasn’t really betrayal. The mental gymnastics I performed to justify my actions. The carefully constructed narrative I built where I wasn’t really the bad guy – just a victim of circumstance and chemistry.
The truth is, I’m tired of being that person. Tired of the cognitive dissonance between who I pretend to be and who I actually am. Tired of the careful dance of half-truths and omissions. Kate deserved better. Hell, even Marianna deserved better – though I later learned her boyfriend back home might have appreciated the irony of our shared moral flexibility. Sometimes I wonder if they’re still together, if she told him, if she went through her own version of this reckoning. But I guess that’s not my story to know anymore.
So here I am, at the dawn of a new year, making promises to myself that feel different from the usual resolution fodder. I’m not pledging to hit the gym more or cut back on carbs. Instead, I’m committing to something far more challenging: radical honesty. Not just with others, but with myself. It’s a term I picked up in therapy – another surprise twist in this story of self-discovery. The idea is simple, but the execution is anything but.
It starts with acknowledging the hard truths. I’m not the victim in my own story – I’m the antagonist. The choices I made weren’t accidents or momentary lapses in judgment. They were conscious decisions, each one a brick in the wall of self-deception I built around myself. Kate and I aren’t together anymore, and that’s not because of fate or circumstance or compatibility issues. It’s because I chose to destroy something real in pursuit of something fleeting. When she finally found out – because secrets like this always surface eventually – her face didn’t show anger or even disappointment. Just a profound sadness that I still see sometimes in my dreams.
Moving forward means more than just avoiding temptation. It means understanding why I gave in to it in the first place. Was it really about Marianna’s hypnotic beauty and accent that reminded me of my heritage? Or was it about the thrill of doing something I knew I shouldn’t? The intoxicating power of being wanted by someone new? My therapist suggests it might be about self-sabotage, about not believing I deserved the stable, loving relationship I had. I’m not sure if she’s right, but I’m learning to sit with these uncomfortable possibilities.
I’ve started therapy – another thing I used to mock as self-indulgent navel-gazing. Turns out there’s something powerful about sitting in a room with someone whose job is to call you on your bullshit. We’ve been unpacking not just what happened with Kate and Marianna, but the patterns that led me there. The way I use charm as a shield, humor as deflection, and self-deprecation as a pre-emptive strike against real criticism. The way I learned to navigate relationships like a performance, always playing a role instead of just being myself.
The hardest part isn’t the big changes – it’s the small ones. It’s catching myself in moments of casual dishonesty. The white lies we all tell to make life smoother, the small deceptions we justify as kindness. I’m learning that true kindness doesn’t require deception, and that honesty doesn’t have to be brutal to be effective. It’s about finding that middle ground between truth and compassion, something I never bothered to look for before.
Occasionally, I’ll think that I still see Marianna sometimes, passing through different hallways. We haven’t spoken since she went back home, not really anyway. There’s this kind of tension now – the awareness of shared culpability, of mutual understanding. Sometimes I wonder if she’s doing her own version of this soul-searching, or if I’m just a chapter in her study abroad story, a cautionary tale about American boys and their wandering eyes. Or maybe she doesn’t think about me at all. That possibility used to terrify me – the idea of being forgotten, of not mattering. Now I find something almost comforting in it. Some stories aren’t meant to be anything more than what they were: brief intersections of lives that change us in ways we never expected.
My friends have noticed the changes. Alex, who watched it all unfold that night at the bar, mentioned recently that I seem different. “More distracted,” he said, though I’m not entirely sure what he meant. Justin just said I seem less “like I’m trying to perform for everyone,” which I choose to take as a compliment. They’re still processing their own roles in all of this – the times they could have called me out but didn’t, the ways they enabled my behavior through their silence. We’re all learning, I suppose.
I don’t know if these changes will stick. I don’t know if I’ll ever fully become the person I aspire to be. But for the first time in a long time, I’m trying to align my actions with my values instead of adjusting my values to match my actions. It’s uncomfortable, often painful work. But it feels necessary, like setting a broken bone so it can heal properly. There’s something almost poetic about the pain – like maybe it’s the price of becoming someone better.
So here’s to 2025. Not as a magical reset button or a clean slate, but as a reminder that change is possible, even if it comes in small, imperfect increments. I’m not asking for forgiveness – that’s not what this is about. I’m just trying to be better, one honest moment at a time. Some days are harder than others. Some days I fall back into old patterns, catch myself in the middle of a convenient lie, or find myself longing for the simplicity of being the person I used to be.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough of a start. Not a clean break from the past, but a slow, deliberate walk toward something different. Something true.
-Leandro Colon