The party was polite in the way funerals are polite. All smiles, no teeth. I stood with a glass I didn’t ask for, nodded at sentences that sounded pre-approved, watched guests perform versions of themselves they had memorized long ago. Every conversation ended right where it began. Someone whisked away the person who was trying to pry information out of my bored self, and that was when I noticed it.
A movement in the shrubbery. Nothing dramatic, nothing urgent, just enough to interrupt the monotony. Others paid it no mind, but it was the only thing I could focus on—though it was a happenstance that my field of vision flitted across the motion. Stillness resumed. The party had been dull since the invitations were mailed out, details of the rendezvous outlined in sans-serif. Another quiver that would have escaped the average eye had I not already been watching the bush. Whatever hid inside the greenery was biding its time, eventually begging to be seen. I resonated. Outside my periphery, teacups clinked and niceties were exchanged to a yawn. Everyone was civil and unoffending, curious to a bore. Have you not given a second thought to moving home? How are your studies progressing? What is it that you do at the bank again? A snooze fest would have been a more accurate description of the gathering than a ‘party’.
Then, it happened.
Something darted out of the shrubbery and raced through the crowd. A rabbit! White as snow and peculiarly dressed—too tailored to be accidental, too intentional to be real—with a watch dangling from its pocket. The speed with which it ran told me that it was either late for something important or early for something life-altering. Regardless, it did not acknowledge me. It did not ask permission to run.
As if the rabbit and I were bound by a thread, I felt the urge to pursue its path. Without planning, without weighing consequences, I followed blindly. I wish I could tell you that I was overcome by a wave of bravery, but that wasn’t the case. I felt impulsive. Reckless. Embarrassed, even. The guests began tracing me with their eyes, but no one stopped me. That scared me more than it should have. If the rabbit was merely a figment of my imagination, unexisting to others, then they must have thought me a madwoman. And nobody would extend the next party invitation to a madwoman, though would I have attended?
The rabbit did not let up despite my lungs begging for mercy. The questions in my mind took priority over the pleas of my body. Did the rabbit know where it was going or was it mindlessly moving one leg after the other? What if all this effort led nowhere? What if this was a mistake disguised as momentum? Self-destruction dressed as courage? Why couldn’t I stop running after it? Did I want to stop?
Soon, the garden gave way to towering woods not designed for certainty. Paths wound, disappeared, and reappeared as they pleased. Branches threatened to claw at me if I didn’t immediately turn back, but I hadn’t come this far just to turn back. The rabbit kept its pace ahead of me—close enough to keep a flicker of hope alive, far enough to keep doubt perched on my shoulder. Yet, the deeper we ventured into the belly of the woods, the clearer it became what I was chasing: uncertainty.
The rabbit was a strange compass; always pointing somewhere, but never promising the right direction. The thrill was no longer how much I’d achieve at the end of the chase, but whether I would even achieve anything at all. Not everything you chase will explain itself to you; the rabbit sure never bothered to turn around and soothe my woes. Some things require movement before meaning. Some things require faith you don’t yet possess.
The ground continued to shift beneath my feet, refusing me any semblance of familiarity. I thought about the party, about how safe it was, how predictable it was, how I was well-prepared to spout answers and enact behaviors accepted by society. I thought, then, about how the party asked everything of me. Here, in the woods, nothing was asked of me, yet I was willingly offering everything. I started to tire out, to entertain the possibility of pausing. My hairpin focus started to fray, clouded by questions galore once more. Was I in this for the thrill of the chase, because I believed in the rabbit, or was I, like Alice, running away from a circumstance I did not want to be in? And yet, every time I cast a glance behind me, I realised something unsettling. I don’t remember how to go back, even if I wanted to. The ground shifted again, reminding me that it is a privilege to run in the first place. So I ran.
All of this year, I ran without care for how the wind had ruffled my hair, how the branches had bruised my skin, how the bottom of my feet were more earth than me. I ran after glimpses of opportunities that did not come with instructions. I ran toward fear because it mattered. I ran into rooms without invitation, believing that belonging would come eventually. I had had enough of being told the kind of woman, writer, daughter, and friend I needed to be. It was lonely to choose myself in a world that benefited from my compliance. My heart dropped to my stomach all the times I couldn’t distinguish growth from unraveling. But I ran.
And when you run, you leave things behind. I left people who preferred the version of me that was docile and polite. I left plans that I had made down to a T. I left the comfort of being easily understood and accommodating. But the grief for all of that was lighter to carry than the person I could become if I just kept running. I chased so much that my feet were used to running more than they were used to walking. On the way, I caught glimpses of the rabbit reflected in puddles and looking glasses—always moving, always distorted. Sometimes, it looked promising. Sometimes, it looked foolish. Most of the time, it looked exactly like me.
Everything I’ve been chasing is an opportunity. Everything I’ve been chasing is me. What are we if not a vessel of opportunities waiting to be realized? Nothing gives your name more meaning than your responding to it, and purpose isn’t something to be sought but something that demands we show up.
The forest eventually thinned, like it was a manifestation of what clouded my understanding. The air shifted and allowed clarity in. That was when I saw the clearing. And in it, a party. The one I ran from. As I stepped closer, recognition found home in the hollow parts of me. The guests—they were all me. Versions of me at varying ages, dressed in expectations foisted onto them. The me who stayed because it was safe. The me who said ‘yes’ when she really meant ‘no’. The me who believed that being agreeable meant I was a good person. The me who waited patiently for permissions that would never know my name. They were standing with glasses they didn’t ask for, nodding at sentences that sounded pre-approved, talking about rabbits they would never chase after.
Curiously, one of them asked, “Why did you leave?”
I didn’t have a rehearsed answer this time, only the truth.
“Because something moved in the bushes and I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life pretending I hadn’t noticed.”
The rabbit reappeared, sitting before me like a question mark. Oh! It was never meant to lead me away from anything. It was meant to lead me through. Through noise and doubt, fear and loss. Through the terrifying practice of choosing myself over and over again.
I have been chasing rabbits all year, betting on curiosity more than on caution, and it has paid off. As I stand before January, my legs are exhausted from chasing rabbits, my hands pruned from blue burials, the skin below my knees scratched from playing fetch, my palms scabbed from prying oysters, my desk stained from writing letters and erasing narratives, my throat tightening from choking on déjà vu, my voice hoarse from asking you to put down the cigarette, my eyes dry from putting on a one-woman fountain show, my stomach uneasy from eating mermaids, my faith shaken from meeting god at a friend’s wedding, my fingers pricked from sewing buttons, my world colored in orange.
Yet. Still running. Still writing. More me than I have ever been.
I end this year as I end every one—in gratitude and in words.
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