Favorite Moments and Lessons of 2025

Dear 2025, you have been the pain behind every tear, every ache in my bone, the fog in my head, and the constant stab in my chest. You have been the year that utterly, unequivocally broke what was left of me. If there’s anything I am leaving this year feeling, it is definitely heartbroken—just plain broken.

That sounds incredibly morbid to begin my usual yearly wrap-up post, but this year was incredibly morbid, to say the least.

At the end of last year, I knew that there were going to be many changes going into 2025—moments that would cause me grief, sorrow, loss—and I thought that I would be okay. I truly did. I would tell myself to enjoy each moment before the storm actually uprooted my life; to check in with myself to make sure I was okay. Funny how when disaster strikes, the last thing you worry about is yourself. The last thing you make sure to take care of is yourself. You let yourself feel the depths of the destruction, and then wonder why you ended up in the darkest hole you could never imagine.

I fell into a hole.

I sunk into the Mariana Trenches.

I found comfort in the darkness for most of the year, sans maybe the two months I had to prepare for the catastrophic disaster that was to befall on everything and everyone I know.

I thought I had let go of Depression, only to be embraced in its arms fully this year, and held onto in the most comforting hug for months. Nothing felt better than to lie down every single day with Depression holding me together when nothing else was keeping my pieces together. I let Depression stay with me in new chapters that should have felt shiny and exciting, but soured to monochromatic and melancholic because I could not go past what I had in the four walls of my sorrow. I let Depression sit with me on the floor whenever I looked around me and wondered how I ended up in a place that did not feel like mine with no one but myself and my delusions to keep my going. I let Depression put a hand on my shoulder whenever I would stare out the window or my doorway, wanting to be at home, knowing I couldn’t go back home, but the place that I was in wasn’t home, but had to be. I let Depression walk me to the shower where I found the only comfort in the waters that felt like tears encasing my whole body—tears that I wish washed me out, tears that made me feel less alone in the single tears that only captured my face. I let Depression run with me in a neighborhood that was foreign, to clouds in a sky that were distant or off—like the whole world was different and I did not want to bare the thought that when my whole world fractured, everything shifted so noticeably that the changes irked me like splinters all throughout my body. I let Depression follow me to work where everything I saw was everything I lost, and everything I wish I could return to. I put on a front throughout the day, letting myself crawl back into yet another room that was far removed from where I was a year ago, let alone six months ago, wanting to be in the darkness that was my life.

I craved darkness.

Dark places.

Dark clothes.

Dark music.

Dark thoughts.

I would have rather closed my eyes and slept through this year if it meant escaping the nightmare that became my living reality. I just couldn’t fathom wanting to do anything, be anywhere except the namesake of what it provides—a comforter. Every single day, I wanted to sleep longer. I wanted to wake later. I wanted to nap. I wanted to rest. And it pains me me to write that sentiment right now because I can’t believe I fell into the abyss again after working so, so hard my whole life not to be in this place I feared I would be in after everything.

My heart hurts knowing the person I lost this year.

My heart hurts knowing everything I lost this year.

What makes this year worse, is yes, I have been in heady places before—physically, mentally, and emotionally—places where I felt numb, places where I would starve myself, places where I felt absolutely alone.

But what made this year unlike anything I have felt before, was just that—I felt. I felt it all.

What a beauty and gift to feel because what is life if not feeling?

I know what it is to be numb–the absence of any emotion—truly a walking ghost, trying to live a life that does not feel real.

But my gosh, to feel the zenith of every emotion multiplied tenfold?

To be human with every apex of emotion magnified, is an experience that can only be best as surivival.

Because that’s what every single day was: surivval.

Waking up. Trying to get ready. Trying to show up when I didn’t want to. Trying to do what I didn’t want to. Trying to take care of myself when I didn’t have the energy. Trying to be okay when I felt less than okay. Trying trying trying.

Never living living living.

I’m so exhausted from surviving.

I just want to live. When will I get to live instead of try to get by?

I’ve been saying more often than not this year that I was tired.

And I think people thought I meant I just needed sleep, which I very much did. But this tired was a physical, mental, emotional tired where my brain could not fully rest even when I did fall asleep. This was a tired of having to endure the destruction of what already was. Then having to survive another catastrophe while still never fully recovering from the last destruction only three months before.This was a tired where I kept waiting to hear the sirens of another storm to afflict my life. This was a tired of being constantly deracinated with a new environment, new people, a new set of responsibilities I did not want and did not enjoy. This was a tired of copious amounts of loss, grief, heartbreak, all while having the world turn around you and being expected to show up and not be tired.

I was so, so tired.

I am so tired.

This year has been utterly exhausting.

I’ve sobbed enough to fill the hole I am in.

If there is any moment that encapsulates this year, that moment would be when I was sitting in front of my mirror, clutching my chest while trying to find my heartbeat. I wanted to know if I was still breathing, if I was still being, if I was still there. I wanted to ease the honest ache I felt in my heart, because I truly cannot explain how my heart actually hurt—like my heart knew I was in a horrible place of heartbreak and it was breaking and hurting with me. I was clutching my heart, my eyes red as my broken heart, my face splotchy, my one eye lazy from all the tears over the many moths, looking at my phone. I wanted to call someone to not feel so alone in my pain, but I also didn’t want to bother someone with my pain—to burden them with all the heaviness I already dispelled to them. But I also didn’t want to be alone. I always dealt with things by myself. So I sat there, clutching, wheezing, trying to find breath, looking at myself, wondering when will this pain stop. I didn’t want to feel this pain anymore. I didn’t want to constantly be sad, to feel hurt, to feel lost, to feel so immensely that I needed proof of life. I wanted to feel better and for things to get better, but I was tariffed that I didn’t know when life would get better, if life got better. Would life always so cavernous? I sat there. And sat there. I wailed. I coughed. I sobbed. I felt.

Why did I feel this pain so much?

Because I love so much. I have loved so much.

Because with every loss, came love.

To have loved something or someone so much, means to grieve in tantamount, maybe even more so, knowing they are gone. Or what you had is gone.

So many things can change in a year.

So many things can be lost in a year.

I am not the same person I am when I wrote this post last year, hoping that I would be okay, or a place where I didn’t feel defeated.

I’m sad to tell that girl that she does feel defeated.

She feels not okay.

I feel like I *I shouldn’t say this to myself* I failed her.

But that’s me being hard on myself because I know I didn’t fail if I tried the best I could given how bleak life has been. If I am being honest, I don’t remember much of this year. I just remember two months of sort of peace before the first storm hit, and then trying to live with that. Then being stuck by a second storm, and trying to live with double the pain. Then trying to show up everyday after that, so much I would count the days, weeks, and moments until I could get some sort of break, some reprieve. I told myself to look forward to something at the end of the week just to make it by. If not, just get through the day. I couldn’t breathe this year. I couldn’t truly rest. Not when I had to survive, survive, survive. On a thread. Not on a precipice, I was far gone down. I needed a thin line to save me, or a fine line between surviving and just letting myself stay down. The latter half of the year didn’t feel as heavy (up until November), but things still had this melancholic tone being the holidays or just life in general felt so different, that memories were making moments hard. There were more tears than smiles—I don’t know the last time I laughed or smiled and meant it. There were more hours wasted to sleeping. There were more moments in the confines of my four walls than outside in a world that went on without knowing my pain. There were more lessons that were tied to loss and grief. This might have not been the happiest year, a year filled with many memories, more like traumas, but you got through it.

You know, to myself writing this or reading this, you got through it.

You counted down the days ever since March, that this year would be over, and now it almost is.

You made it.

You’re here.

And that’s something to be proud of for all the days, minutes, hours you counted down hoping you could let this year go because you do not want to experience this year anytime soon.

As much as this year broke every part of my life and myself, there were some lessons to be learned and memories (that I do remember) that were heavy, hard, and hopeful? I hope.

Without further ado, here are my favorite and hardest lessons and memories of 2025, an unforgettable and hoping to forget year that felt like losing everything:

🐍🖤✨ Favorite and Hardest Lessons ✨🖤🐍

Grief is Love With No Where to Go

Sorry to start this post so heavy, but this was the lesson that has lived in me for the past year.

My mind feeling like a mad person with a pen, scribbling, never letting up. The ink left in the rain, dripping, spilling, contorting.

A person long past gone, heavy with each grief I held—trying to hold—trying to hold myself together.

Because when you lose someone, some place, some thing you deeply, truly love, you feel this cavern open up in your heart, the echo of where that person, place, or thing used to be.

Now there’s just an empty space—an absence that someone, some place, something occupied—something that you don’t have anymore.

And it’s like waking up every single day aware of the hole in your chest, the tangles in your mind, and not knowing what to do to fill the pain. So you try water because water is gentle. But water spills out of you in rivulets, in tsunamis down your eyes. Then you draw gauze because gauze is healthy. But then gauze gets soaked up in all the blood, seeping through the cracks in your pain. Then you try rocks because rocks are stable and strong. Rocks hold you together, but rocks are heavy. Rocks you have to hold. Rocks you have to carry.

I’ve been carrying rocks. I’ve been holding rocks. I’ve been weighed down by the rocks.

But they somehow keep this heavy body of mine together when I had nothing, absolutely nothing, left within me to want to hold it together.

I heard that grief is love with no where to go.

And I’ve never heard such an honest expression of how carrying all these rocks felt.

Like all this love I had that I lost, had no where to go, so this emptiness was causing me so much pain, so much heaviness, so much grief.

I felt like I couldn’t catch a breathe that wasn’t jagged. I felt like I couldn’t think a thought that wasn’t connected to the cavern in my heart. I felt like I couldn’t see past the dreary window that said the world is no longer the same.

I had no where to go.

I had all this love for the homes I lost, the people I seemingly lost, the sense of safety and stability I lost, and absolutely no home for that pain but within. It’s funny how that love turns to pain after the loss. How deeply that love cuts, not because it was hurtful or not beautiful, but because that love was just so—beautiful and comforting.

It’s like love from loss makes a new home in grief. A grief that becomes love’s new home. A home inside of you.

Oh, how I had so much grief within.

Because where does that love go? Truly?

Where?

But within.

Grief almost becomes you because you experienced insurmountable pain that it’s like you have all this love within that no longer has a place in this world—homeless—wanting somewhere to go, but it doesn’t. So that pain stops at you, stops to be with you because there is nowhere else for that grief to be. And that grief is such a heady pain to carry.

I have yet to find a healthy place where the love from a loss goes.

Grief is one of the most complicated, agonizingly painful emotions in the world that I never really understood in this year just how much grief can take from you after having so many things taken. I never really understood just how much those five stages of grief live through you too. And no one really prepares you for the unexpected staircase that is grief: one moment you are taking the next step only to be knocked down to the bottom, to take the next few steps, and then the next step, and being knocked down again—an endless loop of falling and climbing and falling harder.

In my grief, I feared the acceptance.

I didn’t want to accept or believe that what I lost was truly gone because if I knew that thing was gone, then it almost felt like I was betraying the love I had for what I lost—-like I was moving on and forgetting about that love. But just because you are moving forward, doesn’t mean you ever forget that love or don’t carry it like stone in your pocket. That stone always stays, it just doesn’t seem as heavy anymore because of the strength you built to carry it. I don’t know if I am in my acceptance phase of my grief, but I know I will always carry the love for everything I lost this year.

Even if I carry that loss inside me every single day—even when that love feels heavy, when that loves feels nostalgic, when that love feels hopeful.

Being at Your Lowest, Isn’t When You Finally Should Get Help

I’ve hit rock bottom so many times in my life.

The last time I hit absolute rock bottom was truly a decade ago.

That was when I should have gotten help.

But I didn’t.

I knew I should have, but I was too young to know how to get myself help. So I grew up carrying this backpack of hurt, that grew insurmountably until I found myself giving up trying to be okay with carrying this backpack this year.

I let myself drown with the backpack I was carrying, sinking further and further into my darkness—the rock bottom.

I always asked for help. I’ve been ridiculed for it, being told things like, “Are you crazy?” or “If you talk to someone, you’ll just go to a hospital.” I was always spoken down to whenever I voiced that I needed help—I wanted to talk to someone.

If I can tell anyone anything, it’s you shouldn’t have to wait until you are at your lowest to actually get help.

Get help when you feel like you need help.

Please do not wait for anyone, anything to seek out what you need for yourself. Please do not wait for permission from anyone (unless you are a minor, unfortunately), the universe, and most importantly, yourself to find help. If you are a minor, please do not take no from anyone when you advocate for help because no one understands or knows yourself better than you do; ignore anyone who denies you or makes you feel small for wanting help because they cannot speak for YOUR health. Please do not wait until it is too late and you’re the floor of rock bottom, wondering if you still are alive or have anything to live for to get help.

Please.

Because I wish someone told me that when I was younger—that the help I needed was the help I deserved.

Because I spent so many years, practically a decade, letting so much trauma and hurt drag me through experiences where I thought I was okay, when really I wasn’t. And having had helped or going through a process of help, could have made me feel clearer in my decisions and emotions to be a person who didn’t react, but act.

Help can mean therapy. Help can mean a certain doctor. Help can mean a friend. Help can mean a family member. Help can mean a close confidant. Help can mean a teacher. Help can be anyone you trust.

If you need help, please speak up about getting help.

Don’t drown and pretend that you are just swimming the surface of life. Have someone who will be there to guide you back to shore, so you can actually start living your life, and taking off the backpack that causes you so much heaviness.

You don’t have to drown and stay there, waiting for a life guard to see you. They won’t. Sometimes you have to save yourself by getting that help as much as it is a struggle to find your voice and say that you do. But trust me, speaking up for your health is the best thing you can do.

I Was Always Hurting

Because I was at one of my lowest this year, I did seek help. Hence, the lesson above.

When starting therapy, we discussed memories from my childhood—memories I would replay to myself in the loneliest moments, memories that were uncomfortable and honest, memories I wish I could forget but unfortunately remember too vividly. To be frank, many memories, I don’t speak about to most people because sometimes I don’t think they will believe me that those experiences were real. When voicing the memories I kept secret in my head, the way my therapist looked at me bothered me.

Not that my therapist was judging me.

My therapists eyes would get bigger, redder, a frown pulling her lips. The room silent as if waiting to hear what I had to say.

But that look bothered me. My therapists look bothered me because that look validated that what I experienced as a kid was just as awful as I remembered it. And the look I received cracked open a whole other type of hurt that I didn’t know could crack open again.

Growing up, my childhood was difficult. I am not going to lie. I am not going to get into specifics.

But reflecting on my childhood, growing up sucked.

My childhood was nothing like any movie or show that I would watch on Disney Channel or Nickelodeon, but like any child, i wanted my family or childhood to feel as magical or wholesome as every family I saw. Some people aren’t so lucky.

There were more raised voices and tears.

There were more heady nights.

There were many tense days and years.

There was a lot of anger.

There was a lot of silence.

They say that childhood is formative years that shape who a person becomes. I truly do believe that growing up with a family who cares about you and makes you feel safe is such a privilege—to feel safe with the people around you, to feel loved, to feel stable. Oh what a gift. I often wonder who I would have become if I had a childhood that felt safe? A childhood where nothing constantly felt uprooted? A childhood built to last more than crumbled to fall?

Who would I be?

Would I be the confident person who walks into a room and everyones knows she means business and/or wants to know her/talk to her?

Would I be the person who smiles easily and makes friends with the first person she meets?

Would I be the person who goes out more without guilt and has dated different people?

I will never know.

Because I could never be that person; only the person I am today.

The person I am today, unfortunately, grew up very hurt and is living or contending with that pain. She carries that pain with her every single day, and somehow, despite it all, she tries her darnest. She tries her absolute best to be kind, to be caring, to be thoughtful, to be intelligent, to be confident. She tries so freaking hard because life was so freaking hard for her as a kid.

And I finally am understanding why it has been Herculean for me to just be okay most days. To say that I’m doing good.

Growing up with hurt is a wound that never heals, the wound just scabs over. When the wound is picked over, the wound is fresh—-still there. I will always have wounds, and they will always be picked over to feel fresh.

But I hope that doing some work and now understanding my hurt, that I can actually mend what has bled out of me.

I hope I can mend what has broken in me as a kid.

So I can be an adult who doesn’t always feel so hurt—so open to wounds and being wounded. Tolerating wounds.

To my younger self, I’m so so sorry that the world and the people closest to you never treated you with enough care to make you feel safe enough to be. You never deserved to feel unseen, on edge, attacked. You never deserved to be less than who you always wanted to be and the life you wanted to lead, and I’m so sorry that so many things took that hope and joy away from you to the point you stopped believing that things could be okay—that things could be good. I’m sorry for the little girl who clung to more sadness and more despair because she knew early on how easily happiness could be taken from her and how love is not a promise people actually keep, but break out of selfishness or protection. I’m sorry to the young girl who believed herself so ghastly that all she did was run and disappear into her own bones to feel good enough.’m so sorry so many people have let you down and who didn’t love you in the way you thought you would be loved. I’m so sorry for all the pain and hurt you carry and still carry.

To anyone reading this, I’m so sorry to your younger self too, and yourself now who carries that hurt.

I am hoping that you won’t always have to bear the hurt of others in your life or that the weight of that hurt doesn’t stop you from trying to continue on better. I hope life gets better and you hold space for the life you always deserved and the you that you always wanted to be.

Getting Out of Bed is the Bravest Feat

I’ve never been one to stay in bed.

I enjoy sleeping in. I like to go to bed at a certain time. I wake up a certain time for work.

A bed was just a place I slept; A place I rested.

But a bed became my destination—the one place I wanted to go and stay.

I now understand why people say getting out of bed can be hardest first step.

Sometimes you just want to lay down, curl up in a ball, and blankets around you. You just want to lay horizontal so the world feels as flat as you do on the inside. Being vertical, means getting up—world spinning, moving, everything on its axis going. Being on your side, means stagnation. Nothing can hit you when you are in your bed—nothing can hurt you.

But eventually, we have to get out of bed whether we like it or not. We might pound our clenched fists on our comforter or kick our sheets down with our legs. We might toss and turn as if the idea of getting out of bed will stop the action of actually having to put our legs on the ground and move. We might tell ourselves one more minute, two more minutes, before actually having to hoist ourselves up. People like us battle ourselves out of bed. Sometimes we lose, sometimes we win. On the days we win, getting out of bed is the greatest accomplishment we should be proud of.

Sounds dumb to say.

But getting out of bed is one of the greatest, if not, bravest feat when we can choose to never get up.

Also, I would like to emphasize that sometimes people do stay in bed for the whole day, weeks, and months, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Everyone is experiencing different things at different paces; heavy depression can cause someone to stay in bed for lengths at a time, and some cases people are directed to stay in bed by doctors. Whatever your journey is, is okay and please take the time you need to rest and take care of yourself.

This is more so about myself and a lesson/motivation I learned this year.

I believe getting out of bed is even braver when we choose to get up when we don’t want to.

Getting up can just mean putting your feet on the floor. Getting up can mean taking slow steps to the bathroom just to use the bathroom and brush your teeth—another win. Getting up can mean going to change your clothes to lie back down in bed or on the ground. Getting up can mean getting a sip of water and then maybe sitting down.

Getting up doesn’t have to mean springing out of bed, leaping to the bathroom, singing a song as you brush your teeth, and pirouetting as you get ready to get your day started. You don’t have to rush getting up or be rushed in your movements as you find your footing.

Small, simple steps.

A first step.

The hardest step.

Especially if you already don’t want to.

The World Keeps Going Even When You Can Not

It almost feels wrong.

Like a betrayal.

Almost like a “How dare the world spin on when my entire world collapsed.”

I woke up one day in a bed that was bigger, a room that was smaller, a sky that was the same but wholly different. The clouds seemed farther, almost too flat and out of reach. The birds sounded different, less joyful and more irritated. There was no whistling of the breeze, but a stiff rustle that shook the dead branches of the decaying bushes and trees beyond this window. The sun was no where to be seen, almost like moving caused the sun to move too.

The whole world shifted.

My whole world shifted.

Yet, the world spun.

People were going to malls, restaurants, sports games, the beach. Families were playing outside or dad’s were mowing lawns while mothers pruned flowers. Dogs were barking in the distance. Cars were still honking at each other or speeding up so fast on the road that I could hear the distinct screech of tires from the distance. The clouds were grazing in the sky, indiscernibly leaving unless you stared long and hard enough.

Life was happening around me, and yet . . . I. Was. Still. Here.

Four walls. Bigger bed. Unfamiliar small room. Boxes all around me. Different sky. Unrecognizable noises.

My heart heating up like a stove top.

How was life still happening?

I couldn’t believe it.

Everything in my life was seemingly swept away with the hurricane of every event, and I was stuck in the rubble of this room, but the world frustratingly went on.

And that’s when I realized as I sat at the edge of my bed, shadowed by the darkness of the debris. that no matter how much you feel like you’re world has ended, the world keeps going, and even if you do not want to, even when you cannot, you try to keep going too.

Keep going can mean slowly getting out of bed to take care of yourself.

Keep going can be lying down all day because rest is what you need.

Keep going can be having music and podcasts on all the time as you rest because the silence of the aftermath is defeaning.

Keep going can be putting on a TV show or movie and letting your brain latch onto the first fantasy of a life you wish you had or a life that takes your mind off of yours.

Keep going can be stepping into the shower after the worst and longest days of your life, and letting the soft sprinkle of the water hit your head as you stand there wondering how you ended up there.

Keep going can be going on a run while your tears run down your face.

Keep going can be eating food you don’t really taste or feel, but know the motion is there and the sentiment is there so you can just live.

Keep going can be scrolling for hours on end, looking for any sort of connection online that you are not the only human being out there who feels like their world has stopped.

Keep going doesn’t have to be much to mean much.

The world doesn’t wait for you.

But being okay again takes time; rebuilding from a break takes time—beginning again.

Getting up is going to be the greatest feat as I mentioned previously, but moving forward with the motion of the world? That’s going to be another challenge to overcome, especially when you are starting from ground zero again.

So we have to take the little, most incremental steps we can, to keep going. As much as it sucks.

Life keeps going.

Life doesn’t wait for you to be okay to keep going. As much as it sucks.

I know you don’t feel like you can keep going, and it’s going to be a struggle every single day until you want to brave the world again, but take the steps you can.

The world will always be there for you when you are ready to feel all of it again—the push and pull of life. But be gentle, and know that your world fell a part, but that doesn’t mean that the world is always trying to hurt you. I know that’s hard to trust, but I hope you know that the world really doesn’t want to cause you sorrow—it only tries to move you forward.

Decisions out of Fear is Not A Decision, it is a Mechanism

I’m going to talk a lot about choices.

Because I never really knew the impact or significance of making a choice.

I had to make one of the most visceral choices this year. However, reflecting on that time in my life, there were so many turbulent emotions and experiences that making my choice felt more like being scared.

I felt like someone was holding me hostage, telling me to chose tension or choose the unknown and if I didn’t choose, they would choose for me.

I was terffied.

Tension or the unknown?

Both sounded unappealing. I mean, why would I want to be in tense situations? But also, why would I want to face something I didn’t know? But on top of that, I didn’t want someone choosing my vice.

So I chose.

Not because I truly knew what I wanted, but because I didn’t think I had a choice. I was petrified that if I didn’t give an answer, then someone would take that choice away from me, and that, I couldn’t live with myself knowing I could have said something but I didn’t. And when I did say something, I feared I said the wrong thing because I had no time to think about what my choice meant.

I read something recently with how there’s a difference between a decision and a choice.

A decision is something you give more thought to in how the decision affects your future. A choice is an immediate response to options. I also saw how a choice is when you know what you want, but a decision is when you are overthinking what you think you want but don’t know the consequences of what will happen.

I felt like I was given a choice when I wanted to make a decision. Given the situation of what I was choosing, it should have been a decision. But I was scared, and that’s not fair; it’s not fair for anyone to decide something out of fear because they are terrified of either losing out on one of their choices or having no choice at all. Deciding out of fear can also be a learned response from years of feeling unsafe and like a person’s never had a choice in what they wanted in life—like everything happens around them or to them, and they had to go with it. So when that person is finally given a choice, but is rushed in that process, being rushed activates the fear because life never gave them the time or the courtesy to decide.

I was never given that courtesty. And really, honestly, that’s not fair.

I mean, yes, they told me to decide, but I didn’t really get a say in what I could choose because one thing felt like tension, the other the unknown and I had to know right then and there what I wanted.

I couldn’t think clearly; anyone in their right mind wouldn’t have.

How do you know what is right for you when you don’t have time to think? To fathom? To decide?

If I can say anything now, it’s when life gives you choices, no matter how long it takes you, please decide on your time. Think what you are choosing through even if you fear having your options taken from you because if the opportunity really was right for you—meant for you—that opportunity will stay, and it will not rush to leave you. What is meant to be in your life will give you an open door willingly and patiently. You have to know that you value yourself and your life so much more than what two things are offering you because what you decide ultimately affects you, and if they really wnat your answer, they can wait for as long as you need to figure out what you want for you. And screw what people say about “you have to choose already or accept the first choice,” because that’s not fair. That’s not right. You should feel assured, safe, peaceful about what you decide for you. If something doesn’t feel right, yes, trust that gut feeling, but also trust the part of you that says, “I need time.” I need to honor myself to think so I don’t decide on a whim. And if one of those options leave, let it.

That option wasn’t really for you then.

And if that other option leaves. Let it.

Find something else. That sounds easier said then done, but I think we need to be done as people with accepting the rush just because life moves so fast everyone wants answer. But we need patience, we need time. Life does move fast, but imagine deciding something you never really wanted because you said something so quickly and didn’t mean it. Then you have to live with that choice as long as you have to until you can choose something else. There’s no fault in choosing wrong, but if we have the choice to think about something, take your time.

We shouldn’t make decisions out of fear of losing something or someone.

A decision is peace, clarity of what you lose, but also what you have to gain.

I wish I had the time to understand both sides when I was rushed to choose.

What You Decide Now, is What is Best Based on What You Know

I recently watched a video on Instagram from @Cayydences.

He’s someone I offhandedly watch once in a while because he has the most unhinged motivational videos. But sometimes, he makes these really blunt, but genuine videos.

This one was one of them that randomly popped up on my feed as those kinds of videos do. And in this video he talked a lot about how he wanted someone out there to know that you made the best decision based on what you knew.

That idea really struck me.

I was faced with a lot of decisions this year, or shall I say, a really significant decision.

The day after, heck the night of, making this decision that would alter so much of my life this year, made me instantly regret every day since I made that choice.

Why did I say yes?

What if I didn’t say yes?

Why didn’t I wait? Why didn’t I think through more of what I was saying yes to?

Why? Why? Why? What if?

I can stew on all the why’s and what if’s, but that has truly never gotten me any answer I really wanted, and it’s never going to. Quite honestly, asking all these unanswerable questions has made me more upset at myself for constantly believing I messed up—-that I am at fault for ruining a good thing that I had.

I have beaten myself up about my decision so much this year to the point that my decision has pushed me more into my darkness. . .

Until I saw this video.

I did need to hear that today—I needed to hear what he said back then when I needed it too.

“You’re always making decisions based on what you knew back then.”

“How can you fault yourself for something you didn’t know back then? When you made that decision, you made the best decision based on what you knew.”

And when I heard that, there was this sudden the entire way I have been so hard on myself shifted—I felt the world ease.

Because I didn’t know.

I really didn’t know that when I made my decision all these months ago where that choice would lead me, what would happen or wouldn’t happen, but I made that choice because I only knew what I knew to make that choice. I had all the gut feelings that caused me anxiety—maybe it was just my anxiety and not a gut feeling—but gosh it felt like a gut feeling. I felt it everyday leading up to making one of the hardest choices I had to make so far. I had all the knowledge of the experiences that didn’t feel right to me or made me feel under appreciated. I had all the knowledge of how I was treated by people that felt undermining or controlled. I had the knowledge that felt passive aggressive towards the end as if this situation didn’t care what really happened to me, so they tried to save face by pretending they cared. I didn’t have the knowledge of if I was going to end up at the same place or be forced to a different place I didn’t choose.

So I had to make a choice.

I knew so much, but I also didn’t know so much back then. I have been faulting myself—blaming myself ridiculously for so long—-that I screwed up, I failed. But I did my best to make a choice.

And sometimes that’s all we can do.

You make a decision based on what you know, maybe how you feel and you go through with it.

You might end up loving the choice you made; you might end up disliking the choice you made.

But I liked what was said in how: “”So what if you made a bad decision? you learn about it and make another good choice and leave it.”

So what?

So what?

Sometimes we can get so in our head that once we make a choice, it’s locked in stone—forever.

Some choices are like that—-marriage, starting a family, buying a house, etc.

But some choices aren’t so rigid where you make that choice your forever. You still have time to make other choices. You can choose to stay, you can choose to go, you can choose soemething else entirely.

One decision doesn’t mean you failed, you screwed up.

One decision doesn’t mean you can’t decide what else you want.

I feel like I’ve carried the burden of feeling like I cannot escape my decision, and that’s not true.

I have the freedom—the agency—to deciede because it’s my life and I get to think about what I want for me.

And so what?

I made a wrong choice, I made a choice I didn’t like for the first time in my entire life, and I’ve lived with that choice this year. It’s been he**. But I did my best. I thought I made my best choice based on what I knew and felt, and that’s all I could do in that time and place of my life.

And all I can do now is truly to learn from what I have been experiencing, and to decide from there.

And I have been deciding from what I chose back then to what I know now.

That’s so crazy to think about—that you make choices back then based on what you know, but you are also actively making choices now based on all you’ve gained to think how you move forward.

I always thought that when you make a decision, it’s final. Done. The end.

It doesn’t have to be.

Life continues to change as you continue to change and grow, and if you don’t want something anymore, you don’t need to be stuck. You can change, you can try, you can fail, you can succeed, you can try again.

You can start over, start anew, start.

But you didn’t fail.

I’ve always been prideful in some ways, thinking whenever I decidied something that I chose right the first time.

Sometimes you don’t.

Sometimes you don’t get it right.

You get it wrong.

I’m learning that being wrong is living through the pain of learning of where you can choose to go right.

I hope that whatever decisions you make, that you know that it’s not a failure, it’s just you doing your best with what you think is best for you.

A Choice is Something You Have to Live With

This goes with my previous lesson, but a choice is something you live with.

You may not enjoy it, you may, but you have to go through whatever you decided.

You can’t just skip to the part where you made the choice, detest it, and then some how go back or find something else that feels better. I mean, sometimes you can go straight to the part where you find something else, but not everyone is fortunate enough to quickly find something else.

You just go through as gruesome and heavy as it may be; like a tree growing through a crack in the pavement.

I know that sounds sucky, but I don’t know, there’s no magic that says you can skip out on living the choice you said yes or no to. You live it and learn.

Tu vivi e impari.

And it very well might suck some major a**. It doesn’t always.

But I guess they call it growing pains for a reason—-it’s painful to grow.

It’s painful to go.

It’s painful to be somewhere or do something you feel good at, or be somewhere that’s familiar, and then go somewhere entirely unknown with people who feel foreign. You start over, and it’s like you are the foreigner to them because you are on the outside, trying to fit in—-trying to find where you belong.

I know for me, there’s so many times where I just wished—begged—the universe to go back to when I made my choice. To choose differently, so things were the same. But I couldn’t—can’t—go back. I could only go forward into this unknown of the choice I made.

I don’t give myself enough credit for doing the most terrifying thing—living with your choice.

And like I wrote above, just because you chose something, doesn’t mean it’s final.

You might have to endure that choice for a while because that’s just life and life can suck a fat one sometimes, but it doesn’t mean you’re done making choices that affect your life.

Making the choice I did earlier this year, I knew I was going to endure hardships and a rockiness that I didn’t really want to after I thought about it. I knew this year was going to be hard because of my decisions. I didn’t want to live with it; most days I don’t want to live with my choice I made because it’s so hard.

But I did.

I lived with my choice as best as I could this year.

And I did the thing that scared me: living through a choice that ended up not being the best for me or what I want.

Now, I have to do the other scary thing: making another choice and hoping that everything works out, but having that lingering fear of what my last choice cost me.

I hope, I really hope, I pray, that choices you make in life don’t always have to feel so monumentally final or heavy, and that the choices you are given lead to something your heart desires—-hat you have been wanting, needing, dreaming—that your choice leads you to the utmost good you deserve.

🥀🪴💔 Favorite and Heartbreaking Moments 💔🪴🥀

Losing My Home

One of the biggest concepts I had to grieve at the end of last year, was going into this year knowing I was losing my home.

I never really had a sense of home.

Growing up, my family moved houses a lot—sometimes literally moving even as close as down the street. We would pack our car with all our things and take multiple trips from one house to the other. To me, this was what moving was—a slow process of packing the car and driving to another house nearby, but still far away from the house I wanted to call home.

I associate a different memory to each house I have lived in; I associate a different chapter to each house.

The first house I lived in—a house I don’t quite remember—was my first home.

My second house was the house I thought was going to be our home. Until it wasn’t.

The third house was the house that split the family image askew.

The fourth house was a transitionary period.

The fifth house was, finally, what I felt was home.

I thought this last house I lived in was going to be the place where I finally could set down roots. I was told that it was going to be our “childhood house.”

From where I am from, most times, people grow up in the same home from birth to older age. They have rooms where they painted the walls an atrocious vibrant blue, dust surrounding the place where they had glow-in-the-dark stars, and old trophies or pictures of past accomplishments. They had rooms full of photos that changed or stayed the same year after year and couches and tables that have seen many gatherings. Home was a place where they grew up in and could return to no matter if they went off for school or eventually bought their own house to start a life/family.

I never really had that.

Until this last house.

I decorated the room the way I wanted. I painted the walls with colors I finally felt were mine. I built bookshelves that literally attached itself to the wall. I filled every closet with clothes that I found more of myself in and hobbies that I collected more items from—-paints, paintbrushes, ribbon, glitter, baking supplies, pots and pans, and you know, more books. I filled this house with as much love and life as I could because I felt like I belonged somewhere and I had somewhere I could call my own. I felt comfortable in the neighborhood, saying hi to every neighbor near and far. I knew the person who would walk her Pomeranian everyday; the older lady who would always wear a fanny pat, a visor, and would ask me, “Have you seen this little boy?” or tell me “Take care nice lady;” the mom and daughter who would also walk their dog and lived near the nail salon; the little boy (a different little boy than who the older lady asked me about) who would always ride his bike and wave hi to me; the older couple who lived a couple blocks down for me and who would go outside for a walk everyday and would compliment me on running faster; the guy and wife who lived near the park and who would ask me how my job was, and the wife would tell me about her; the random older guy who also lived by the park and gave me a pineapple he grew in his backyard; the Fedex man who would wave at me as I ran. All these people I knew and have come to enjoy seeing. They were my community, and in a sense home too.

I never had that either—community. People who I have come to know a bit and have built a relationship with, little as it be. But I knew if I ever needed something or felt worried about my safety, I had my neighbors and the people around me because they knew who I was.

But that all changed last October when I was kicked out of my home.

There was no more promise of a family home. No more the idea that I could go back to a home for our family.

We don’t have that anymore—a place to land.

Being kicked out and losing my home was akin to watching a loved one slowly pass away before you.

Because that’s what it felt like: my home, and sense of home, was dying before my very eyes and I could do nothing to stop it.

I could not stop the two months at the top of the year that I had to go through the garage and donate many things. I could not stop the way my house got listed on the market and a sign stabbed right in our backyard, signaling to everyone we were moving. Not by my own violation.

Seeing that sign was the first knife through the chest. The tragic For Sale sign was a death blow.

For Sale meant no longer ours.

For Sale meant gone.

For Sale meant real.

I did not want any of this to be real. I never asked to lose my home. I never asked to be kicked out. But I was, and he was selling the house because he wanted to.

I felt like selling the house was punishment from the Monster in my life because he couldn’t control me and I wouldn’t listen to him. He didn’t like the way I saw past his facade, and so to punish me, he took away the one thing that mattered—my home.

Gosh, when all the neighbors saw that sign? Another death blow.

They would ask me, constantly, what was happening and why we were moving as if the act of moving itself wasn’t already horrific enough. Having to explain to the community I built around me that I was leaving when I didn’t want to leave? I was reliving the pain all over again having to tell them that we were moving in all different directions. After people would ask me, I would often go into my house, sit on a bench by the window and break down. These are the people I had to leave and didn’t want to leave. How could I leave my community? How could I leave what I built behind?

Having other people enter your home without you there is one of the most violating feelings.

There was an open house that I could not even be in my own house anymore. At that point, our house wasn’t even our home.

Moving was getting real, even if I wasn’t moving to pack.

I didn’t really pack at that point because I felt like if I put one single thing in a box, that meant this life I made, this home I found actual home in was over. I didn’t want this to be over. I didn’t want to lose my home.

But our house was dying, our home was dying—physically and literally.

I almost find it funny—not really funny—but maybe like a sign that we were not meant to stay anymore based on what happened early in the year. It was like our house was filled with so much poison from the years of hatred that our house turned sick and was falling into disrepair.

First, our refrigerator broke for the better half of a month and a half. Our refrigerator broke during Christmas time, and so we bought another refrigerator, but it couldn’t come until the end of Janurary. So for whole month, we lived in coolers. My brother and I would share buying ice every other day to put in two big coolers so our food would stay cold. We wouldn’t cook much not to have leftovers, and honestly, we couldn’t even buy much groceries because we had nothing to store it in. Literally everything in our fridge had to be thrown away because there was nothing to preserve it. Living out of coolers for a month really makes you grateful for refrigeration to say the least.

Second, our water heater broke. So my brother and I had to split the cost on a new water heater system, which is not cheap.

Third, the blind string broke so you couldn’t close the blinds.

Fourth, the kitchen cabinet on the bottom was coming off the hinges.

Fifth, oh fifth was the real kicker that had me laughing in hysterics with how the universe works, I put in a hole in the wall.

Later that night, when I was trying to grab something from my closet, for the life of me, I couldn’t open my closet. I was so confused. That was until I saw my entire closet shelf with the other side of hangers literally hanging off the wall. Utter collapse. I managed to open some of the closet door to move the hangers one by one to give space to open the rest of the closet. That’s when I saw, lo and behold, a gaping hole. Yay me.

So not only did I have to continue moving out that week into my new place, I now had to tell the Monster there is a hole in the wall and had to fix said hole. Thank goodness for someone in my life who is good with tools and repairs and helped me that entire week—when I was starting work again after a break—that he came after work every day and helped me patch the hole, put dry wall, put spackle, and whatever else we used to cover the hole and let dry, to fix the hole. Fixing that hole took days: to put in some strength to where I put the hole, to patch, to let dry, to paint, to put the shelf back up, and I could not have mentally or emotionally done this without this person in my life all while working and still moving.

We fixed the hole, but gosh, having a literal hole in the wall while moving is not a stress I needed.

All to say, the house was telling us we shouldn’t be there anymore if everything was breaking a part as much as our family was.

This house was falling a part because we were.

We moved out officially on March 25.

The week before was Spring Break, so I spent that whole week moving as I always moved: packing my car with my things and taking multiple trips to and from my home to where I was going to live now. I went back to work the next week, and still had to finish up moving.

The night before starting work again after Spring Break was the most heartbroken I have felt. Like I went to sleep in a new place I didn’t know all by myself, full of sorrow for a moon that wasn’t there, stars that didn’t look the same, a breeze that was silent, and boxes all around me. When I went to work, I did not want to be there. I wasn’t really there but I had to be there, but gosh it was so, so hard. Looking back, I can’t believe I even went to work after having just moved and slept for the first time in a new place and got up to work. That day was the first of many this year where I was hit with this new feeling: I felt utterly unmotivated. I didn’t want to be at work. I didn’t want to do anything. I just wanted to sleep, to lay in bed. I have never felt unmotivated before. I have never felt such a strong desire to not do anything or be anywhere.

I would get messages from Monster to move the rest of the things, to clean up, to do this, and do that. And it was frustrating as it was harrowing to have all the moving placed on my shoulders when I was busy and I did everything for a house that I was constantly reminded wasn’t really my house. I was continued to be poked at and harassed by the person who kicked me out in the first place. Every day that week, I went back to the house to move out the rest of the things, but as I would sit there, I would stare around me, trying to soak in the last days I could be in my home. I would stare outside, hoping someone would come by and ask me if I was okay or if I needed a hug. I needed a hug. I would sob in my garage and how devoid and lifeless my home was.

The house was echoing in the reverberations of what was gone—the hollowness apparent. Those last days, I walked to each room, a memory reel flashing through my mind of the good and the heavy. I would linger longer in some rooms, sit in others. The very last day I had to leave my keys, I had my mother and her partner come over to say goodbye to the house with me—mind you, it was only Wednesday—because I didn’t want to be alone when I said goodbye. I feared if I was alone, I really would have broken on the spot and couldn’t make it through. I went to each room again and just stayed there, wanting to stay there. I wanted to stay. I didn’t want to lose my home at all. I wanted to have more memories in the kitchen, more dinners with my brother, more reading time in the patio, more time in my room to grow. I wanted a forever home, a childhood home. I wanted my home to be home. I did not want to say goodbye or let go or leave. Walking into my bedroom for the last time; seeing the empty spot where my bed used to be, the paint peeling from where I took off my wall sticker, and seeing just the carpet and window I would look out of every night at the street below and the houses across the street, I couldn’t take it.

I sat in my room, tears streaming down my fractured body.

This is where I grew the most and lived more than I did any other house, and now I had to say goodbye before I was ready, before I even wanted to.

I never wanted to chain myself to a room so badly as I did in that moment. I never wanted to escape reality so much as I did in that moment. I did not want to leave.

If my mother wasn’t there, I don’t think I could have left or would have left as early as I did. I would have stayed in that room, lied down, rested, until I really had to go. I wanted to.

But I had to leave my key. When the garage closed, it was the last fracture, the final slam.

I was gone. Everything I knew and felt was sealed.

I would never be the same. Life would never be the same. Home was no longer mines.

I don’t know how I got through that week at all.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t feel. I couldn’t keep going even if my body was.

I just lost my home.

And no one knew but my close family, yet I was expected to keep going and going and going and be okay when on the inside I was being buried alive. I was lying in the ground, watching life but feeling buried, drowned, gone.

Home is where the heart was, and my heart was broken.

I don’t know where home is anymore.

Losing My Family

When losing my home, I also lost a sense of family.

To be quite honest, I didn’t really have a strong sense of family in the first place, but whatever left I had evaported.

A piece of family I lost was the Monster. I call this person the Monster in my life not because he scares me (although this person does), but the way he treated me was very monsterous. But this person was blood. This person represented everything I thought should protect me, but was the very person who attacked me, wounded me, drained me of everything. And so I don’t know if this is a true loss, but the relationship I used to have with this person is a loss. The relationship I thought we would have until everything that caused our relationship to crumble feels like a loss. Who this person represents feels like a loss because I do not have the privelege of saying that I have this kind of person in my life again.

I don’t think anyone realizes how growing up with a family who loves you and cares for you is such a privilege—that having a family that makes you feel safe is even a greater privilege. A privilege I did not have.

I lost my extended family.

If I’m also honest, I wish they were there more.

They knew what happened and how my brother and I were to move, yet they did not check in until months after the fact. Even then, they acted like they expected to hear we were okay. How were we okay when we just moved from our home and were forced to figure everything out while you sat by and did not help? I don’t blame my extended family, but part of me does feel angry, but not angry if that makes sense. I’m angry because they are older than me and could have spoken up about our situation multiple times, but they didn’t. They were too scared to poke the Monster in fear of being attacked too. But they did not live with the Monster for years and know the depth and breadth of his fury. I did. My brother did. But mostly I felt the brunt of the anger, the hurt. I wish they said something so I didn’t feel like I had to face every waking moment in his vicinity alone. I felt alone. They would act like he wasn’t mistreating me at gatherings, opting to talk badly about him when he wasn’t there. But gossip does nothing. I mean, it was helpful to vent, but venting did not change the fact that they could have done more than pretend and sit by. However, I get that this was not their battle, and that they had their own families and lives to handle. I just thought families were there for each other or mines could have been there more, especially when we moved. Not one single person asked to help or checked in.

I think most of all when I say I lost a sense of family, I mean my brother.

I feel like the only family I really have is my brother.

I didn’t really grow up with my mother, so I don’t really know what it is like to be around her or feel like we have a strong relationship. I feel like my mother is a stranger who I call mother. My sister lives far away and we have a complicated relationship, or complicated in my head.

I only truly lived with my brother.

He made me feel safe—the only guy in my life who makes me feel safe even when we get mad at each other. He made me feel happy and like I could laugh as loud as I wanted and he wouldn’t judge me. He made me feel real like I could ask the most ridiculous things or do the most inane things and he would just laugh at me or with me. We would sometimes go shopping together, he would always drive. As much as I wouldn’t admit it, I enjoyed when we would drive home at night from something, and he would blast a song we thought was weird and he would sing it as loud as he can to rival the wind. I enjoyed our sense of routine of knowing when to cook or pick up—how we had a system of living together because for the most part it felt like we were the only two at home. I miss being able to go to his room and bother him like when he was playing his video game.

Most of all, I miss dinners with him. I miss sitting at the table and eating with my brother. I loved how he got into my reality TV show or girly shows like Ugly Betty or Remlife Vlogs. I loved how he would share with me his reality shows or cooking shows he liked to watch. I loved the nights where we would laugh at the TV or make offhand comments that would crack us both up. I loved most the conversations we had—ranging stupid to deep. He was the first person I felt like I could be honest with about how I felt, and who made me feel less alone in every emotion. To know he felt the fears and worries I felt, made me feel closer to him.

I miss hearing the garage opening up to signal he was home. I miss hearing the cabinets slam, meaning he was going to the gym or going out. I miss hearing his random humming as he walked in the door because he hated his job and said f*** it by humming because he needed some levity. I miss hearing him yell at his video game through his door. I miss seeing him walk around the house with his headset on, a mug in his hand full of water because we didn’t have cups at home. I miss sitting with him. I miss talking to him. I miss being with my brother. I have never felt close to anyone in my family my whole life, except my brother, and he now lives far. He lives in another place.

I miss him in every show I watch, slammed door I hear, table I sit at, and laugh I rarely have. I miss him a lot more than he knows or realizes, and that sounds dumb because he’s a grown man and he should get to figure out what living separately from his little sister means, but I can’t help but say I miss my older brother because he was home.

Living without him doesn’t feel like home, and I don’t know if that’s the feeling I’m missing, but it’s part of it.

I just miss family, especially my brother.

Losing My Dream

As if this year couldn’t demolish me any further, I lost my dream.

If you read my Favorite Memories from 2022, you would know, I got the dream job.

Being a teacher, is more complicated than I understood as a kid—that’s putting the sentiment lightly.

In my state, you have three years of being on probation and then you are tenured your fourth year. During your third year, you either have to reapply for your job or you apply to a different school. In the back of my mind last year, I knew that I either had to reapply for my job come March/April or apply out. So not only was I fully aware that I was moving in March, but I potentially had to look for a job in March too. You know, March just all around sucks. I don’t like a March now.

Can I rant for a bit?

I DETEST this whole transfer process if I’m being honest. As if being a teacher isn’t hard enough, they make us reapply for our job or find somewhere else to teach as if there isn’t a blaring teacher shortage. Like why do I have to reapply for my job?????????? Like what other profession has you reapply for your job once you have your job????????? You feel me. Sorry, I just looked it up, doctors do this and maybe dentists, I’m not too sure, but if I have to reapply for my position on the same level doctors and dentists do, I’m being underpaid and under appreciated. Honestly, it feels like I was hired to work at a grocery store and then being told I have to reapply for my job because I worked there for three years. I’m sorry. I get it, I was new, but still, why do I have to reapply if I do fairly well at my job.

Second, I DETEST the whole part of the transfer process where teachers should accept the first offer they get. I’ve been told in my state that if someone calls you, you let the call go to voicemail, and then you have to get back to them soon because if not, they might rescind their offer because it seems like you don’t want to work there. What does a girl got to do to get some time to decide what she wants? Why do I have to take the first position available to me if I have other interviews I am still doing and want to see all my options? I don’t like that I have to try again for my job and that I have to desperately secure a position in fear of being put somewhere I didn’t choose or want to be.

When the postings came out, I had some options to reapply to where I am, but in the back of my head there were many things that felt complicated. My relationship at where I was at was good for the most part, but one part made me feel like I wasn’t really wanted back—that if I reapplied, I wasn’t going to get rehired. I feared not having a job for the majority of February and March because, honestly, I did not know. My prospects of being rehired didn’t seem the best based on the vibes or the signs I was getting, and reflecting on that time in my life, I would have straight up asked this person instead of assuming what I felt. But you know, they say trust a gut feeling, and this felt like a gut feeling. Nothing felt right.

So I applied to other places just in case I wasn’t rehired. I did two interviews: one at a school close to my old home and another close to where I was going to live. The first interview I did felt very formal and robotic. I literally was sitting in a room with seven people all on their computers typing my response rather than looking at me. All I could hear the whole time was the clacking of keys and my heartbeat. I did not feel good leaving that interview.

The second interview, there were three people and we sat in the office. The interviewers actually looked at me and just wrote their responses. The vibe felt different—more conversational and personal, which I liked. I also liked one of the interviewers who knew someone who inspired me from high school, so I took that as a good sign that maybe this would be okay. The thing was I had my current position interview for the next week. I was supposed to hear back next week from both interviews.

When driving home—seven minutes—after the second interview, I got a call. I let it go to voicemail.

I knew then something was going to change.

I knew.

Because no way were they calling me to say I didn’t get the job after just leaving the interview.

Not feeling good about being rehired, and having been indoctrinated to take the first position, I accepted the offer not knowing what it would truly cost me.

That night, I had acid in my stomach and a hurricane in my head. I could not sleep. I woke up early, calling my mother about every regret and doubt I had saying yes out of desperation and not fully thinking through what saying yes meant.

Saying yes meant leaving my dream. Saying yes meant leaving every person I have come to think of as second family. Saying yes meant leaving the very place that felt like a second home. Saying yes meant losing another part of myself I didn’t truly want to lose but felt like I was going. I should have been in therapy at this point, my gosh.

But I said yes out of fear. I said yes out of desperation. I said yes because I was already in a heavy mindset with losing my home, having to move, that I just wanted one thing to feel right—to make sure I had a job next school year. Because I didn’t know if I had a job and where, and that thought petrified me on top of not knowing what moving was going to mean to me.

I remember leaving work that day—-it was a spirit week day (Read Across America) and I was dressed as a person who inspired me (Taylor Swift)—and I had no idea that going to this interview would be the beginning of a gruesome journey. I had no clue that one day, one word, one decision would change my life for seemingly the worse. But it did.

That’s not to say I think where I am is bad, it just never was the dream, it’s not where I want to be.

It’s not where I feel like I belong. It’s not home.

The day I said yes, March 7, is the day I let my fear win. If I could go back and change everything that happened during this transfer process, I would in a heartbeat, but like I wrote previously, some choices you just live with.

And living with this choice every single day, feels like living doing the one thing that now brings me so much ache.

Losing Myself

The greatest loss I experienced this year was myself.

I never knew I was going to lose myself this year on top of everything else I thought I was going to and might lose, but here I am: losing myself. Or lost myself.

The following moments go more in depth into how I was demolished this year, but I just want to touch on how losing myself was worse than losing both my homes. Because when I physically lost both sense of homes, at least I had myself to fall back on. But I never realized when you are experiencing so much heartbreak, grief, and loss and that all falls back onto you, who is there to catch you? Who is there to soften the blow?

This year I landed off the edge with no drive to get up.

This year I fell into the ocean with no desire to find the buoy.

This year, I let myself fall and look up at how far I had fallen. I let myself look down to how far I could let myself sink.

I had some people who were there to catch me, to soften the blow. And honestly, I don’t think I can fully say I would be here without them checking in with me or just being there.

But even if there were people who were there, I still felt like I slipped through.

That there was so much weight in my heart, that all these comforts—depression, grief, loss—grabbed in in their invisible fingers and pulled me where I needed to go. There was no stopping their pull. So I let them.

I let myself morph into a version of them—losing myself with each day spent in their clutches.

Instead of feeling more human, I felt more like a concept—an idea of what depression, grief, and loss looked like.

I knew all this was happening, and I let it. didn’t know if I could fight anymore after everything.

So I lost.

Oh, I lost.

Oh, I’m lost.

Last year, I wrote about how being lost means you are moving towards something else. I like to hope that my lessons I’ve learned over the years are still lessons I believe in. Maybe I am moving towards the person I am actually meant to be now? That being so lost in who I am right now, is me finding a new sense of self that doesn’t tolerate as much as she used to, that doesn’t hide how she actually feels as much as she used to, that doesn’t try to do what she thinks is best for herself as much as she makes excuses.

I’m lost, but maybe I am finding out a lot too.

Sunk into the Comfort of Depression and Grief

March was when I let Depression into my home.

I would sleep in. But suddenly sleeping longer felt more peaceful.

I would try to go out. But staying inside felt safer and less irritating.

I would try to read. But picking up any book felt daunting and uninteresting.

I would try to cook. But nothing seemed worth cooking for.

I would try to exercise. But resting felt like strength.

I would go to work. But I would leave the second I had a chance.

I would try try try.

Then end end of May hit and June came, Depression was no longer just in my home, it became my home.

Depression was what I built myself out of for practically nine months.

Depression was my foundation, my walls, my roof—my saftey.

I felt safer being depressed because I had grown so used to living in depression, that honestly I don’t know what it is like to live without depression.

And that’s something I had to understand and process a lot this year, especially after finally understanding that I had depression. You know, starting therapy, I always wanted to know—wanted to know why I felt so strongly and why that strength was always rooted in sorrow. I had depression.

I’ve had depression since childhood, and I never really knew. And hearing how I did have depression—that I could confirm it from a doctor—felt like a shaky breath. I always knew I had depression, but now I understood myself a lot more. And you know, it’s so hard to explain to anyone who doesn’t battle depression how heavy you feel, and how much hurt you carry in your heart, and none of that comes with wanting to be sad, but feeling like you deserve to be sad or you’re so used to being sad all that time, that sadness feels like a comfort when happiness was never there. I don’t know; even on the days when my depression doesn’t feel as hefty, I crave sadness. I crave the feeling of wanting to cry, wanting to feel bad because I just feel so used to those emotions. I know that’s not right, but it’s hard.

Depression is a part of me, and it’s always going to be a part of me. And depression is something I am going to be challenged by for the rest of my life; some days will be absolutely abysmal and other days like I’m carrying a rock, but I will always be carrying something with me.

Every movement felt like I was walking through quicksand buried in tar. I did not want to move. I just wanted to lie down as much as I could because getting up was monumental. A task I couldn’t even fathom to want to do.

Every moment was a rubber band stretched until I reached a snapping point where everything felt irritating to me; I had blisters all over my body and everything was bothering me. I was so freaking irritated. I distinctly remember one morning when my alarm went off for work, and I felt this fire in my body and my fists were clenched. I just stomped my feet and pounded my bed. I did not want to get up. I did not want to leave to do a job I did not want to do anymore in a place I didn’t want to be in a house that didn’t feel like home. I did not want to go. I wanted to just stay because my heart was hurting and I felt like the world was asking me to break every single day just to be here. And don’t get me wrong, I am grateful to wake up and experience every single day, but my goodness when you feel utterly broken and the world keeps aiming a wrecking ball at you, you just want a break. I just wanted a break. I wanted to breathe. But I was so, so, so angry that the world was seemingly choosing to hurt me over and over again that it felt like I was fading away as I was barely living. Surviving.

Anyone irritated me. I disliked how easy it was for everyone to be okay or to be happy, and here I was crying on the inside. I disliked how positive people were when my life was filled in with the negative. I disliked how helpful people were to me when I couldn’t help myself to return the same energy. I disliked how no one seemed to notice how much I was struggling sans crawling on the ground, begging for anyone to listen or to see. I wanted someone to see how much I was hurting—someone to be there. I disliked how people said I was strong when I didn’t want to feel so strong because of all the heartbreak I felt. I didn’t ask to be a warrior. When do I get to be soft?

I would often sit outside my door at night, looking at the stars, begging, hoping, praying.

I like to believe there’s someone or something that listens because I want to hope that this pain isn’t forever, and that life got better than what it felt now.

Some days, especially in the beginning, I couldn’t believe what had happened to me this year—I didn’t want to believe that all these dense things happened. But they did.

I don’t think I fully healed from my grief yet, and will never completely be without depression.

But as I am typing this in December, I can say that the weight of what I felt isn’t tantamount to what it was two months ago. And that’s something. Some of that levity attributes itself to therapy, maybe time itself, maybe knowing it’s going to be the start of a new year that I don’t want to go into so heavily, but the weight’s not as heavy.

I hope the weight isn’t always heavy to the point I’m dragging, but slowly getting up again.

And if the last two months can ease that pain in the slightest, then maybe, just maybe I have hope that I can get through this.

Disoriented and Disassociated

This was the first time I felt like I didn’t really know who I was or where I was.

I tried researching this feeling/experience, and what popped up was a lot of information of feeling dissociative or disoriented.

The first time I felt extremely disassociated was in June. I just remember waking up one day, not quite believing that this was my life or my reality. I was genuinely confused because for a second I thought I would wake up and the past 48 hours of my heart being wrecked again actually didn’t happen. But it did. I just didn’t want to believe it so much. Because if I believed it, that meant I really did leave the one thing that was a dream and into this absolute unknown that terrified me. I lost a sense of family, love, joy, confidence, and myself. And I didn’t want to wake up to believe it because it hurt. So much. I felt like someone shoved me off a building and then put me in my bed the next day, expecting me to be okay. I was in absolute pain.

But no one knew. Just me.

And I didn’t even know myself.

I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror for months.

It was so hard.

I never felt this way before. I just felt like I didn’t know who I was anymore, and the person I used to look at wasn’t the person I knew, and so I didn’t even want to look at this person I didn’t know. I didn’t recognize her. She was so sad. She was crying every day on the floor, tears making a literal pool. She was rubbing her eyes as she ran and ran and ran. She sat in the darkness often because the lack of light was comfortable. She lied down most days because getting up needed a crane lift or something. She stayed inside all the time becuase she didn’t want to be hurt anymore by the world. She hated how she felt so dim inside and didn’t enjoy anything anymore because there was no light.

Extinguished.

I didn’t believe n myself or the magic in me that kept me going like Tinkerbell’s light.

I’ve lost my spark.

A spark I fought so hard to get back for years.

And that’s what makes me even sadder is to know I fought incredibly hard to be in a better place, and here I am in another dark place in my life and I don’t even love the person I am becoming anymore because I can’t even recognize her. I thought I was becoming someone I was proud of. Now I lost her.

I don’t talk as loud. I don’t laugh anymore. I don’t remember the last time I smiled and meant it. I don’t feel as strong in myself.

I just don’t know who I am anymore.

I feel like I’ve spent so long being a fighter, I’ve just given up a lot this year on myself.

And that sucks, and I’m aware I’m all woo is me, but it’s been a hard year.

I just really hope that when I look back on this post, I can say that I found myself again. That I can laugh again, smile, talk, and feel proud of who I am not because I did have to keep fighting, but I allowed myself grace to be soft.

I don’t want to always be so strong. I want to be gentle in who I am becoming, and that includes starting with myself.

Here’s to hopefully not feeling like I don’t even know myself anymore, and to reclaiming the person I want to be.

As much as their was darkness, their was the contrast of what came out of that darkness.

Living in My Own Place for the First Time

Because I lost my home, I had to find somewhere else to live.

After I was kicked out, in the back of my mind, I thought I was homeless. I felt homeless.

Homeless was a state of mind.

I didn’t know where to go.

Where I live, the cost of living is laughable because absolutely no one successful can afford a house or a place in general. So there was no way in heck, I a teacher could afford anything.

I had some options of moving out with my brother, moving to a relatives house, moving to a friend’s house, moving in with my mother, or finding my own place. I tried looking at affordable housing, and was put on a list, but even that was too expensive with every other expense I still had to pay besides rent now.

By a sheer miracle, something opened up, and I was able to afford this place. I moved in.

I live in a studio that is about the size of a small classroom. I have a kitchen, washer and dryer, and a bathroom.

As much as this place isn’t as big as what I’m used to—a full house—I am grateful that I even have a roof over my head and a place to go. I wasn’t sure for months if I had anywhere to go. I mean, I did, but I didn’t want to impose on anyone offering me a room because in my head, I would always feel like I was imposing in a space that wasn’t mine. At least now, I have a space that is kind of mine and I’m not bothering anyone.

You know, I always wanted to move out.

The second the Monster bore his talons, I wanted to move out. I just felt like I couldn’t because of the financial hardship of moving out by myself. I just couldn’t do it, until I genuinely had to leave.

I thought when I did move out, I would be in an apartment with maybe a small living area and a room. I would have a kitchen I would have matching bowls and cutlery, and a bathroom with plush carpets and maybe a nice plant to bring color. I would have bookshelves adorning every wall and a TV set in the middle around picture frames. I would have a colorful couch and a nice rug. There would be flowers everywhere because, duh, floweringpages (I love florals). I would blast music as loud as I wanted while I cooked my own meals after a day of grocery shopping or going out. Moving into my own space was a romantic experience—an experience that was taken from me.

I was cheated out of the joy of moving into my first place.

Now now, people could argue, “well, you control how you feel and you could have romanticized moving out.” And yes, I could have. But when you are kicked out with a month (changed to three months) to move out, pack up everything from not only your room but the entire house, apply for a job, and go to work every day, the last thing I felt was joy to move out.

In my life, there have been so many joyful moments that were taken from me and replaced by absolute sorrow.

I wasn’t happy to move out.

I was stressed. I was depressed. I was heartbroken. I was grieving. I was angry. I was hurt.

I was everything but happy.

I was losing my home. I was lambasted for not cleaning out the whole house when the whole house wasn’t even mine. I was trying to find a job because I didn’t know if I had a job. I had to still show up for work every single day.

Moving was lonely.

Moving was packing my car during my only break, and driving back and forth to unload more boxes and random things. Moving was trying to get everything out of my home to this new place because this house was no longer ours; I did not have the luxury of a slow move, but a rapid tornado to sweep everything away. By the time I moved everything, and I spent the first night in my new place, the first thing I did was cry.

Big, sopping tears of I-don’t-want-to-be-here.

I didn’t want to move out like this—under angry, hate, stress, sorrow.

I didn’t want to live in a place that now felt like a punishment—banishment.

Because if I’m being honest with myself, I feel like I’ve been banished or punished by this Monster in my life who wanted me to lose.

I’ve been living in my first place for nine months now, and this studio doesn’t feel as foreign as it did when I first slept here. But it still doesn’t feel like home. I look around me most days and see a place I’m thankful to have, but sad knowing how I ended up here. I should feel glad with how I ended up here, but there’s always that tinge of melancholy.

I think there always will be.

Escaped a Monster

Part of moving out was escaping the Monster.

I never really fully processed when I first moved how being in a space apart from the Monster would be best for me. I think subconsciously I knew, but I didn’t actively think about this idea until my brother asked me one day: “How do you feel being away from all that?”

When there was so much loss in my heart, the last thing I felt was relief from being away from the very person who hurt me. I felt like I was battling an entirely different hurt now—grief. With grief taking root in every part of my body, I didn’t even recognize that, yes, I was away from all that.

I was away from staying away from home most days—staying late at work—because I didn’t want to be home when the Monster was home.

I was away from being attacked for every small thing like not washing the dishes when I just got home, not taking out the trash right away, or sweeping the floors.

I was away from passive aggressive notes with degrading names, telling me to do things as if I was a maid.

I was away from the constant messages of random pictures of things the Monster didn’t like that I didn’t do or clean and was disappointed in me because I was raised better.

I was away from sitting at the couch or table and having the Monster randomly pounce down the stairs to pick on me for another thing that was stupid or trying to start the same fight of the same thing that I already told him about.

I was away from the yelling, the hitting the walls, the yelling from the Monster’s wife telling me I am ungrateful, unfriendly, disrespectful, and that “I’ve changed.”

I was away from the running away and sobbing outside on the sidewalk anytime my body would shake and my voice would waver when speaking up and standing up for myself whenever they tried to accuse or attack me for whatever they deemed they could. I was away from sitting outside, wanting anyone, everyone to come ask me if I was okay or to understand that I lived with a Monster who they saw as a nice man, who really only hurt his daughter.

I was away from the shaking in my heart, quiver in my voice, tension in my body—-I would become dying tree in a hurricane.

Every single day I lived in that house, I was scared. I was tip-toeing.

I walked on glass, hurting myself to make them feel comfortable—-when I wasn’t extended the same courtesy. I made myself careful to step around any minefields to not blow anything up.

I said nothing if I could help it. I walked around if I needed to. I made myself smaller, hoping they wouldn’t notice me and would do anything to hurt me. I became so small.

So when I was in my own place, letting my grief overtake me, I didn’t realize that I was safe. I didn’t feel safe from grief.

It took me a while, and honestly, it still is taking me even now to recognize that I don’t have to walk on glass anymore. I don’t have to tiptoe. I don’t have to keep silent. I don’t have to walk around. I don’t have to be so small in my own place. But that’s so hard for me. So hard.

I don’t know how to feel safe sometimes.

I always feel like something or someone is going to take everything that I feel happy in or safe in, and smash that feeling. I don’t know how to let myself feel okay or safe when I know how easily happiness and safety can break.

I feel like the Monster can’t hurt me anymore because I cut a boundary with the Monster after everything. But the thing about living with a Monster for years, is there’s always going to be a monster in my head I now battle because of the fear I got used to.

Have a Job

I know this sounds like it feeds into the negative lore of teachers, but teaching truly does drain you. I cannot count how many times this year I truly contemplated actually quitting my job—-how many times I wanted to resign and give up. Nearly every single day of going into work, I wanted to give up.

I wanted to take a break.

I wanted to pack everything up and leave.

This was not what I really wanted, and starting over again is not what I wanted to do. I want to stay in the same place in the same position at least long enough where I felt confident in what I was doing, and I felt like I was finally doing that until I wasn’t. I have never stayed in a grade longer than two years; I wish I could become confident in one grade and work on my practice. But now I’m not even in a grade I enjoy or a place with people I know. Every day, I see people and I see that they are not them—the names and faces of those I worked with for years and felt friendly. I see myself on the outside wanting out. I see myself in the room, doing the bare minimum, tolerating more just so I don’t have to do much just because I’m drained. I see myself so much more irritated, less empathetic, frustrated because this job has turned into something I don’t enjoy.

I hate saying that. I never say hate, but I hate that teaching has become something I don’t enjoy and I dread every single waking moment of waking up and going to work against my will. They say do it for the kids, and gosh darn knows I try, but I can’t do it for them if I can’t do it for myself. I can’t help them if I can’t help myself. I can’t teach them if I am coming from a place of not being okay, just doing the minimum when they should be getting someone who wants to be there and who can help them to the fullest. I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing anymore and I don’t even like what I teach. I don’t enjoy much about teaching anymore, and it breaks my heart knowing that I would see people say teaching is hard and would quit after the first year. I never thought I would feel like I was in the place to even want to quit, but I seriously am on the verge of resigning.

I want to give up.

But I also am holding on to a small hope in me that I’m too scared to hope because when I hope, the universe usually feels heavy. But the infinitesimal part of me hopes. And if not, I really do think I need to find something that doesn’t make me feel so physically, emotionally, and mentally sick every single day. Literally, I have been sick for about two months now. I have never felt more like a failure, and I have been in such midnight mindset about who I am as a teacher. I don’t like who I have lost and become as a teacher—never really doing anything for myself except work, late meetings, losing my voice nearly every month, getting sick nearly every month, constantly changing grades and schools. I don’t like how being a teacher makes you feel less human—to live less of a life.

Don’t get me wrong, there are many beautiful, magical moments that can happen as a teacher because gosh knows I have experienced moments I would relive in a heartbeat, but right now, the pain outweighs the joy, so it’s been hard for me to remember if I even want this to be the dream anymore.

All this to say, as much as I don’t enjoy my job right now, I am grateful I at least have a job.

I have work that can provide me financial stability to pay rent, groceries, and other expenses; that’s not something to take lightly. A job I had some say of being where I am.

And I guess, I’ll take that.

Achieved a Financial Goal

A big goal of mine this year was to achieve this financial goal—-a goal I’m not going to say.

But I knew this year, I would be in the position to achieve this goal if I kept up to the plan I set two years ago. . . and I DID IT!

Writing that I achieved this goal is more exciting than when I actually achieved this goal, because achieving this goal meant just clicking a button and done. I was all by myself when it happened, and what do you know, I was also gosh awfully sick 🙃, so that made the enthusiasm lower. I just remember finally having this weight off my chest, but also feeling melancholy that I had no one to share this huge accomplishment with; that I worked so hard to execute this idea and only I felt happy about what I managed. But I did it. I really did.

A lot of people told me to take my time with this goal and to not stress myself out. Some people told me my goal was too much, but I stayed true to wanting to achieve this goal as much as it did cause me financial stress. I had to make a lot of cutbacks, and there were many moments I felt like I wasn’t really doing much for myself to accomplish this goal, but I’m proud that I stuck through what I felt like I could fulfill in two years.

You know, honestly, this year sucked a fat one, but at least I accomplished one thing.

Started Therapy

Okay, maybe not one thing.

This one was a huge thing—the most signficant thing, honestly.

For years, I have been saying I wanted to start therapy.

Honestly, as mentioned previously, I probably needed to start therapy a decade ago, gosh knows the work I could have done to be at a better place. But better late than never.

I never knew how difficult finding a therapist was until I truly delved into the process.

Finding a therapist is like finding a pearl in the sand.

I didn’t really know where to start. I mean, I have heard of all the websites like Better Health and Rula, but I didn’t really trust those sites, and I wanted something more personal than online therapy. I don’t know, I feel like so much of the world is lived online that I craved a connection with someone if I was going to open up to that person about what I have been going through. I didn’t want to cry in front of a computer screen in a room by myself—sterile and lonely. I wanted to be with someone I could see, feel. There’s also nothing wrong with virtual therapy because virtual therapy is convienent and works for people, but I needed something different.

I looked on Pyschologytoday.com for in-person therapists. Scrolling through all the therapist profiles feels a lot like online dating. I kept reading their descriptions, methods, years of service, rates, hoping to find someone I felt connected to without knowing. I mean, you can’t really know who you would connect with without really trying. I found many amazing therapist and learned the difference between a social worker, therapist, and psychologist because I thought that was the same thing.

I first contacted someone in July after days of looking. I just wanted to try someone because I was so tired of feeling the way I did and not wanting to further burden the people around me. I just wanted to try. It’s so awkward messaging a therapist. Like what do I say, “Dear so-and-so, I am not doing too well and would hope to speak to you for your services. I hope you have a nice day. Sincerely, so-and-so.” Awkward. But I contacted. I didn’t hear back for weeks. Then I called their office, only for the office lady to tell me that they didn’t get my email and to email again. So when I emailed again, the response was the therapists services were full. The office lady couldn’t tell me that when I talked to her 🤦🏽‍♀️? Sorry, but when you are in the depths of depression, trying to seek any help you can get, it would be helpful if they didn’t make the process so darn complicated.

So that didn’t work out. Then I tried to do a Rula telehealth appointment, but then that didn’t work out either. I tried calling another person I found online, but this person wasn’t taking anymore clients either. By this time, it was August or September, and I was feeling even more hopeless in life and about my prospects. I then gave up fearing messaging or calling therapists because I just wanted help and would take anything. I remember emailing and calling multiple people and didn’t hear a response for weeks, some days. I never knew that therapists didn’t reply right away; I mean, you would think they would because if someone really needs help, they would respond, but they sure, take their time 🙃. No shade. I know therapists aren’t saviors and not the crisis hotline, but still. I got an email back from this one lady, but her emails were sporadic, but at least she replied. She tried to call me at work one day, so I didn’t answer right away. But when I called her literally two minutes afterward, she didn’t answer me. I left a message. I never heard from her again.

Then I received the other responses from therapists I emailed, where they asked me what days or times I would be available. I felt like maybe I could breath—this was going somewhere. Until the therapist I wanted to talk to, told me she could no longer take me because her client didn’t move and she didn’t do therapy later in the afternoon—after 2 pm—then I lost hope again. The other response from someone else was she also didn’t do therapy after 2 pm, but if I could, I would fill out paper work so we could speak soon. I liked these therapists honesty and quick approach, but I just couldn’t understand why most therapists I looked at didn’t do therapy in the afternoon?????!?!??! I’m sorry?!? Like, most people work all day, not everyone works from home these days. I can’t do therapy at a random hour during the weekday, like how does anyone do that. So I really was struggling to find help when it felt like everyone I tried either wasn’t responding, wasn’t taking new clients, or wasn’t meeting anyone past my work hours when I could make an appointment.

After three months, I found someone.

This person was someone whose profile said her client list was full, so I took her off my list of prospects. But then when I refreshed the page and opened her profile on Chrome, it didn’t have that message on her profile anymore. I sent an email. Quick response. A time that she carved out to make for me. Paperwork sent my way. It was happening.

Oddly enough, this person was right under my nose the entire time—I literally would run past it everyday without knowing. But the rate that everything happened felt right because it didn’t feel like I was fighting to find a therapist who I had to bend around for, but the fact she found a time for me? I liked that so much.

I started therapy in October.

I don’t know what it says about me that I would openly cry to a stranger in the first ten minutes of meeting, or how easily I cried. I just felt like I was so much at a point where I just wanted to talk to anyone because I really needed help. Talking to my therapist felt like I could breath—I could release what has been happening this year and my life, without feeling scared that someone would tell me I’m too sensitive or that I should get over it. I felt like I could just talk and someone was there to listen. There was a comfort to knowing this person didn’t really know me, so they could respond with a clarity that others in my life wouldn’t; I guess that’s the comfort in therapy.

If I’m being quite honest, saying you want to start therapy and going to therapy are two different experiences.

I always thought therapy meant sitting on a couch talking to someone and they give you some advice or psychoanalyze your experiences to provide you some explanation as to how you’ve been feeling, what you have been going through, or why you have been feeling what you are feeling. I mean, in many regards in therapy you do talk about how you are feeling and possibly why you are feeling that way; there is definitely a lot of questioning and being challenged to think differently than how you have been thinking. Sometimes you may get advice or words of encouragements based on what you are expressing, and sometimes you are given homework that is supposed to help with your growth or healing. But I didn’t actually know what being in therapy and talking every week to someone would actually feel like. I didn’t know that you would talk about anything and everything, and really dig into your past because your past is what shapes who you are today. I never really realized therapy could be crying at random moments, or thinking about moments you never really thought about.

I have only been going to therapy for three months, and I don’t really know how therapy should feel like.

Do I think it has helped since I started therapy?

I would think so.

The heaviness I felt all throughout March to November doesn’t feel so leaden, but I also don’t know if it’s too soon to tell if what I have been discussing or understanding has actually helped me grow or heal as a person. I think what I have worked on so far has brought some healing, I don’t know completely if I feel like I am this whole other person right now because I am in therapy. I don’t know if this is just with my therapist, but I kind of do wish my therapist would express more about why I act the way I have acted or to provide an explanation for my tendencies for certain things when I talk about it? I don’t know, I think I should ask her why, but I am also not sure if that’s something most therapists don’t do? That’s what I kind of mean by I don’t really know how therapy should feel like; I know therapy feels different for everyone, but I also wonder how do you know therapy is working for you? How do you know what you should feel like after each session? If you go to therapy, how does therapy feel like fo you? How do you know it’s working.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful I even found a therapist and I am doing the thing I have always needed to do for myself, I just fear that I don’t know what therapy should feel like and if I have the right therapist for me. I don’t know if that makes sense. I feel like my therapist feels like the right person for me, but I don’t know. I don’t know a lot—-this is my first time going to therapy.

I do enjoy just having someone who knows what I have been through—things that I don’t even mention to my close circle of people. There’s comfort in knowing that I can share all these traumas and current hurt with someone and to feel validated and less alone in what I am going through. My therapist has helped me try to feel less alone, to write more, to get out more, to let myself fully feel what I need to feel. I think there’s just a lot of work I need to do as a person that I don’t know when I could say I feel healed or okay.

But I know that I am doing the work—that I am trying—to be better for myself after so long of suffering and battling in silence.

Facing a war everyday by yourself is a fight not many can win.

I never wanted to face every battle alone, but I have. But not anymore.

I hope that when I look back on who I am a year from now, that I can genuinely say that I am in a healthier place emotionally, mentally, and personally, and that starting therapy—as scary and confusing as it was—was always the right choice for me.

Barely Survived Every Hard Day

At the last moment, I wanted to add this memory.

Or not really a memory, but an experience.

Because when I truly look back on 2025, I will say that I don’t remember much.

I remember every moment that broke me. Every moment I felt broken. Every moment I wanted to feel broken. Every moment that felt like I was stepping too quickly in a world that was throwing all my broken pieces haphazardly. I remember every moment that caused my whole world to be obliterated.

Every day I barely survived.

But I did.

And I don’t give myself enough credit for all the days I told myself, “You got through today.” Or, “You just have to get through this week,” then look at next week, “You just have to get through until Friday.” Every week, I would look at my calendar, and tell myself, “I just needed to get through it.” I needed some sort of hope that the pain I felt could end on a certain day so I could rest before the pain started all over—-like being hospitalized to be released, to return, a cycle.

I don’t give myself enough credit for getting out of the bed I wanted to bury myself in each morning.

I don’t give myself enough credit for working so hard when I had nothing left in me to work with.

And somehow I got through the days that were hard—365 days of them.

If the most I can say is that I survived them, that I am here, trying as hard as it can be sometimes, then that is the best memory I can give myself right now.

The gift of presence.

Because life is so precious and fickle and unpredictable, and I really don’t know how I would have gotten through this year without the people in my life who saw me and were there, but I don’t take being present for granted in all the days I felt like I wasn’t really alive.

Life in all its hardship is still something I fight for because I know how much beauty and joy and hope there can be.

I survived.

I got through it.

You did it.

When you couldn’t.

You did it.

🎞 To All the Movies and Shows I’ve Never, Needed and Wanted to Watch Before 🎞

Jokes on me when I went into this year knowing it was the Year of the Snake. In my head, I was like, “Oh, the year of Reputation (Taylor’s version).” Second jokes on me, that we didn’t get a Reputation (Taylor’s Version). I had no idea what Year of the Snake meant until recently: a year of shedding the old, of transformation—shedding the skin to make room for what is new.

If I understood what Year of the Snake actually meant, I would have been more mentally prepared to feel so lost, so pained.

I shed everything this year, or everything was shed from me—somethings that I didn’t want to lose but did, somethings I lost that ended up being exactly what I needed to lost, and most things being things I lost that I am still grieving.

Next year is Year of the Horse, which is supposed to symbolize forward motion or moving forward. In the Year of the Snake, we shed the old to make room for the new, so in the next year, we can move forward—hit the ground running without the old holding us back. Or something like that. If that’s true, I hope next year truly does bring something good—moving forward, or moving towards something actually good.

Going into next year, I don’t really know what I am hoping for.

I have some hopes, but if I’m being honest with myself, I feel like I’m so scared to hope now because I know how easily that hope can turn into pain, disappointment, dread. I just don’t want to be hurt again. I feel like that’s a valid fear I have because of my experiences not only this year, but I’m scared.

I hope though that next year does feel better.

I mean, when you’ve hit one of the lowest lows, hopefully things look better than that.

I hope that truly at least one good thing happens not just for me, but for everyone. I hope that one good thing whether that’s something I’ve been dreaming about, thinking about, wanting, or needing, that it happens. I don’t know what that one good thing is, but I hope that that good thing happens.

I hope I find a place that feels like home again. I want to find somewhere I feel like I belong or I feel comfortable being whoever I am becoming. I want to walk into a space and not hear the room before I feel the room—to hear the absence before feeling the presence. I want to walk into a space and feel at peace or comfort that I am safe and don’t need to be on guard, looking for the next move or next thing coming. I want to walk into a space knowing I deserve to be there and that I worked so hard to be where I want that I am not letting people make me feel like they can take away home again.

I don’t even think I mean home just physically, but with people I love. I hope to find home with people I love, people who love me. I hope to reconnect with people who have been home and that I have been away from—that we can reunite and it will feel like knocking on a door, and being embraced. I hope to be let in again by these people, shown around, told to stay a while. I want to go home with people who make up my home.

I especially want to find more home in myself. I don’t know who I am anymore.

I have become Notre Dame.

I’m in the process of rebuilding. Starting over.

I still have a foundation, but I now know a lot more than I did at the start of the year. I tolerate a lot less than I let myself before. I have less patience for knowing when something or someone is hurting me because I don’t want to always be at the deceiving hands of an empty promise or a false hope. My laugh a decadent dessert I indulge sometimes when I used to be heavy with laughter. I want to feel full of laughter, of light again. I want to find my spark again after being burned, extinguished. I want to feel a literal light ignite in my eye over a passion, a dream, a hope, something that makes me feel like I’m not being consumed by the fire, but I am the fire; I’m not going to burn down, but let the light burn in me.

I’m in the process of starting over.

Maybe finding what I am worth. Maybe finding how I deserve to be treated and loved. Maybe finding places that feel better or feel worse—you can’t know if you don’t try. Maybe finding who I want in my life.

This year really was a shedding of homes, people, dreams, places—some way too soon than I would have liked to let go of.

But you never know what life tells you to let go or when, or when life shakes your grip and the thing you love just flies out of your hand into the atmosphere, untouchable.

You never know when you are on the ground, staring at the sky, wanting so badly, so tortoursly for something to come back, knowing that it’s not going to come back until it falls.

I fell so far this year.

A deflation to the ground I laid in.

I am ready to be blown back up and to drift for a while, to discover.

My word of the year for 2025 was healing.

I don’t know how much of that I did.

I feel like the true word of 2025 was heartbreak, grief, loss.

But maybe healing was the right word after all?

Because in contrast to all the heartbreak, grief, and loss, had to come healing, has to come.

I started healing the second I said I needed help and found it for myself after so long of wanting help.

I started healing the second I left a home that I didn’t want to leave because I had to, and now no longer feel like I’m stepping on glass the second I get home.

I started healing the second I was welcomed in another broken home that I am slowly starting to med after a decade of not knowing how dilapidated this home was.

I started healing when I left another home that was a dream so I could understand how grateful I am for that dream, and how much I didn’t feel confident in myself because I was so scared.

I started healing when I understood what that lost cost me and how much living through a choice I felt like was a mistake showcased to me that a mistake feels like the worst thing to experience, but you can get through it. I never imagined what a wrong choice would feel like.

I started healing when I would break down every day of every month, feeling the hurt my younger self always felt.

I started healing when I let that little girl grow with me, and let me hold her when I needed to. I let that little girl grieve with me every step of the way instead of numbing how I felt to be okay. I was not okay.

I started healing when I realized just how much I needed to work through and understand so I could let love in, to let motivation in, to let myself in, and to let forgiveness or moving forward in.

I never realized how much you had to bleed in order to restore.

I never realized how much you had to break in order to rebuild.

I never realized how much you had to deflate in order to expand.

While restoring, rebuilding, expanding, my ultimate hope, my word for 2026 is discovery.

Discover who I can be. Who I want to be.

Discover places that feel like home and make me happy and safe.

Discover people who feel like home and make me happy and safe.

Discover what makes me truly happy and feel like I am living my life and not like I’m stuck doing work every day or the same thing.

Discover new things for myself.

Discover the world in general. Go travel, experience, see.

Discover someone to share my life with.

Discover what life has to offer outside of chaos, survival, functional freeze, depression.

Discover how I choose to carry myself with my mending wounds, and some forever wounds.

Because some wounds stay with you for life, but that doesn’t mean you have to feel broken by something that’s not brokenness but emotion on every level—-love on every level.

Because what is depression but the opposite of the zennith of love?

To have loved so infinitely, so deeply to feel so much sorrow and heaviness that you now carry.

I don’t know where I will be a year from now or what I can say, but I will tell myself this: You got through one of the heaviest, shi**est years. I’m sorry that so many things felt like they were taken from you this year, that you experienced so much pain and loss that they became part of how you lived everyday. I’m sorry you felt like you had to get through each day because you didn’t want to get out of bed because no one understood how difficult getting out of bed really was. No one understood but you. But you kept trying, and going.his You felt like you couldn’t breathe or really couldn’t make it through. You could not endure this pain in your chest anymore. But somehow, we got through it. Through every dark moment, we got through it. You’ve pulled yourself out of some heavy places, but this was the year you couldn’t do it on your own. Know that it’s okay to ask for help—-that you are not alone anymore or don’t have to experience the same pain your younger self felt. You have people who care, and please let them care for you because they want to be there for you as much as you tell yourself otherwise. I’m sorry for every person and place you lost this year that you were never ready to say goodbye to. There’s not enough words to apologize for such loss. I know you are going into this next chapter without any real idea because you are afraid, and I get it, but I hope a year from now, you really will be in a place where you are living—feel alive. I hope you had more days you smiled and laughed. I hope you continue your relationships that make you feel appreciated and full. I hope you focus on yourself and what feels best for you. I know you worry about romance, but my hope is that you let love in, let yourself be loved. I don’t know when or who, I know we have work to do still for ourself, but when you find that love, please let yourself trust that you deserve a good thing. I hope you finally let in the good you don’t fully convince yourself you can have. I hope you are okay. I really hope that on the other side of all this strife, at the very least, you are okay.

There’s so much to discover ahead, I hope you find everything and thensome of what you are looking for. Even the things you are not looking for, i hope they find you in good faith and love 💕.

Thank you 2025 for all that you have cleaving me open to show me just how I needed to heal. Thank you for being a year I don’t want to think about 😂 . In all honesty, I know I will look back and think of the year that my whole life changed, and maybe there is some understanding in that. II know there will be years that will feel heavy so I can’t say a year I don’t want to feel. I guess, thank you for showing me that even when I’m bleeding out, sobbing, gasping for breath, that I can get through the pain—that the pain will be a lengthy, arduous path but I can hobble my way if that’s the best I have to give.

See you next year,