This past year had loads of highs and lows, but there was one particular low that really got me down. Relationships. Past tense. Deaths, births, jobs - gained, and lost. 2019, you were a real one. A long year, and one that, if it had ended a few months earlier, would have been a bit of a stormer. But then things like mental health and academic anxiety come into play. It's a bit like hayfever, which I conveniently forget about every year until April when I'm reminded on no uncertain terms that I do in fact suffer from it. Weep.
The Bad of 2019
There's something about missing another person that's just soul-crushing. There are no two ways about it and I'm not going to sit here on my hardwood chair and declare otherwise.
Ah yes, the struggles of January to March last year. Not a fan.
It can be friends, work pals, family, lovers, living or dead, nearby or far away. We've all been there, and it doesn't get easier. We shouldn't feel like failures, or feel pathetic, for still having attachments to people that were, at one point or another, our Person. Our favorite 'got to tell them what just happened to me' person. The 'I've got to catch this train to go to the store and get them flowers' person. The 'god I love you' person.
Oh yes, that one.
The one that we really should have known better than to fall for. It's always the people we shouldn't have fallen for that hurt the most when they leave because it means you were right. But we can't help it.
Like it or not, your heart is still at their mercy. You unfriended them on Facebook, but realized soon after that you didn't unfollow them too, so they still show up on your feed. This is a form of emotional torture that you allow yourself to go through every day until your friend is on your phone, sees him, and discretely turns it off. You barely even realize she did it, but never question his absence from your life now. You should probably thank that friend, by the way.
I'm being dramatic but also I'm not.
While relationships may come and go, you have many other types of love around you. That isn't to say that filial heartbreak or loss is any more bearable than romantic losses. None of it is fun, but here we are, all binging Gilmore Girls again in 2019 and pretending it aged well.
Anyhow, here's an uplifting quote from the Lumineers: it's better to feel pain//than nothing at all.
The Good of 2019
I got a new job, in a sector that I'm super interested in, and I made loads of new friends - I even took up running!
2016 me is shocked. Frankly, 2020 me is shocked, but it just goes to show that if I can become the person talking about runner's high and the 10k I'm running next week, then you too can become a more socially conscious obnoxious person that we all love to hate!
I also unfollowed all the influencers and random celebrities that were cluttering my insta feed and replaced them with wholesome body image and dog accounts. Trust me when I say that this was a game-changer, and I cannot think of a single celebrity that I actively search out or miss from my feed that I culled.
Therefore, looking forward to 2020, I have high hopes.
I will do more of what scares me, because that is when the best things happen.
I explicitly remember watching a trashy nameless rom-com on Netflix and they said something that really changed the way I go about my daily life. You have to be willing to fall flat on your face and fail. This statement was damning and prompted me to change the way I live.
It doesn't matter if not everyone always likes us. Or finds us funny. However, it still leaves us with the feeling in our throat that we don't care to describe.
It's not a fun feeling, the feeling of failure.
Learn from it. Look it in the eye.
So yes, 2019, you were hard and a struggle, and I hated quite a lot of what you put me through. But I got through, and I am proud of a lot of things that I achieved, and although I don't feel prepared for 2020, I probably am, you know.
