End Of The Year Reflection

Reflecting On My Past Year

I’m not one who does “New Years resolutions” per-say, but the last few years I’ve created long lists with goals or things I would like to get done in the next year or so of time. As a Capricorn, I do love a good, categorized list. 

At the end of the year I like to reflect and go through my list and appreciate everything I accomplished in the past year. Then for the beginning of the new year I make a new list. Anything I didn't get done the past year remains, anything I want to continue to do remains, and new goals get added as well. 

This year I didn’t accomplish everything on my lists for “work” or “adulting”, but I did make “love” a priority, and that makes me happy. I did almost everything on my “health” list, I kept my “mindsets” in mind, and above all else, I accomplished everything on my “self love” list, and I love that. 

Really, my main intention this year was to choose love and happiness everywhere I could. I decided I would choose the things that make me happy and things that fill my heart, and I’m very proud to say that that is what I did with my year. 

I intentionally put “work” and “adulting” on the back burner, and I’m thankful that I was able to do so and that I was able to give myself this year of love and happiness instead. What an incredible blessing that is. 

It was so need too. 

My body, my mind, and my soul needed this replenishing year, more than you can begin to imagine. How lucky am I that I was able to recognize this too, and that I was able to give myself what I really needed? 

I know not everyone feels like they have this chance to give themself that much self love, but man... If you get a chance to be able to chose love and happiness, I highly recommend that you take that chance and claim your joy. Life is too short to let that pass you by. Don’t wait to be happy. Don’t wait to choose love and value your heart. You deserve those things always. 

Some Cool Things I Accomplished This Year

• I branched out and made new friends. 
• I reconnected with old friends and hosted a class reunion. 
• I’m 50k+ words into writing my first book. 
• I became a certified reiki master. 
• I’m 90% better, health wise. 
• I’m finally back to weighing what I weighed before I got sick. 
• I moved out into the pool house and am living with my boyfriend. 
• I’m finally driving (I got my permit a few months ago and didn't really tell people.)

I read good books, I learned new things, I tried new things, I listened to good music, I binge watched a few good tv series, I caught up on movies I wanted to see, I got back to doing more hobbies and things that make me happy, I got back to enjoying life. 

I followed my happiness and chose love. 

I was true to myself. 

I was happy. 

THAT is everything. THAT is priceless. 

One Year Later... Happy 20th Birthday To Me!

As you have probably noticed, I haven't blogged nearly as much this year, and if I'm gonna be honest, it's not just the blogging that stopped. I stopped writing altogether for a while there in 2017. For a long time I had nothing good to say, no new updates, and I just couldn't bring myself to write more about my "doom and gloom." But even when my luck changed and my life started coming back together, I still couldn't write. I still don't know why that is.

From where I was one year ago at this time, to where I am now, it's like two completely different worlds. Everything has changed! I have written and vlogged a few times talking about the positive changes I've had in a year, and how much my health has improved, but there is SO MUCH that I haven't even begun to share.

I have been at such a loss of how to put it all into words, but I want to share the crazy journey I've been on. I still don't know how exactly I'm going to word it all and share it, but I'm working on that.

For starters, I wanted to just write this, say hi, tell you all that I miss writing and I'm starting back up on it. The holidays, New Year's, and then my birthday all happening very close to each other always spark a lot of emotions for me. I get very introspective and reflect very deeply into my life, my past, and myself. Last year, it broke me to reflect on how everything had changed for the worse. This year, it still hurts me to think back on how far gone I was a year ago. I've found myself going through a grieving process over my past, and I'm actually okay with it. I'm happy to be feeling real, genuine emotions again, and to be processing them in a healthy manor. I'm acknowledging how it makes me feel, I'm processing it, I'm going to write about it, and then I'm going to move on.

Along with mourning my past, I'm also extremely thankful for where I'm at now. There are not enough words in the world to accurately express the amount of gratitude I have for the progress I have made. I did try my best to sum up last year though and express some of that gratitude in a letter that I wrote and called "Dear 2017." You can click on that and read the written version, or if you'd like you can click here and watch the video I made for my YouTube channel of me reading that letter.


As for it almost being my birthday, I really want to talk about the article I wrote a year ago for my birthday. It was so depressive, but I was being honest about where I was at in life. I'm going to include some quotes of that post because I really want to update on this.


"It breaks my heart that my birthday is tomorrow and I'm so unhappy and so strongly not wanting to be alive."..."It's all so heartbreaking and disappointing and unexpected that I don't even know how to really cope with it."
...
"4 years ago, I was sleeping in a room that wasn't mine, in a bed that wasn't mine, in sheets that weren't mine, in a mind and body that didn't feel like mine either. 

4 years later, nothing has changed. I'm back to sleeping in the same room and bed and sheets that have never been or felt like mine. My body and mind feel foreign again. I feel lost, deeply unhappy, and suicidal once again. I want to disappear and I find myself wishing I'd never existed. I lose hours staring blankly at the same old curtains that I used to stair at, that, and every night I watch the clock that still is broken and motionless, as if it will suddenly miraculously tick for the first time in years. It never moves, and yet every night I find myself watching it and waiting for a miracle that I know isn't coming. 

I realized tonight that just like the clock on the wall that one day just suddenly stopped ticking and froze in time, I did the same. My life stopped abruptly, and 4 years later I'm literally in the exact same place. Literally!"

...

"It's extremely hard to keep living when your body and mind both stop wanting you to."
...
"I'm still desperately trying to hold on and all I can feel is myself and everything just slipping farther and farther away."
...

"I'm in the same room and the same bed and the same sheets that all aren't mine. I'm stuck in a body that hasn't felt like mine for years, and a mind that is back to feeling frighteningly foreign. I stared at the same old curtains that I used to stare at 4 years ago, and now I'm staring at the clock... The clock that hasn't moved in 4 years. Still shining, hung perfectly, and infinitely motionless, and now I can't seem to decide if the clock that's forever frozen in time is either starring down at me or watching over me. 

At the beginning of this I felt like the sudden random turn of bad luck events that brought to me to be sleeping in this room again was the universe hating me. I felt like this was some kind of seriously sick joke, that all this time later while I'm going through hell in life right now and it's just fucked up for me to have to sleep in here. I was not amused. But now I'm just looking up at the clock wondering if maybe I took it wrong. Maybe the universe doesn't just hate me. Maybe there's some kind of hidden meaning I'm supposed to understand from this. 

I know it can't just be random that I'm sleeping in this room again for the first time in 4 years, and it can't just be a coincidence that health wise and mentally I'm doing just as bad now as I was then. It can't be. The universe can't hate me that much. Can it? 

I hope not. 

I feel like I'm supposed to understand something from this. It has to mean something..."

Firstly, I want to just say that I'm doing great now, all around great. If you want to hear more about how I'm doing now, you can read my last article or watch my last video, "Dear 2017." I'm very happy with where I'm at and I'm very excited to be turning 20 and to have a pajama party game night with my family. I can't imagine a better way to spend my birthday. I wouldn't change a thing. 

The reason I wanted talk about this article and the thing I want to update on is ... I am still sleeping in this room, even though I never meant to stay in here so long. I'm currently writing this from the bed, and sheets, and room that aren't STILL mine. But I'm happy to say that for the first time in many many years, I actually feel like myself again. My mind and body no longer feel "frighteningly foreign." This room may not be mine, but I did find a way to make it feel like home.

I am planning to move back to my room soon, but I found it SO symbolic that I ended up staying in this room for a full year. As you can tell by my writing a year ago, I was not happy to be back in this room, in the same place as I was 4 years prior. But at the end of the article you also can see that I suddenly started to question "Maybe I took this wrong. Maybe the universe doesn't actually hate me. Maybe this means something and I just don't understand it...yet."

My last thoughts were correct. I did take it wrong...at first. The universe doesn't hate me; it was a lesson. There were many reasons I was in this room this year, and I'll have to talk more about that at a later date.

I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, and I fully believe that I was meant to  be in this room, and for a full year too. I was forced to make peace with this room and the bad memories it once held. I had to quite literally face my demons, and take back control over my life and my surroundings. As much as I hated being in the EXACT place I started, I needed to be exactly here. I did need to start over. It just wasn't the type of starting over that I initially thought it would be. My health didn't have to start it's 4 year journey over, like how I thought it would. No, it was ME that needed to start over and go on a journey I'd been avoiding my entire life.

Like destiny, I got pushed to the edge of a crazy spiritual journey, and as always, I froze and thought about running away. I stood on the edge, afraid of the vast unknowns that lied ahead of me, and as I talked about in Dear 2017, I met two women who changed everything. They empowered me to jump right into the deep end of this crazy journey, and I've never looked back. It's been the most incredible journey. I'm embracing "the wonder that is me", as one of those women would word it. I'm enjoying the ride, and man oh man do I have some amazing things to share and talk about sometime soon... I'll be writing much more this year, so stay tuned for LOTS more to come.  

But the moral of this story is, yes, everything does happen for a reason. 

Dear 2017,

Dear 2017,

What a year you have been. 

2017, like any year, you have had your ups and downs. But I have to say that you really have been a good year for me. 

At the beginning of 2017, I was very ill...to say the least. My weight was dangerously low, my daily allergic reactions were just starting to stop, my health was continuing on it's downward spiral, I was deeply depressed and suicidal, I was sure I wouldn't even live to see spring time due to my hopelessly dwindling health.... 

The beginning of 2017 for me was dismal, at best. The only thing that got me through was my furry baby, Tramp, my puppy. He gave me a reason to at least get up every day, and at the time, just getting up was a monumental accomplishment for me. 

But in some time, dismal turned to not too bad, and then suddenly I stopped and realized that things were starting to actually look up. My health wasn't declining anymore, it was actually starting to improve. 

On March 13, 2017 I saw a new doctor for the first time. After a 4 hour appointment, I walked out of her office and walked up to the hill to the car, practically pain free...for the first time in 5 years. 

And even though that wasn't the instant cure all end to my chronic pain, nothing has ever been since that day. Just having that one day without pain changed everything for me. It was like suddenly we turned a corner and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I had hope. 

This year has been filled with endless amounts of very hard work and strict self discipline about making the best possible choices for my health. It's been a long, hard year, but my God the benefits and improvements I've made have been amazing. 

My life path has changed drastically, yet again, and for once I stopped fighting it and let go of the things I'd been holding onto for so long. The goals I felt I needed to accomplish in life, and the ideas I'd had about how I felt my life should be. With the encouragement of the doctor I started seeing in March who has completely changed my life, and almost identical advice I was given by an intuitive, and some would say psychic stranger, I let go. I let go of my fears, of my anxiety, of my resistance towards so many things, and most of all... I let go of my old view of myself. 

To paraphrase those two women who've changed everything for me, they told me, "You are capable of so much more than you think. You're stuck in your head. You don't have to try so hard. Just let it all go. Breathe. Follow your instincts and stop questioning it. Be curious, not afraid. Fear cannot exist where curiosity does." 

Two women, whom I met two days apart, who don't know each other, whom I both met after long, crazy series of events of fate, somehow managed to give me the exact same advice. 

It was like a slap in the face wake up call from the universe. 

After the second woman, the intuitive stranger, said the same things as my doctor, I stopped questioning everything and followed their advice. I didn't second guess my instincts any longer and dove right into the deep end of this whole crazy long life and spiritual journey. It's been amazing. 

I have to say, 2017, I think you have been the most incredible year of my life. So many huge things have happened, so many changes... I've gone from the lowest off lows and worst my health has maybe ever been, to now doing the best I have done in YEARS. I can't remember the last time I've been this happy for this long and didn't dip into a depression. I can't remember the last time I had a winter where my health was so good. I can't remember the last time I felt so good on Christmas. I can't remember the last time I actually felt like me. I finally feel like myself again, even though everything in my life has changed.

2017, I have to thank you, because of you, I've found myself. 

I'm the most grounded I've ever been, I'm the most spiritually connected I've ever been, I'm the happiest and healthiest I've been in years and I'm still continuing to improve. I've gone a whole year without being in the hospital. I've gone almost a year without an allergic reaction. I have two, happy, healthy furry little kids who've totally changed my world. I'm happy, and in love. 

But most of all, the thing I am most grateful for is that I finally have hope again. Hope has changed everything for me. 

I have grown so much as a person this year and have learned so much, and for that I am incredibly grateful. 

I still don't know what I'm gonna do with my life exactly, and I don't know where I'm going, but I'm finally okay with that. Everything that's happened this year has led me to exactly where I am right now, and I wholeheartedly love and am so thankful for where I'm at. I'm excited to see what's in store next for me, and I'm ready to start living. 

2017, you have been a reawakening for me, and honestly I think that's what you've been for many others too, and for that, I thank you.  

Thank you, 2017. You will forever hold a special place in my heart and I'll never forget you. 

Cheers to a hell of a year! 

Goodbye, 2017! 

Hello, 2018!


I did a YouTube video reading this, plus some extras. You can find that here.