Reflections of 2016.
As the ball dropped on the year 2015, I did something that I
had been telling myself for at least six months I would do. During a quiet
evening spent with only three other people, I raised my glass and toasted a good riddance
to the turbulent, tumultuous year of 2015, the year that almost broke me, the
lost year.
I promised myself that in 2016 I would be better, I would do
better, I would force myself to heal. I thought that my sheer will power to
deny anything that had happened would push me through.
I promised myself all of these things that I would do during
the year, like, starting to work out again, and taking a graphic art and design
class, and finishing a novel, and finding great love, and allowing myself to
heal. I told myself I would do things to my house. Only some of those things
came to fruition.
Towards the beginning of the year, I made a friend that
would become the first person I would open up to. Because this friend hadn’t
known me in my previous version and had some struggles of his own, he was able
to see past the tough exterior that I tried to put on and see how broken I felt
and in his own ways, pushed me to begin the healing process.
I will respect his privacy, but he opened my eyes about a
lot of things in my life and about myself, including my previous denials that I
wanted someone to share my life with.
See, before, I thought that if I pushed myself hard enough,
I could force myself to heal. If I just told myself to snap out of it, I would.
I didn’t know that it would take time and months of intensive counseling and
therapy to keep all of the hurt, anger, rage and sadness at bay.
Many mornings I didn’t look in the mirror, because I didn’t
want to see the toll the year before had taken and because I wore the guilt of
things I couldn’t control like a badge.
I had thought that if I continued to say that I was fine, I
eventually would be. That if I denied the desire to have someone share my life,
the desire would go away. I thought that if I just kept pushing every
emotion down and swallowing it, it would be ok.
I went out with friends, probably drank too much, worked too
many hours, obsessed over working out, but when it came to talking, I just wouldn’t.
I told people I was fine, that I was
okay, that I didn’t want to talk about it, or think about it.
By April, those things were beginning to weight more than I
could deal with.
There are things that only those closest to me knew over the
summer. Only the people that were in my day to day life knew about the
debilitating panic attacks, which caused me to be unable to leave my drive way,
or shop, or see friends.
Only a few people who
love me most knew about the times that I woke up and cried and rolled back over
to sleep because I couldn’t’ deal with the pressure of everything. I couldn’t
figure out how to get over a string of heartaches, let go, and move on.
There are people in this life that will tell you that you
just pull yourself up by your boot straps and deal with it. That’s all fine and
good and dandy. I agree eventually you do have to pull yourself up by your boot
straps, but those people weren’t beside me or with me, when I sat for 30
minutes in my driveway and physically couldn’t make myself leave. Those people
weren’t with me when I felt like I had been gut- punched constantly.
They didn’t understand how many things had finally built up
and taken a toll on me, or how I had spent years bottling up emotions and
tragedies without shedding tears. I boxed everything up and shelved it until
the weight finally caused everything to tumble down.
With so much grief and anger, there were times I felt like
maybe I didn’t deserve to move on and have my own life. I felt like maybe I
wasn’t a good enough mother, friend, niece. I felt like if I had tried harder,
things would have turned out differently.
Guilt in grief has a way of almost destroying you.
See the thing is, people don’t talk about mental health.
They don’t talk about the way it impacts your body, and a lot of times we’re
shamed or called weak if we break down and can’t push through. But I’m not
weak. I’m one of the strongest people I know, ask anyone who loves me. So my
loved ones sat quietly by as they couldn’t figure out to heal me or what I
needed in order to move on.
So, I knew it was time for me to start counseling. I had to
hit rock bottom, before I started climbing back up.
Months later, after talking and talking and talking and
learning ways to process, ways to heal, and healthy ways to grieve, I finally
realized that nothing that happened the year before was my fault. Other people
make decisions about their lives, and no matter how much it hurts me, I can’t
control nor dictate their choices. I can only control my reactions to it.
As I have healed, I have finally started making choices that
are about me, choices that are about me and my own future.
I took a job, where although the pay is lower than I’m used
to, but I get to meet people, and have a
flexible schedule, and have opportunities to grow and develop as a person and
use personality strengths.
I kept writing for the magazine, and have loved every minute
of it. I am watching as it grows and develops. I got certified to tutor English
for an adult literacy and English as a second language program and have enjoyed
seeing my student develop and hope to help her continue her development.
And I completed my novel. It needs revision, but I know in
my heart it is good. I know it is timely, I know there are people in this world
that will read it and maybe have it touch their lives or open their eyes.
As with every year, I have gone on great adventures to tell
people about the existence of structural and natural beauties. I have made my
way to castles across the state, to Kentucky and to Indiana. I thrill for those days when I can tell
someone an exciting piece of history and people say “I had no idea, thank you
for showing me that.”
I have opened up to people, and shared my heart, my dreams,
my strengths and weaknesses. I opened up and shared not only my darkness, but
that light that in previous years I had only let my closest friends see.
What those people have done with me being laid bare, has no
consequence for me. I opened myself u whoand finally after years of not giving
anyone an opportunity to get to know me, allowed someone to hear my hopes, my
dreams, my passions, even my weaknesses.
For once, I have allowed myself to be human, to be
vulnerable. That in itself has been a challenge for me. And in allowing myself to be vulnerable, I
have finally started to become whole again.
I have stood by my loved ones as they went through their own
personal struggles this year, and sometimes through their struggles I have
learned things about myself. One of the things I learned is that there are
times they are strong, because I have been strong. They have told me they have
looked up to me and admired my persistence, my stance that you must love
yourself before you allowed yourself to be loved. I have learned that in times
of need, I will remain strong for them.
I am growing, I am developing. This year I finally realized
that the hurt of years gone by does not define me, and that I can move on
without settling for being treated as less than.
I finally learned that for some people, it won’t matter how
much I am, how smart, how pretty, how funny, how good, they will never love me.
But I will no longer allow that to define me. I am finally learning that my
happiness means more to me than saving the feelings of those who do nothing but
attempt to tear me down.
There are things that will always hurt. There will always be
anniversaries, birthdays, or just some days when I am genuinely sad because of
the memories. But, I finally have the ability to remember not just the hurt,
but the fact that I was lucky to have loved people so much that losing them
hurt so much. Where there is great hurt, there was also great love. That’s
taken me awhile to understand.
The last two years I have allowed myself to be lax on having
a five-year plan. I stopped asking myself where I see myself. I stopped asking
what I wanted and how to accomplish my goals.
That changes this coming year.
In 2017, I will revise my freshly written novel, and will
start the submission process. I have a story that I think needs to be heard to
help other people begin their healing. Even as I wrote it, there were times I
had to walk away because there were feelings that were too fresh, too familiar.
I will continue writing for the magazine and tutoring. I
will also spend more time working on and developing my blog. This means many
more road trips to destinations off the beaten path.
Maybe sometime I’ll
travel to someplace exotic, maybe I’ll fall in love, real, true, lasting,
forever love. Maybe I’ll take some more classes and learn new skills. Maybe
I'll toast the New Year with a kiss, maybe I’ll toast it with a hug from an old
friend. However I roll in the New Year I
will toast to a me that has finally grown, a me that is evolving, a me that
went through hell and came out the other side, tattered, but not broken.
Whatever happens in 2017, I will know that although 2015 was
the lost year and 2016 was the year I learned how to heal and without that, I
wouldn’t have 2017, the year of dreams and possibilities.
