Life Lessons of the Past Year

            How crazy is it that another year has gone by? Why do the years seem to go so fast now, but when I was younger, they seemed so slow. Maybe it’s because I hadn't lived as many years, so the time felt slower. I don't know, but now the years fly by.

I'm not going to sit here and say 2023 is going to be the best year ever, and all my dreams will come true, and all my goals will be achieved and blah blah blah because with the way the last few years have gone, who fucking knows. I didn't expect or anticipate, or plan the things that happened in 2022 so why plan for the next one? And I'm not being pessimistic here, I'm not being like omg nothing goes my way, and the world is against me or whatever. 2022 was not a bad year, it just was a lot of unplanned events and life. It's more like what's the point because we don't know what life will throw our way, we can't really prepare for it. There's no guidebook or instructions on how to live through some things, you just have to figure it out as you go. Sure, we can plan things, we can get a job to make money, we can go to school to get a career but I'm not talking about those kinds of things. I'm talking about the things you can't plan for, the heartbreaks, the losses, the emotional highs and lows, the amazing people, just the overall experience of being alive because it's like riding a rollercoaster with a blindfold on.

One thing I learnt is that nothing is easy. Everything takes time, and effort and money and commitment. Even things that you love and things that are meant for you and things that are just part of life. I think that’s why it's so hard to determine what you want and what your dreams and goals are because no matter what it's going to be hard. Pursuing your dreams and goals, hard. Watching life pass you by, hard. Building up friendships and a good social circle, hard. being alone and feeling alone, hard. Winning is hard. Quitting or letting go may seem easier, but is it? No. You just have to decide what's worth fighting for and what isn't and doing that is, you guessed it, pretty fucking hard.

Another thing that I've learnt is that I need to speak to a therapist. I know there's a stigma about that but it's bullshit. We all have issues we need to work through and some of them are bigger than we are. We need help to figure them out and that's okay. I've been trying for years to heal myself and I thought I was doing great at it. I thought I was okay. But there have been so many things that have happened in my life that made me feel like I don’t deserve good things, like I’m not worthy and it’s caused a lot of issues for me. It causes me to constantly be in fight or flight mode and creates a lot of commitment issues. So anytime something good happens or I find good people I instantly want to run because in my mind that's not for me. That I'm not good enough for the happiness in life. And the thing is I know that's not true, I know that the bad things that have happened don't define me, but those things still put ideas in my head and no matter how hard I try to fight them off sometimes they still win. I don't want to miss out on the good things anymore because my brain tells me that someone else deserves them more than I do. We all deserve everything good that life throws at us, and we need to enjoy those things without a shadow of a doubt that we deserve them. So, I'm going to therapy to sort those things out because while I think I did okay in healing myself, I need help to finish the job.

I've been saying this throughout my entire blog, in fact it's like a foundation of it but it's such a big concept that it's incredibly hard for me to grasp so I'm still learning how to do it. Putting yourself first. Learning how to love yourself and cherish yourself and be proud of yourself. We live in a world where thinking you're beautiful is narcissistic and putting yourself before others is selfish and yeah maybe in some context that's right. But for the most part it's straight up spoon-fed bullshit. You need to be you, you need to do you, you need to appreciate that you're here. I will never stop learning how to do this because it's not natural for me. I want to put everyone before myself. It comes down to the fact that I love those people more than I love me. It's okay to love people, it's okay to share your heart but you need to keep a piece of it for you too. If you're not treating yourself like you would treat your best friend, then that needs to change.

One thing that I did this year that I'm proud of is let go of a few things that were bringing me down. I let go of relationships, I set boundaries for myself and while those decisions were extremely hard because I'm the kind of person that wants to see good everywhere in everyone, despite everything. But sometimes the good part is just the memories, and we need to move on. We need to let go. We can keep those good memories, but we need to understand that as good as they were they aren't an excuse to keep being hurt in hopes we will get something similar in the future.

Another thing I learnt is that it's okay to be selfish if it helps keep you sane. I've had to make a lot of really hard decisions lately but even though they are hard, as we've established that everything is, they are what's in my best interest right now. You can't give every piece of you away to other people expecting that they will give you something back. I think that's my toxic trait, I love too hard to the point of exhaustion. I've moved mountains for people who wouldn't kick a pebble out of the path for me. I don't want to give up that piece of myself, I like that when I'm in I'm all in. I like that I care about the people I love so much. And I like that I would go to the end of the earth for someone. That's just who I am, but I need to find a way to give that to myself too. I need to move mountains for me too. I can't keep giving all my energy to other people's mountains until I don't even have enough left to kick pebbles for myself. I don't want to love less because I want the love that I give in return, and I deserve to be loved the way that I love. I want someone to want to know me. I want to be asked how my day was and what I'm learning in my classes. I want forehead kisses and cheesy movie nights and to pick the music on the car rides. I want someone who learns my love languages and understands how I interpret love. I deserve that. Everyone deserves that. I think I've lowered my standards because I'm not sure if that person even exists and I've settled for mediocre ever afters. But I know there is someone out there who will be that person for me. I just need to stop wasting my time with lowered standards.

I've been in back-to-back relationships for a long time now. I guess I don't do well with being alone but this year I'm going to force myself to do that because I think that's what I really need right now. You spend so much time in relationships getting to know the other person and understand the way they work. Or at least I do, in my experience I've learned that that's not the norm for some people. I need to give myself the energy that I have to those people. I need to get to know me again, so I've thought about it, and I think I am going to do another love life list. This time I'm not going to set a time goal like I did last time. It's not just going to be a year; it's going to be a life.

I mentioned in a previous post about stress that I've been going through a lot lately and I want to write about it so badly because I know it would help. However, since it involves more lives than just mine, I don't feel right doing that. Out of respect for those people that's going to stay offline.

 

Thanks for reading, love you ❤️