Endings

Writing this for my own closure.

2016 was hard. I can’t think of another time where I was in such an awful place mentally. In the Springtime I started dreading the thought of going to work. Each morning I would wake up crying and I would cry myself to sleep at night. Nothing terrible happened at work, something in my brain just triggered which all of a sudden caused me to feel that way. The stress of a handling a full-time job was (is) still new to me. It didn’t help that in the middle of this I got a boss who made my life miserable, no matter how hard I tried not to let little things affect me. The anxiety was more than I felt like I could handle and I fell into a depression (self-diagnosed). It wasn’t just sadness, it seemed different. It was scary. What I usually found great joy in doing I didn’t really care for anymore. That was a first for me; even when I went through a really rough period my freshman year of college I don’t remember feeling the way I felt this year. Of course there were plenty of amazing times filled with happiness (a ton!) but the doctors are right when they say that depression is like a dark cloud hovering over you – and I experienced that cloud more often than I would have liked. It’s difficult to explain to people who have never experienced it before – but I kind of felt numb to every emotion.

Another low point for me was in August. I’ve struggled with acne for years, but in August I got the worst breakout of my life. I ended up distancing myself even further from all of my friends both out of embarrassment and sheer exhaustion. This was also the month my brother left for college which was sad for me. I had my second anxiety attack of the year during August, which I’ve never struggled with in the past to this degree.

In October, my grandpa was in a critical state in the hospital for almost a month. Very luckily, he has made a full recovery.

November – I won’t even get into the disheartening state of our country. Even now, in December, I still don’t feel completely myself despite the fact my anxiety has improved immensely. As we get closer to the new year, I unfortunately think that the whole holiday season was a blur. I’m ecstatic about a fresh start in 2017. I know things won’t magically change the second the clock strikes midnight, but I have more desire than ever before to make a positive change in my life. I don’t have a choice. Next step is to get up and figure out what that change is going to be.

Lastly, to top off the year, I tripped over my toe and have been walking with a limp for the past week.

Here’s to a very happy new year.