Goodbye 2024

I sit in bed on January 1st 2025 and write about my gratefulness of where I am today in my last blog post. All of that is true. All of it. But I would also be missing parts of the story here if I didn’t also write its inverse; because can’t you feel grateful but also look back on a year with other emotions. There are far too many to list in one setting. And honestly, they will be continuing along on my journey of healing far into my future. 

Because healing is not a black and white thing. You don’t wake up one day and say…done. I am over it. Sometimes I wish that is how the world worked. But that has never been how I experienced it. I still look back from years and years and years ago and feel the pain in my heart from situations and feelings. I think to some extent I always will. 

So today is also a day to look back at a year that has finally, painstakingly, horrifically come to a close. And I am so thankful that it has. 2024 has been a year that truly tested me, pushed me, gotten very close to fully breaking me. I am who I am today, having gone through it. But hell if it honestly didn’t just suck. 

Can’t you be grateful to the strength of enduring something but also feel such anger and pain in the fact that you had to. I sure do. I hope one day I will look back and things will have continued to dull in feeling. I know to some extent some of it already has. However, it is still so very raw and real. How 2024 has been one of the hardest years of my life. 

Hard doesn’t always equal misery. Hard showcases strength and endurance and ability to keep going. I sure didn’t feel like that. I still don’t fully. I see this hard as a lot of lessons I wish I didn’t have to learn. I see this hard as a lot of things that just hurt so badly that I can see the scars still. While they are not the open gushing wounds anymore, they are still so very visible. I don’t know for how long they will reside. Maybe forever. 

This past year I will be working to fully put behind me likely for the rest of my life. 

I will be trying to recover from watching him almost die in the hospital. 

I will be trying to recover from trying so hard to make it work that I fell into one of the deepest and darkest holes of my life. 

I will be trying to recover from walking away from someone that isn’t ok that has just completely ripped my heart out. 

I will be trying to recover from feeling like I lost myself, my purpose, my world. 

I will be trying to recover from finding myself once more in a situation of hiding from the world, myself and my pain. 

I will be trying to recover from feeling so deeply lonely. 

I will be trying to recover from a dream that will no longer come true.

I will be trying to recover from watching one of my best friends go through such an ugly and hard experience and feeling so helpless. 

I will be trying to recover from once more facing the fear of being alone for the rest of my life. 

2024 has not been an easy year for me. Maybe it is what sparked me to finally start a blog. Maybe it is what has helped me book my first stay to get away and start identifying my life. Maybe it is what has helped me finally push through every negative and scared feeling I have felt to start antidepressants. Maybe the hard is where you find the peace. I am just not fully there yet.

I think I am just feeling at this moment that my inverse in looking at 2024 has been one hell of a year that I wish I didn’t have to live. I didn’t want my heart broken so many times. I didn’t want to find myself sitting in bed crying out to the universe that I would trade places with him in the hospital if I could and to please not let him die. I didn’t want to have to make the decision to get on a plane back home, leaving him there alone. I didn’t want to be in a mental place, where I was thinking about on my drive home if I got in a car accident and didn’t make it that it would relieve me from the feelings so trapped in my chest. I didn’t want to feel any of it. That’s not how I wanted my year to go. And yet, it was how it went. 

So saying goodbye to it now, I know is not a true goodbye. It will still be alongside me in the passenger seat for as long as I need to carry it. But its a door I am so miserably happy in closing. 2024 was a very difficult year for me. And I so hopeful for a better tomorrow in 2025. So right now, if I need to lean into the cheesiness of the date change to feel or do different, I will take it. Anything at this point that helps is not something I am going to give space for negativity on. 

Let’s give grace today. To those that want better and if a change of year helps them take steps for better, let's see it as a positive. 

Goodbye 2024. What a year it was.