I truly cannot believe we’re ending another year.

I get that time passes and a new year is inevitable, but I swear, the years have gone by so much faster as I’ve gotten older. I still vividly remember where I was a year ago.

I started blogging last year along with journaling daily so if I wanted, I could even look back to my exact thoughts this time last year. While I like having the time capsule, I’ve also noticed how attached I’ve become to my past.

2017 was not an easy year for me in the slightest. I’d go as far to say it has been one of the most difficult in my short twenty-one years.

My biggest issue?

 

Letting go.

 

I spend a lot of time trying to form my words into a way where I get my point across without offending anyone or sharing too much information.

Thing is, my words are my weapon. This site and all the work I put into it, along with Kimtells last year, holds so much of my heart. It’s a place where I can represent myself in my truest form. I’m tired of censoring myself when in reality, being vulnerable is the only way I can be of actual service to people.

I appreciate when those I adore hold down the truth. They share their thoughts and don’t give a damn who might come across them. There’s something so admirable about people not being afraid to be their authentic selves. So, here’s my declaration to myself that I’m tired of hiding. Going into 2018, I’m ready to let loose. This site is my stomping ground and it is okay to share my struggles in their rawest form. While being vague may keep me a bit protected, I crave being open for the first time in my life. Here’s to honesty.

 

So, on letting go.

 

This concept seemed to follow me in every aspect of my life.

When it came to my job, I ended up quitting three times this year. Two times from the same place.

I realized at the end of last year that I was ready to move on from my job. I was a manager at a coffee shop and if I’m being honest, I’m really not the type of person to be in a manager position. One of my biggest issues is people pleasing and if you throw that in with an empathetic heart, you have someone who is built to make everyone around them happy. Kind of hard to manage people when all you want to do is be their friend.

So, I quit in March and moved on to a juicery. I left there after less than a month.

Why?

 

I was nostalgic for the past.

 

I missed the people from my job. I missed knowing what I was doing. I missed working with a large group of people because at the juicery, I worked with one other person at a time. Not to mention I took a pay cut because in March, I thought it would be worth it in the end. It was a fresh start and you couldn’t put a price on that.

Well, once I realized I was unhappy, I decided to leave and return to my old job. However, I transferred to a different location because I thought it would satisfy the part of me that wanted a new beginning.

After two months, I already knew I was unhappy again. The new location was a 35 minute drive from home and my hours coincided with rush hour traffic.

 

But, I still tried to focus positively.

 

I made a promise to my bosses that I was here for the long haul because I felt guilty asking for my job back.

I began taking spin classes after work to avoid rush hour and I started becoming close to my co-workers. Things seemed to be getting better.

However, if you read the post I wrote right after I quit (spoiler alert), you’ll know that I spent at least one day a week in tears due to stress.

I hated having so much of my life out of my control. I never got enough sleep. I’d be gone from sun up to sun down.

I put things I loved on the back-burner because I had no energy.

It wasn’t until I had a week of back-to-back breakdowns due to this that I finally made the decision to leave. As I’m writing this, I’ve only been unemployed for two weeks but I can tell you wholeheartedly that it was the right decision. I slowly feel like I’m gaining back the life I lost so long ago.

 

It took me all of 2017 to finally let go of my job. I defined myself by what I did. I put my worth in my position. Only to come home and never feel more disconnected from who I was.

 

If you’ve been going through a similar situation, I urge you to take the plunge into 2018. It is okay to ask for help from family or friends while you go through this. We’re taught to be independent and never accept outside resources, but trust me, your well-being will thank you. Help exists for a reason. We all go through transitional periods and we do not have to go through them alone. Do not hesitate to reach out to those around you.

When it came to love, my heart was destroyed this year – in more ways than one. I’ve touched on this in multiple posts, but most recently in ‘For Those Who Don’t Know How to Love.’

I learned about my relationship patterns in a way I never expected.

This time last year, I put so much of my worth into how a man saw me. If he treated me wrong or I got mixed signals, I initially blamed a lot of it on myself. I thought I was picking up on things all wrong or I wasn’t worthy enough of his affection. I thought there was something wrong with me.

 

But, going into 2017, I told myself I would be more open to life. I would see where this situation took me. I thought I was just over thinking it.

 

Turns out, this man was interested in me, but only to a certain degree.

I was there when he was bored. I was there when he was lonely. I was there because despite all the evidence pointing to being ‘just another girl’ he screwed with, I was convinced I could be the different one.

After months of push-and-pull emotions, I began to let go of him. However, if he ever reached out, I managed to throw all the sound advice I told myself out the window and see him. I didn’t understand why I was so attached.

Flash forward to this summer and I began to understand some things. I started talking to someone new, someone who clearly saw my value and was interested in what I had to say. Yet, after two weeks of this, I was completely out of alignment. I touched on this in another post.

I felt suffocated. It was too much affection. I slowly felt like I was drowning and losing my independence. Mind you, I had not even seen this man in person. It was the simple thought of seeing him that sent my anxiety through the roof.

I ended up cutting him off, however, after experiencing all the miscommunication from my previous encounter, I was honest about why. I had never been so honest before.

I began to realize that when it came to love, I had a problem. I’ve always known I had some resistance, but after spending months craving affection from someone and someone else giving it to me (but I didn’t want it), I felt really taken back.

 

I said I wanted someone to love me and be there for me intimately yet when that came along, I shut down.

 

That’s when the pieces started to come together. I read the book Attached, which if you haven’t read, I highly recommend. It touches on our attachment styles in relationships (anxious, avoidant, and secure) and I quickly realized that I was the rare 4% that had an anxious-avoidant attachment style.

When it came to actual intimacy, I was avoidant as hell. I never let anyone too close, no matter how much love they showed me. Yet when those same people would pull away, I craved the chase again. I would reach out to them thinking I truly wanted to be with them only to feel suffocated almost immediately after they reciprocated. This led to a lot of confusion on my past partners’ ends and for all the right reasons.

I only wanted them when I didn’t have them.

On the other end, if I meet someone, become interested, and they don’t reciprocate, my mind goes on an insane loop. I do whatever I can to receive their affection; I’ll post to Snapchat consistently, put on my best face of makeup, listen eagerly to their every word, act dumber than I actually am, the list could go on. It’s terrible. My life turns into a cycle of trying to please someone else and if I receive any positive re-enforcement, I get a high.

 

Seeking love turns into more of an addiction than the act of loving itself.

 

Once I came to all of these conclusions, I almost became numb. Everything felt wrong and I didn’t know what to do next.

I spent most of Fall trying to understand why I couldn’t receive love and what I could do to change it. Thing is, when you try to change something about yourself, you’re saying to yourself that something is wrong with where you are; and where I was wasn’t entirely my fault. The way we receive love in our adult lives is based on how we received love as a child.

I was never shown love in the most upfront of ways. Love tended to come in through the back door. It took a lot of interpretation on my part as a kid.

So, when someone shows me love directly, my old beliefs don’t line up with that. It seems dangerous.

However, when someone is vague and refuses to be candid about their emotions, that feels like love to me. I know this sounds distorted coming out, but some of our darkest truths are what need light the most. Revealing this to you all feels therapeutic in and of itself.

 

After awhile, I began to merge my beliefs about love into my beliefs on the law of attraction.

 

I believe that people come into our lives based on our vibration. If our inner being is vibrating at a place where we don’t feel loved, we tend to attract people who either don’t feel loved as well or people who will be a mirror to our own vibration.

This is why our relationships can get so messy.

Either they’re matching where we are or they’re here for us to learn more about ourselves, usually in gut-wrenching ways.

Looking back on my issues with love, I have always carried this resistance. All of my past relationships ended due to my inability to get close to someone.

It didn’t matter how many times I was repeating this assignment because it continued to end the same way. I wasn’t picking up on the lesson, I simply continued to tell myself I wasn’t meeting the right people.

 

Until this year.

 

I started off this tangent saying I was heartbroken, right? How is that possible if I have so much insecurity when it comes to love?

Because I needed to attract someone different into my life to finally catch the lesson, to see the mirror. To show myself first-hand how I had been treating people in the past.

I went through all the highs-and-lows of my relationships with this person, but I was on the opposite end. I was the one who was hurt. While I’m still struggling to let go of the pain, I know I needed this person to enter my life for that reason.

 

I needed the mirror to understand my own behavior.

 

And let me tell you, since all of this, I have changed how I approach my relationships completely.

If I talk to someone and I realize I’m not interested, I tell them off the bat.

If I feel anxious or nervous or any of my old behavior comes up, I let that person know where I’m coming from. I don’t ghost people anymore. I even go as far as to tell people on Tinder why I’m not replying to them.

I feel a completely new outlook on communication and for that, I’m grateful. I no longer want to leave anyone in dark and have them believe there’s something off about them when in reality, all I’m doing is battling my old demons.

As I enter 2018, I’m taking this newfound knowledge with me and running with it. While I know my issues still aren’t fully healed, I feel humbled in knowing they don’t have to be. Life is a constant path of growth and 2017 provided me a little piece of the path to continue on my way.

Despite all the hardships, I do believe 2017 will remain a monumental year for me. Sometimes we don’t need everything to go right in our lives for it to be seen as good. The fact I finally let go of draining job and began to understand my side on love can easily be seen a victory.

 

Our most painful feats can provide the best stepping-stones for what’s to come.

 

I don’t know what to expect in 2018. Not a single clue.

I’m unemployed with no plan. I’m coming out of a heartbreak. I don’t even know what to expect tomorrow let alone a year from now, but with such a fresh slate, I feel excited.

I can put 2017 on a shelf and come back to the lessons as I need them, but the battles I dealt with are coming to an end. I’m no longer in the pits of my issues but on the other side reflecting.

I know this post was very much me-focused, but if you take anything away, let it be this.

No matter what came up for you in 2017, you gained something from it. You might not have even realized it until now.

If you quit your job as well, what was the reasoning behind it? Were you just done with the position or were you being treated unfairly? With receiving unfair treatment, maybe you began to understand your worth in a way you hadn’t before. If you went through a break-up, you learned more of what you don’t want out of a relationship or like myself, you learned more about your own relationship patterns.

 

That’s the thing about life. It’s a constant classroom.

 

We live as students on this planet, learning more and more about not only ourselves, but the world around us. Seeing life as a classroom instead of a set structure to follow keeps our child-like qualities alive. They’re the part of us that are most authentic to who we are and we can’t risk losing that.

I’m not going to tell you to write out resolutions because let’s be honest, we know a lot of those go out the window. Life happens. We change our minds. We end up not wanting what we once wanted so desperately.

All I ask is that you sit down with yourself tonight. Before you go out, before you get into the craziness of it all.

Ask yourself this:

 

How are you different from the person you were one year ago?

If not much has changed, how does that make you feel?

If everything is different, how does that make you feel?

Knowing the first question now, how do you want your answer to be different at the end of 2018?

 

The months will pass us by and the things we wanted to change on December 31st may now seem like a pipe-dream, but they don’t have to be.

We can carry this question with us every day next year.

 

If the life we’re living is not a life we want to be living a year from now, we know a change has to happen. If we’re holding on to things that we don’t want to be hurt by a year from now, we know we have to let go.

 

We have a right to feel alive in our everyday lives. It doesn’t matter what we ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ do or what others think is right for us. If we don’t feel alive, something has to change. We don’t deserve any less than that.

I hope 2018 can be a turning point for a lot of us, myself included. A time where we begin to re-integrate the disowned parts of ourselves. A time of starting to live on our own terms despite every scared bone in our body.

We may be scared, but my are we brave. We continue to live regardless of our troubles. We still find ways to laugh even when our core is hurting. We are some of the strongest individuals alive and we hardly give ourselves credit.

It’s time to start admiring our courage; to take pride in how far we’ve come in spite of every setback.

In the face of it all, our bravery lives on and in truth, that’s all we’ll ever need.