Well, we’re at that point in the year where I start to get reflective.

Even though I didn’t write much the past two years, you bet I was still in my nostalgic head looking back on the year behind. I know New Year’s is one of those holidays people either love or don’t care about, but I always get so excited for it. It’s my favorite holiday.

New Year’s Eve is a day of full reflection, goal-setting, and partying in to the next year with those you love (usually – f u 2020). I can’t think of a better time.

It’s wild to look back on where you were a year ago and see what the past twelve months had in store for you. I know there’s still a week left or so of 2020, but my mind is already in New Year’s mode.

2020 held a lot of things none of us expected. I don’t think any of us could have predicted the chaos we experienced this year. We’re all tired of saying it or reading it, but you know your 2019 self would be mind-blown.

This time a year ago, I was working two jobs and about a year in to a relationship. I spent most days with him or working. I didn’t sleep much and I remember not being in the holiday spirit. I was actually really sick for a month. I truly would’ve thought it was COVID now if I didn’t test positive for the flu. I remember hardly having a voice throughout Christmas and New Year’s.

I remember working in to January as I was feeling better but my voice just wouldn’t come back. I had to whisper to customers to even have them understand me. I worked New Year’s Eve at the hotel and lost my voice by the end of it – customers pity tipped like crazy.

 

Kinda like now.

 

I only work a couple of days at my restaurant job and every week we’re preparing for a shutdown. It’s weird how many hours I used to work and now, I don’t work until the day after Christmas. I don’t think I’ve had time off around the holidays since I started working at 16. The pandemic and losing my grocery store job really took all the holiday pressure off this year.

The numbers are rising so I don’t really see myself leaving the house until I have to work again. It’s weird watching Christmas movies this year and seeing packed places on screen. I’m hoping America gets it’s act together a bit in 2021, but after this year, I’ve come to accept whatever timeline we have with COVID. I’ll do my part, but in the end, there’s no conclusion in sight. It’s truly a waiting game.

With all the extra time off, I’ve gotten in to one of my typical phases. I’ve been deep cleaning my space and inevitably flipping through old journals. I’m not in my childhood home, so I don’t really find old stuff in my room from elementary school, but I moved here in 2014. I was only 18. I found a journal from right after I graduated through the beginning of 2016 and holy shit, you think you remember things about your life, but you really don’t.

 

The problems we have at the time seem so massive and reading them back, they’re only a flicker in the whole of your life.

 

In 2015, I was a barista. I was dieting. I was trying to go to community college.

I ended the year in the depths of an eating disorder, a college drop-out, and a manager at that same coffee shop.

All of those things seem so distant to me now, but were everything at the time.

I don’t talk about my eating disorder much anymore on here nor being vegan. That used to be such a basis for so many of my posts on my old blog. I’m sure at the beginning of this blog I have eating disorder posts, but 2015 was the height of it – before I ever started writing publicly.

I still struggle with body image from time to time and don’t always like what I see in the mirror. That’s normal. At the time though, I used to dissect everything about myself. I gained maybe ten pounds after high school and let it take over me until about 2018. I started noticing how chubby my face was or arm fat I wished didn’t exist. I tried to control my eating to the point where I’d binge like no other. I remember being disappointed in myself that I wasn’t bulimic. How fucked is that?

I would binge the food, but wouldn’t purge. I told myself that if I didn’t purge I didn’t have an eating problem, but I knew I did. I went vegan in 2016 and let that be my new identity.

I didn’t focus on numbers anymore, but then I went on to being a ‘clean’ eater. I wouldn’t eat snack food, only whole plant-based foods. I did that for well over two years. I never wanted anyone to see what I was eating because I knew it wasn’t healthy. I shouldn’t be scared to eat with other people over the fear of it not being clean food. I didn’t put together how much food brought people together back then.

Not eating around others nor sharing meals with people only divided me more from them. Instead of introducing people to plant-based foods, I would never bring up that part of me. I would keep food as something to be enjoyed alone and never talked about. Enjoyed is even a stretch.

Over the past two years, I grew to finally have a healthy relationship with food where looking back on those 2015 entries, it felt like reading someone else’s journal. I can’t believe the amount of torture I used to put myself through because I thought losing weight would make me feel better.

I probably weigh the same I did back then, maybe more. I don’t weigh myself anymore because I know those numbers only fuck with my head. Food should never be about the numbers but how it makes you feel.

I don’t talk much about being vegan anymore either because I don’t use that label. There’s times I will have a sauce that has egg in it or I’ll be out to eat and won’t question the waiter on what things are fried in. I buy myself vegan groceries and do my best to be cruelty-free/vegan when it comes to beauty, but I used to immerse myself in it. We didn’t come down to this world to control ourselves to the point of no return.

I’m vegetarian and definitely still plant-based 98% of the time, but I’m not perfect. I don’t want to give up on a treat a family member made on Thanksgiving if it has a little dairy in it. I used to bring a Lenny and Larry’s cookie with me to Thanksgiving – if that tells you anything about where my head was at before. I saw food as good or bad and numbers, never as an experience.

 

In my old journals, I also used to tear myself apart. I knew I was lonely when I moved here, but I definitely didn’t make it easier for myself.

 

I know I still have insecurities, as we all do, but I used to truly think I was unlovable as a person. I let the world’s reactions to me dictate how I saw myself. It’s weird to see the way you used to speak to yourself and look where you are now. I would never talk myself down the way I used to. I know at my core I’m always doing my best and even in my bad moments, they don’t make me a bad person.

If you ever think you’ve hardly grown the past few years, I promise you change occurred. It doesn’t feel like it when you’re with yourself day in and day out, but I swear things are different.

 

You aren’t who you were five years ago.

 

If you liked who you were five years ago and don’t now, also remember you had your own set of struggles back then. Struggles you don’t even think about now. You can’t let that go unnoticed. Times change as people do and you’re at the point you were meant to be at now. You never know what will unfold in years to come.

I’ve met countless people I never thought I would after high school. I truly thought I’d be stuck in my own bubble for the rest of my life. Getting that job at the hotel opened my world in a way I didn’t realize at the time.

I have friends now, people I can confide in. I’ve had relationships, been to parties, truly let myself live out a life I wanted to live so desperately when I moved here. High school felt so big at the time, but I had no clue what was coming.

I had no clue the amount I would find myself in a short span of five years.

In one of my old entries, I was talking about the 2016 election right before Trump got elected. I was saying how we would settle no matter who we got, but I didn’t want Trump and I hoped for better things in 2020. I even went on to have an existential crisis over being 24 in four years. It was weird to read that back seeing everything that’s happened since.

 

24 is not at all how I pictured, but I’m more grateful for it now than I was months ago.

 

I’ve been in dark spots this year thinking about how much I didn’t accomplish at this age. Thing is, I’m exactly where I would’ve loved to be five years ago. Better even.

I grew a love for myself I didn’t know possible. I opened myself up to people in ways that scared me back then. I tried new jobs. I got over my driving anxiety and bought a car (that’s paid off next year, finally).

I get back in to old head spaces where I feel lost and like I’ve accomplished nothing when I’ve come farther than I even realized.

2021 is going to be a whirlwind considering what note the world is ending on, but I’m more hopeful than I’ve been in a while.

Two months ago, I was confused as hell. I lost my job and relationship at the same time. I had benders and numbed myself out to forget about it all. Even a month ago, I was still there. Everything happened so fast and I felt more lonely than I had in a long time.

Now though, I’m finally feel like I’m getting back to myself. Not in to who I was before, but a new version of me. I’m excited to take on a new year when I haven’t felt that way in a long time. New Year’s last year almost broke me. I had no drive and being sick as hell didn’t help.

I wasn’t happy in my life as a whole. I used my boyfriend as an escape because he was the only thing that made happy. I let everything else in my life go to shit because I figured as long as I had someone, I didn’t need to work on myself anymore. I completely lost any personal drive I once had.

 

Now, with all the time in the world, I see where I need to change.

 

Not because anything is wrong with me now, but because I owe it to myself. I have all of these creative ideas in my head and goals with no action to show for it.

I bought a new planner today and one of my biggest New Year’s resolutions is to actually use it. It’s one of those that you can reflect on the months and make goals in. I always set out the year ready to plan and make moves only to forget about them come February. I know I’m not alone in that.

The goal isn’t to make a bunch of changes, but to recognize where I am and where I want to be. I don’t know what that means as of now, but with a little book to guide me along the way, I hope it helps.

2020 held a lot of lost and confused moments to me. With a new year ahead and essentially all this time to myself, I hope to make use of it.

It’s the first time in a long time where I’ve only had to focus on myself. Even before my relationship, I was caught up in countless ‘relationship’ issues that took over my whole life. Not even for months, but years. I never really gave myself a chance to be alone truly – even when all my time was spent alone. I let my mind wander in to other people’s opinions. This is the first year since roughly high school where I know I don’t want a relationship with anyone else but me.

It’s weird to say out loud because I’ve preached it before, I’ve just never actually lived it.

If I don’t write to you again before the new year, know I wish you nothing but healing in the year to come.

We all had our own experience with 2020 and God knows none of them were the same.

Go in to the new year with the knowledge that you can only do what you know at the time. Nothing else. Don’t shame yourself for taking one opportunity and realizing it’s not what you wanted after all. Don’t shame yourself for the ways you’ve been coping with the world. Don’t shame yourself for not having a plan or knowing what to do next.

None of us really know what we’re doing.

We think we do sometimes, but life flips itself as life does and we’re lost again.

We don’t need to know everything right now.

The only thing you need entering the new year is the knowledge that you’re wiser than you once were – and you will continue to be.

Life reaches us through experience.

In the end, we’re going to find something that reaches us.

Trust it. Trust the process.

We’re only here for the ride.