It’s been the most painful and the most joyful year of my life and I look forward, nervously, to more.
I am coming upon 23, that age where the number looks like a disapproving adult and you realize you truly are no longer a child anymore. The next thing you can look forward to is renting a car at 25, but that’s not nearly as exciting.
I feel as if I have fit a decade of emotions into the last 1 year, and as topsy turvy as it has been, I’m glad it happened and wouldn’t take any of it back. Every painful step, every tear, every anxious heartbeat, even every pimple has been irrevocably folded into the batter that makes up me.
While college years were spent pushing my mind and body to the limit of stress (lookin’ at you, all nighters and last minute study sessions) this past year and a half has been the time where I have learned the beauty and cruelty of the world, and the beauties and weaknesses of my physical body and my mental state.
In the last year, I have done more for myself than I have in my entire life, and the scared little girl that was me when I was 21, when I was 9, when I was 5… she would be thrilled to know of how well and beautifully I grew up.
While I have an incredibly long journey to go through to be happy and at peace with myself, the lessons I’ve learned this year have been monumental in pushing me towards the right direction.
- Lose the toxic friendships. Yes, even if you love that person to bits.
I have been in some friendships where I bore incredible amounts of mental abuse but continually excused it because, well, I felt sorry. But even if you know they care about you, and you know you care about them, it doesn’t mean that they’re good for you.
“Love conquers all” is one of the phrases that have proven itself the most untrue in this tumultuous year. Frankly, love doesn’t do shit! Love — the idea, the word, society’s idea of it — is used so often as an excuse for bad behavior and to give second, third, fourth chances. The only thing love IS useful for is self-love, because self-love ties in with self-worth, and it takes a recognition of self-worth to realize that, no, they don’t get to treat you this way and no, you absolutely do not deserve to be treated like this.
- Blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.
Family is undoubtedly important. However, family is also who you choose to make your family. Society tells us that we owe our family this debt and that debt because of shared blood, and while this may be unconventional, I call bullshit.
The people I choose to call family are people that have treated me like how family is supposed to be treated. With warmth, support, and a whole lotta love.
In Korean, one of the phrases that denotes family means “people who eat together.” And in the past year, I have chosen who I would like to sit at my table.
- Being alone doesn’t mean being lonely.
From ex-boyfriends, to sisters, to my mom, to my friends, to my OTHER friends, I have always been told this. But I didn’t get it! Because I always felt lonely when I was alone.
I found happiness only through other people and I truly believed that as long as I was able to experience happiness that I was fine. This was the year that I realized that it was unhealthy, because constantly searching for happiness through other people meant that I wasn’t happy with myself. I was just procrastinating (and also terrified) of sitting with myself and having to reflect and realize how many things I disliked about myself simply because at the time it was just easier to ignore than to deal with.
I can’t say that I’m terribly fond of all that I am. I’m lazy, sleep through my alarms, terribly unmotivated, am fantastic at making excuses, chronically skip meals because I’m simply too lazy to cook, and overthink myself into terrible pits of despair. BUT the one thing I CAN say is that I love being alone. I love having my own space. I love uninterrupted me time. I’ve learned to love and embrace just sitting with myself and seeing what comes of it and it’s fed into my sense of self which feeds directly to my sense of self-worth.
- Make conscious choices instead of letting things happen to you.
If I were given the chance to redo my college experience, I would have no idea what to major in. The vast majority of my hobbies have been put in my path where I picked it up and gained some level of expertise. But for the most part I have not gone out of my way to do things for myself.
This past year I have become a more active player in this game called life. I moved in with supportive housemates, chose to spend more time by myself, chose baking, and am getting myself onto the road of choosing my passions.
I am also choosing to respect my own boundaries which is a nerve-wracking but important step to take as a woman in this world.
In the past if someone hit on me I would end up giving them my instagram and humoring them until they lost interest. If someone said something derogatory I would laugh nervously and try to move on with the conversation. Blocking a person was out of the question. Calling people out invited confrontation, which I am terrified of. And while it is not my responsibility to educate, letting things happen to me has become tiring, and I am beginning the journey of learning how to write my own narrative, which I think is terribly sexy of me 🙂
There are many days where I look into the mirror and hate what I see, days that I sit there remembering naive words that fell out of my mouth like gold painted bricks, days that the sound of my voice and the way I feel grate on every nerve. But I force myself to think of where I was a year before, where I was four years before. How I felt about myself then and how I treat myself now.
I can objectively say I’ve been through a hell of a lot. I’ve learned that I am strong and I am fragile, talented and terrified, mature and childish. All of these things make up me, and I am learning to take pride in my strengths and my faults and everything in between.
So thank you, 22, for your lessons. I will never forget this year. And while I have no idea whether 23 will be kinder, I know that no matter what, I’ll be better for it.
SHUERETHING 