Facing your own mess is heavy. Coming to terms with the choices YOU made, the times YOU didn’t protect yourself, the moments you crossed your own boundaries. That point where you realize everybody can’t take the blame and you had a hand in what fell apart too. Sitting with that truth hurts, but learning how to forgive yourself hurts even more. Growth doesn’t move in a straight line. Days like this are part of it. Feel it, acknowledge it, but don’t get stuck living there.
My childhood trauma left me with a deep fear of being in places where I’m not wanted. Nothing makes me shrink faster than the sense that my presence might be unwanted or burdensome.
It’s also why I am unable to beg or plead; I need to feel wanted, not endured.
/tolerated.
People think grief is crying. But grief is waking up tired. It’s forgetting words. It’s being pulled into memories you didn’t ask to remember. It’s holding back tears in the grocery store because a song or a scent brought them back. Grief isn’t just sadness, it’s the body remembering what the heart can’t let go of.
You don’t need to reinvent yourself this year. Learn to love the parts of you that you were taught were unlovable. Thats who survived the hardest shit. That’s who got you here. Loving them is where needed change and healing will happen.
things I've learned this year in love:
-I can love someone and still know they're not right for me
-intellectual chemistry without emotional presence isn't enough
-I need someone who can receive my care AND care for me
-beauty without generosity will suck me dry
I won't end this year pretending everything was fine. I lost a piece of myself this year that I will never get back, and I'm not forcing a smile as if it didn't change me. So no, I won't be saying “2026 is going to be my year”. I'll be praying that I recover next year, that my heart never has to break like this again, that I never have to survive something like this again. I'll be hoping for peace. Real peace, the kind that lets me breathe without fighting for it. I deserve a year that doesn't hurt.