2017

The best thing I can say about 2016 is that it's over now. It was easily the worst year of my life. Did good things happen? Yes; but unfortunately if we're making lists, the bad far outweighs the good.

In 2016, I could have checked out. I've wanted to so many times. Checking out would have been the easy thing. I could have let this big, horrible, impossible thing swallow me whole. But here I am, on the brink of 2017, about to step into something completely new. A blank slate. The clock will strike midnight, and while it won't erase 2016, it will put it where it belongs: behind me.

I'm painfully aware of the fact that the new year doesn't actually change anything. It will still be the same going to bed and waking up and going to work that I did yesterday. But I need the symbolism, because I have had to fight hard for 2017. To me, 2017 is full of possibilities and trips and bucket list check marks because I desperately need it to be. I need to believe that 2017 can be better because I can't imagine how it can possibly be worse. Every day I'm fighting and clinging so tightly to hope that it hurts, and I need the newness, even if it's simply buying a new day planner and training my brain to write a 7 instead of a 6.

This year is about healing and taking good care of me. It's about challenging myself and putting myself out there and doing things I've always wanted to do, because why not? If not now, when? Right now, so much of this new year is a giant question mark. The only things I know for sure are the very few plans I've made, which is just the way of it, but it's still completely terrifying. I have no idea how a lot of things are going to shake out. So many things that I entered 2016 believing to be true have turned out otherwise. As necessary as the newness of 2017 feels, the uncertainty of it makes my head spin.

But.

I know that I can do it because I've been doing it and I am doing it. I am living and breathing and doing this thing that feels impossible. Who I am today is so much stronger than who I was at the beginning of this year, and that's a big deal. I still have a very long way to go, which is discouraging most of the time. The shitty thing about knowing that I can do this is the reality that I have to keep doing it. But recognizing how far I've come makes me excited to keep getting better.

So, here's hoping. Cheers to the year I fought for and to doing impossible things.