The past 2 years have been both the best and worst of my life. I've dealt with death and still deal with the process of grief now. I've lost friendships, and gained better ones. I moved my entire life to a new city, quit my job to study psychology... the list could go on and on. Dealing with huge life changes can be hard in itself, but having them all at the same time has been a pretty rough ride. On top of all of that, I decided to start posting some more personal content on my blog, but early last year, my hosting expired unnoticed and deleted everything I'd posted in the previous year.
As you can probably imagine, after pouring my heart and soul into content and losing it all, I was pretty devastated and demotivated to post anything at all. That said, my blog is and always has been a creative outlet for me, somewhere for me to come and talk about the things I love, struggles with anxiety and general updates, because for whatever reason I love having a record of my life online, which kind of leads me perfectly onto my final point.
2018 was such a fun year, especially summer. However emotionally it was a really negative one for me overall, I went through a lot of hurt and despite having some amazing people around. I also had a few, or one in particular actually, that affected me quite a lot in a really negative way. My looks and feeling unconfident in my own skin has always been a problem for me, but I've always been pretty sure of the person I am, that I'm kind and can do well at something if I set my mind to it. I have never felt anything but proud of my blog and the community I had built behind it. Last year wasn't like that at all, my self confidence in who I am took a real hit and I all of a sudden felt like a shitty person and became embarrassed to post online through fear of judgement from people who were supposed to be my friends. This was a problem even down to the caption on a photo, I'd have Elaine check it over (all while giving me crazy looks haha) time and time again.
Now that my circle has been overhauled, that self-doubt has dwindled a little and over Christmas I looked back over the messages I had been receiving when I was posting. How I'd impacted someones day or really helped them with their mental health struggles. How did I let someone chip away at my confidence enough to completely forget about that and why I started this blog in the first place? That really pushed me to focus on writing again. Ever since I was a child, writing has been my outlet. Little short love stories, secret journals of my thoughts even down to writing lists has always been my happy place. For me there is no better feeling than putting pen to paper or as we do now 'fingers to keyboard'. Even typing this post, I feel a huge weight lifted for just writing down my thoughts as they come and never again, will I let anyone make me feel like there is something wrong with that.
2019 is set to be a great year, I live in a house full of the best people. Myself, my friends and my family have their health. I count myself really lucky to be where I am. Despite still having a lot of things to work through with trust and self confidence, I'm in the best place I have been for a long time and I'm really excited for everything to come.
