I’m on record talking about what a shit year this was for me. Not going to review that here. But it was also a year of incredible growth and learning, so as the year ends, I want to review the important things that I learned.
I learned that I could survive and accomplish things when everything is falling apart, but only up to a certain point. Yes, I can do it with a broken heart (Thanks, Taylor!) but I cannot brute force my way into productivity without breaking something. For me this came to a head this September when, fresh off the break-up, I was trying to do four days of in-person classes as well as my online ones and I stopped being able to sleep. NGL, that ruined my life for a couple of weeks, but I eventually realized I needed to give myself some relief and drop the in-person classes, since they weren’t necessary to my program anyway. This felt like a failure because the time was right there on the calendar it should have worked out, but it just wasn’t to be. Taking a step back might have actually saved my life. Plus, I was able to finish a book and really give my full attention to my online classes, which were necessary for my program.
My therapist was an important cast member this year, as you can probably imagine. And leaning fully into an Internal Family Systems approach unlocked a lot of things for me. By having relationships and conversation with the various parts of myself, and getting them all on the same page, really helped. It felt like I was bursting through walls all over the place for a while, and it led to a much greater sense of internal peace. In all of this, I realized the part of myself that was most vital to the rest of me, and the part I like most about myself is my creativity. That’s the part I most need to protect, and now I have the tools to do that more effectively.
I also learned I need to pay much less attention to the opinions of randos on social media. I need to care less about the opinions of other people in general, and just focus on a core group of people whose opinions should matter. Still working on how to do that, to be honest. I also learned that I needed to spend much less time and effort in controlling the story other people are telling themselves about me because 1. Most likely they’re not even paying attention to me in the first place and 2. They have a right to believe what they want. Like focus on the call coming from inside of my head and not the imagined one coming from outside. Basically, having come to terms with the fact that I am a little bit (?) of a control freak, trying not to be like that so much. But also having some grace for myself and realizing that’s a process that will take time.
I also learned that I needed to realize that you can’t always depend on other people to do what you think they should. Everyone in your life will disappoint you at some point. You will, in turn, disappoint everyone else in your life at probably multiple points. It’s really, outside of obviously abusive situations, something you don’t even need to keep track of. Forgive them, even if they don’t ask for it or realize they did anything wrong and accept their forgiveness in turn. We are all fuckups of one flavor or another. It is a feature not a bug.
But mostly, I learned that the things I was afraid of happening would not kill me. There were multiple flavors of heartbreak served to me this year in every case the anticipation and fear of it was much worse than it was when it actually happened. I’ve also learned concrete steps I need to take not to be such a train wreck next year, but I know I’ll probably find all sorts of new ways to fuck things up. But I know I will be trying my best despite them.