My 2023

Tekuɔ

Dec 31

I couldn't wait for this year to end. It has been my absolute worst in 3 decades of life.
It broke me to points I wasn't aware I could reach. But looking back, I did learn or rather understood myself better through it. I hate to add to the narrative, but I did learn and grow through suffering.

In this post I reflect on my 2023 and the lessons that came with it. They were not entirely new information to me, just having more understanding of how I operate and facing some harsh truths.

Everything can be on the table;

What definitely influenced me the most this year is my experience with depression and suicidal ideation. In November 2022, I started understanding why someone will want to off themself. Before my birthday in June this year, I'd given myself a deadline. And once that line was crossed, it was/is always an option.
I've had experiences with never say never in the past, but I still thought some things were a definite never for me. This year I learned nothing is off the table. That it isn't much in my control. That there are levels and depths to feelings and till you experience them, you really really don't know what you'd do.

Outside of my own experience, I observed the behaviors of others in documentaries and books. Noticed how people snap and do the unimaginable(eg, a teenager killed her mother because she failed college and couldn't endure the disappointment).
Having experienced the intensity of internal turmoil and struggle, I could understand these behaviors so much more.
I naturally like to believe that I'd never be or do any of the insane things some people do. But I've said them before about other things, and here we are.
Hopefully the awareness that everything is on the table is of use somehow in helping me not get to those extremes.

I need space to fully engage with my emotions;

Until this year, I never thought that I'd experienced depression before in my life. I tended to quickly move on from painful experiences. But looking back, I just didn't let myself feel or react fully to the emotions in me.
I associate vulnerability to weakness. I know it's not, but that's what my mind and my reactions tell.
My idea of being vulnerable is sharing difficult moments after I have already crossed that bridge, never in the moment. Whenever I am crying or sad for whatever reason, the instant someone else comes into the physical space that I am in, all that gets pushed down. I will try my best to show zero signs of me being in such a state.

From the middle of last year to the middle of this year, for the very first time I had space for myself.
I lived at my workplace, had my own room in which I did everything. After work I didn't socialize with anyone and was basically locked in my room all night. So when I had disappointing experiences that I've experienced multiple times in the past, I found myself this year being faced with me and all that's within me.
There was no fear of someone chancing upon me or interrupting me and so when I started feeling, I got to feel it all the way. And it overtook me and broke me. The last 2 months at my workplace, I had packed up my stuff inside my room, not because I was preparing to quit but because I was 'death cleaning'.

When I returned to sharing space with my sister, and our cats died, even though we were both mourning the same thing and my sister expressed her vulnerability and grief openly in front of me and her friends, I still put on a face and hid to cry over my Simba.

As much as feeling one's emotions and not pushing them down is a good thing, not having the space to do so also helps me greatly. Because if I stayed any longer at my workplace or got my own place after that like I initially intended to, with the things that came after, I don't know if I'd been able to make it.

I am not perfect;

I know everyone isn't perfect and that we all have our flaws. But I think I believed that I was somehow perfect. Yes I have tendencies that people find not the best, but I always saw them as who I am and not actually something bad. Or that I was still a better person than other people around me.
This year, not only did it become so much clearer to me that I am heavily flawed, but that I am not as good a person as I like to think.

I am selfish, no news there. Out of my selfishness, I have made decisions multiple times throughout my life that have hurt others without me having cared once. I was aware of my actions but not aware of the inflicted harm. I didn't see it as a big deal, until I experienced the same thing this year.
Acknowledging how much and how many people I have hurt with my actions, I feel now that I deserve all that I get. That if I end up dying alone, it's because that's what I deserve. That when I end up in a relationship with toxic people, it's because those are who I deserve for being a bad person myself.

I am attention seeking, that's a new one. Not the behavior but me being aware it is something I do. I tend to get busy and helpful at events by serving or seeing the needs of others. I actually do enjoy this and it's one of those instances where I enjoy taking care of others. But I've been made aware that during this and other instances, I seem to be underneath all that enjoying drawing attention to myself. Everyone clearly gets to see me and how 'good' I am. I hope to remember this when next I happen to be at any event, and try my best to sit back.

Apparently I am fake, using 'apparently' because I don't think that I am fake and struggling with accepting that. I like being nice to people, and I am nicer to people in person. In person, if someone annoys me, I will keep a smile when I want to just tell them off.
Someone who knows me in person recommended me for a job because of how nice and helpful I am. The job reached out and I was surprised to find a very rude person. Of course I had justification for my behavior, but in the end I was a different person from who they were told I was.
I am not good with checking up on people and tend to reach out to people only when I need something, like information I know they have. But I don't mind people reaching out randomly for that from me. I actually prefer people I am not close to reaching out to me with a purpose other than just checking up on me.
Being perceived as fake conveys to me that I am not a good person.

I've been hurting over my experiences because I thought I was a good person and undeserving of the pain, now I am learning to accept that what I get is absolutely what I deserve.
I do hope that this new awareness that I am not a good person, helps me in changing some of my responses and actions in future.

I can't 'casual date';

I thought I'd casually dated before, but what happened was me getting into relationships with the premise of it being casual but gradually becoming more. And in that short 'casual' period, the person I'm dating expresses genuine desire for my company and presence.
This year I experienced actual casual dating and it sucked.

Not knowing what someone really thinks of you and waiting on them is frustrating as hell. Oh the collapse of potential relationships hurts way more than actual relationships ending after having had enough of each other. Me comparing my past experiences in expecting them to progress into more certainly didn't help.
But that's how dating works now. Everyone wants to start on the basis of let's see where this is going, except they don't really see it going anywhere nor want it to. And you can't get attached, once you show signs that you actually care, they pull back.

I'm starting to worry some predictions about being alone may just become my reality.
But I hate being single. For me, a long term single life won't look like that of the care-free modern woman, nope. It would have to be one of involuntary celibacy because I can't get frisky with someone without getting attached to them, which leads to heartaches. Heartaches are not fun and I'm done with it.
Gonna stay single for a while(whole of 2024), to recover.

Writing helps;

When I write about things that I am passionate about, have strong opinions about, or reveal more of myself and thought processes, I lose myself into another realm. I be.

This past year, I've typed out 3 suicide notes.
I wrote what would have been messages to people I felt contributed to hurt in me, to people that I am pissed at. I wrote down all the nasty judgements I never told them to their face.
I write with the intention to actually send them these messages, but after I am done, I decide I'd wait some days to send it. Then I'd decide not to send it at all and delete the notes. And I'd feel free. The messages got out of me. In writing them, I freely let it all out. I get so much lighter.
And oh how much I've been glad I didn't send them later. It allowed me to keep dignity instead of being pathetic, petty and immature.

Many times in the past months I'd write on topics for a blog post and I'd be carried away by some emotion, strongly opinionated and condescending. Afterwards , I'd leave it to post some other day. And then I'd decide not to post it. In a few days I'd get a more compassionate understanding or a total change of mind.
Motivators, therapists, gurus have encouraged writing out things for like forever. They usually say it's best to write with pen and paper, but I find typing works just great for me.

I will be fine;

The biggest lesson of all, and it came just some weeks to the end of the year is that I will be fine. No matter what.
When I was suicidal, the message that it does get better, just hang in there, even when said by survivors, was annoying as fuck. I read "you don't want to die, you just want the pain to stop" so many fucking times and I just respond "no, I really want to die."
6 months down from the most intense part of depression, the trigger reappeared and I was elated to find that I didn't care at all. I didn't react, wasn't faking, and I felt so free. I couldn't believe that I could be feeling the way I do now. I thought, "what was I thinking? To kill myself over that?" How stupid would I have felt if I actually did.

In hindsight I realize how much I exaggerated the whole experience. If not that I did in fact feel those deep and low feelings, I wouldn't say I suffered at all. Besides my inner world and subsequent response in thoughts, nothing happened to me this year that hadn't happened to me before. I've experienced way worse that I didn't consider suffering then.

Life sucks on the whole for this reason. That something inside, that feels like not up to me can choose how I take in and process experiences and the consequences of that.
Some days I am good and feel positive I dealt with and healed from a particular issue, then sometimes the next day, or a week later or months later I am back in that space again.

What I learned from this is to enjoy my moments. Now when I am elated for no apparent reason, I acknowledge it and get even happier and enjoy it, acknowledging to myself that I may wake up tomorrow desiring to be nonexistent. Usually this feels like peace to me.
I also know now that I will be fine, no matter what. That it does indeed get better. And not necessarily because anything outward changed, no. Not in my case. If anything shit outside of me got worse. But the inside, where the turmoil really is, it got better.

This is life;

When you are suffering it feels so unfair. Not because you want others to suffer too, but because you don't know what you did to deserve it. Do you think the kids being caught in war now deserve it? Nope. Maybe this place is indeed hell and maybe we do indeed deserve it for some past crimes we do not remember or are aware of. Who knows.
But everyone takes it in turns.
2020 was the worst year for most people, it was my best. This year it was my turn.

I ended the year by cutting ties with what I no longer find beneficial to me, that includes tarot.
I tried to make peace and forgive myself by apologizing for some of my actions. I still have some lies that I don't have the courage to confess yet. I still pretty much want to die, not because I'm still hurting, but really can't wait for all of this to be over.
I'm trying to have zero expectations for 2024, I do hope it's a lot better than this year.
Whatever the year brings though, if it doesn't kill me first, I know I will be fine at some point.

Wishing everyone a Happy, Healthy, Abundant 2024!🎉🥳❤️