2024 – The Year I Grew Up – Find Love Together

2024. The year I became known for car problems and dying my hair way too much.

As I look back on this year, it feels so long. I think about the beginning of the year, and it’s hard to believe that was just this year. As I say, almost every year, a lot happened, but at the same time, it feels like nothing happened at all.

It is hands down one of the biggest years in my healing and why it has been one of the hardest years. A lot of what I pushed through this year was trauma and pain that I had stuffed inside for years. For good reason since dealing with it this year was crippling let alone if I’d have dealt with it when the trauma had just happened or surfaced to the public years ago.

The hard part is a lot of my struggles are the aftermath of it all, and not the trauma itself. There are times when I am spending time with people and it triggers something I haven’t thought about or dealt with in years. I spent a lot of time with a friend which brought up a lot of the trauma aftermath that’s been stuck inside of me. It wasn’t the friend that was the reason for it. Our communication styles have always been quite different so that’s led to butting heads. In most of my relationships, I tend to not worry too much about arguments. The ones I did have arguments with were usually unhealthy, so to have a healthy relationship with someone but also bicker has required some rewiring of my brain. I’ve had to remind myself that arguments don’t automatically mean danger. When I say relationship I mean any kind of relationship, platonic or romantic.

I haven’t had a lot of long-term relationships. Most of my relationships shift often. A lot of my friendships were made in college so inevitably a lot of those are going to shift. Then add Covid about a year after graduation which I say was a blessing and a curse for me. Covid put a pause on so many things which is why so many people feel the age they were when it first started. It also in ways paused my current trauma and let me deal with older traumas that were doable to work on at the time. I was thankfully in a position where I could be sent home for work and working from home I think saved my life in so many ways. For one it got me and still limits my time in the office which is one of my most triggering places. And for the people saying “Why haven’t you changed jobs then?” I have applied to so many jobs in the last five years. To my bosses, if you read this no you didn’t lol.

This year I grew up.

With trauma, you mature prematurely in many ways. I’ve gotten many “You are mature for your age.” There are many developmental things that people have already learned how to deal with that I still have to work on. The biggest one for me is communication. Which is kinda ironic for someone who was a communication major. The issue isn’t me not knowing healthy communication styles, especially coming from a family that doesn’t. I bring it up often, but I didn’t talk for years, especially after my mom died. I was also in speech therapy as a child. Sometimes I swear I’m autistic, though I think it’s a mix of ADHD and OCD. I have social cue issues.

The biggest thing I struggle with is telling people too much about myself. A reason is that I heal loudly because I was suffering quietly. I think too I try to embrace who and what I come from even though sometimes I am ashamed of it. It’s my way of trying to relate to the conversations I have. Then, I grew up with my aunt who told the most random strangers the most personal things about her and me. That is what I knew. Also, despite being in my late 20s I get asked about my parents way more often than I ever thought. So, that alone opens the door to my personal life quickly.

Being close friends with someone who doesn’t use social media really and is a pretty private person began to shift my perspective on things this year. It’s been a couple of years now that I tried to figure out how much I wanted to share about myself on the internet and with other people. A big part of my life has been sharing my personal life on the internet. My entire adult life essentially. As time has gone on I’ve wanted to keep certain things private. Especially when I started to date people. It’s been a learning curve trying to shift how and what I post.

Though, I like to say for someone who posts and says the most personal things, very few people know the true me.

I think I matured a lot in how I communicate things. I still have a lot of work to do for sure. It’s hard to not share every detail since it’s my way of trying to relate or be authentic. There were a few things that happened in the last few months that a year ago I would have posted about or told certain people. Instead, I decided it was better to keep it to myself.

People talk and they watch. After spending many of my years being invisible it’s still an adjustment getting used to the fact that people notice me. They are paying attention to what I do or say. What I am doing could get passed on to other people. People I may not even know. I did a lot of journaling in my personal journal that no one sees but me. I wrote a lot of things that I needed to get out but didn’t need to share here. I finally filled the journal today too. A journal I started in 2006. I wrote in it a few times in 2021, 2022, and 2023. This year was the year I truly wrote in it. I think about the girl I was in ’21, ’22, and ’23. I also think about the girl I was when I wrote the few pages in 2006. The last entry I wrote in 2006, 11-17-06 “Dear Diary, I am moving to Indiana in 15 days.” There are only a handful of entries from 2006 but throughout those entries, my mom got sick, died, and I began the process of moving across the country. My life never was the same.

This year was a big “I miss my mom” year. The thing with spending so much time with someone or a few someones, when I’m not with them I feel the emptiness more. I can and thrive being alone. It’s when I spend hours and days with someone to go back to my isolation that being alone sometimes gets to me. I spent a lot of time with people this year who made me forget about it all. I also spent a lot of time not with people and without the typical things that I let distract me.

I was numb a lot this year. I cried a LOT this year. I was also loved a lot this year.

I was able to get through most of what I dealt with this year because of the people in my life. My favorite person got many texts and calls relating to my car and me being stuck in random parking lots. I’ve had to do many things on my own but I’m glad I didn’t have to do as much this year because of him. However, I think my car issues have solidified his daughter from ever getting a license. Sorry ◡̈

I read the letter I wrote at the beginning of 2024 to my end-of-the-year self. The last sentence was “I hope these words don’t make you too sad when you read them in December.” And they didn’t. Which makes me teary-eyed to think about it. I tried to be authentic with what I wanted for 2024 in that letter. I think for the most part I accomplished what I had hoped.

I embraced all of my feelings this year. The good, the bad, the scary, the butterflies. I wanted to run away so many times from my feelings. Still, I embraced them. I tried to verbalize them a little more. Guess what people aren’t going to automatically know what you are thinking. I had a whole lot of “see ya laters” this year and that was not an easy thing. I had to work on my attachment and abandonment issues if I wanted to be okay.

What do I hope for 2025? Fewer car problems, please. I am gonna try to dye my hair less. Maybe figure out how to work with wavy/curly hair because this year my straight hair decided to no longer be straight.

I have a feeling that 2025 will be another year of me working on this year’s issues. I’m sure there are going to be many more “see ya laters” and I am most likely going to cry after most of them. The best I can do is embrace who I am and where I am at. People are going to love me or hate me. The priority is me. I can only control myself and what I make out of my life. I hope the people I love and are in my life make it another year.

I hope 2025 treats you well ❤