It’s time to say goodbye and good riddance to 2018. I took a
different approach to this year, knowing I wanted it to be different to the
rest. I decided that I would keep track of every time something majorly good or
bad happened to me, to see if good periods would follow bad ones, or if any
sort of pattern would approach. I wanted to see whether more good or bad things
would happen in the year, so I could really determine whether 2018 was a ‘good’
year for me.
I didn’t
get the results I wanted unfortunately - the bad things far outweighed the good,
with my only major positives either being academic ones, and passing my driving
test. The first difficulty of the year was having a grandparent pass away. Up
until this year, I’d never lost a family member, or anyone close to me for that
matter. I lost my Nana at the beginning of the year, and then lost my Grandad
in Summer. Whilst this is of course sad, I did what I always do to deal with
emotion, and just kept busy. The night my Nana died, I went to a concert, and
then went into work the next day. I know when someone dies and you have fun,
people tell you not to feel bad about having fun because its “what they would
have wanted”, but when they passed, I wasn’t thinking of them, I was thinking
about myself. I was thinking about what was next for me. It was probably a
terrible thing to do, and I’ve probably internalised a lot of emotion, but I’m
not a family person and didn’t have many memories of my grandparents that
passed, so it honestly didn’t impact me that much. I feel guilty, and like I
should have been hurt by this more, but I wasn’t. The thing that made it
difficult was my parents being upset. It made for some difficult times in 2018.
All in
all, when I wrote down each thing that happened, whether good or bad, it seemed
like such a massive deal at the time, and looking back now, it all seems so
irrelevant. I’m no longer hurt by any of the bad things that happened, but also
no longer particularly happy about any of the good things that happened either.
Maybe it’s good that I’ve learnt to move on from everything, but it seems an
awful big shame that I feel entirely neutral to a whole year of my life.
Saying
that, I think if ‘beginning of 2018’ Hannah could see ‘end of 2018’ Hannah,
she’d be happy. I’ve got all my university offers and know exactly where I want
to be next year. I’ve worked hard and gotten good grades. I have the supportive
group of friends that I needed all along. I’ve managed to keep my mental health
afloat (just about at times). I’ve learnt to value kindness above anything else
in the world, and that if something isn’t right, you need to change
it. I've learnt to always trust my gut feeling. I’m probably more optimistic now that I was at the beginning of the year,
and I think that’s what keeps me going. I’m ending 2018 admitting that it
wasn’t smooth sailing, but knowing that I had some really fucking happy times.
I’m happy now, and I’ve got big plans for 2019.
