November 2026
This year, I’ve been running a marathon with broken bones.
I don’t think there’s a better way to describe it.
So much of this year has been about loss. Losing people, losing the life I thought I was going to have, losing parts of myself I had always believed would be there. There were so many changes happening at once, and somehow I was expected to carry on as though nothing had happened.
And I did. For a while.
I got up every morning, went about my days, smiled at people, fulfilled my responsibilities, and tried my best to hold everything together. I was exhausted in ways sleep couldn’t fix, but I kept pushing myself because that’s what I’ve always known how to do.
I think I’ve spent most of my life being very good at surviving.
Eventually, everything caught up with me.
I fell into a severe depression, and with it came something I had never experienced quite like before: anhedonia.
It’s a strange thing, losing the ability to feel pleasure. Especially when you’ve always been someone who feels everything so deeply.
I could look at something beautiful and know that it was beautiful, but feel absolutely nothing. Music didn’t move me the way it used to. I stopped looking forward to things. Even painting, which had always been my way of making sense of the world, became something I couldn’t connect with.
I remember wondering where all my feelings had gone.
It wasn’t that I had stopped caring. I wanted so badly to care. I missed being excited about things. I missed being curious. I missed the version of myself who could find something wonderful in the most ordinary moments.
I missed myself terribly.
There were moments when I was surrounded by people I loved, listening to their stories, watching them laugh, and wishing I could feel as present as they were. It was almost as though there was a glass window between me and the rest of the world. I could see everyone on the other side, living, laughing, feeling things, and I wanted so badly to join them. Sometimes I felt like I was watching myself from somewhere outside my own body, going through the motions of being there without ever really arriving. I was physically present, but somehow absent from my own life. And the strangest part was that nobody could really see the distance I felt.
There were mornings when I woke up with a kind of dread I still struggle to put into words. An emptiness so profound that simply existing felt unbearable. Other times, my mind wouldn’t stop. I was constantly anticipating something going wrong, questioning myself, replaying conversations, feeling things so intensely that I couldn’t make sense of them.
There were moments when I genuinely questioned what the point of living was if all I seemed to experience was suffering. I couldn’t imagine a future that felt any different from the present, and the thought of having to wake up and feel that same heaviness all over again frightened me. I didn’t necessarily want my life to end. I just couldn’t understand how I was supposed to keep living with so much pain. I wanted the suffering to stop, and for a while, I couldn’t see how that could happen.
For a long time, I thought I was just an overly sensitive person.
But this year, through therapy, psychiatric care, and some very difficult conversations, I began to understand that much of what I was experiencing had roots far deeper than the events of this year.
I grew up around alcoholism, violence, and unpredictability. My childhood wasn’t always a safe place to be a child.
I knew what it was like to be frightened of the people who were supposed to protect me. I experienced physical abuse, humiliation, and sexual abuse at an age when I barely understood what was happening to me.
Some of those experiences left scars on my body. Others shaped the way I came to understand love.
I learned to pay attention to people’s moods. To notice the smallest changes in their voices. To be good, to be useful, to avoid upsetting anyone. I learned that my feelings were sometimes inconvenient, and that being loved could depend on how well I behaved.
I carried those lessons into adulthood without even realising it.
Looking back, I can see how often I confused familiarity with love. How easily I could find myself in situations where I was trying to earn affection, understanding, or basic kindness. How much of myself I was willing to give away just to feel secure.
It’s painful to recognise these patterns, especially when you realise how long you’ve been living with them.
But there’s also something comforting about finally understanding yourself.
This year, I ended up in a psychiatric hospital.
Even writing that feels surreal.
I never imagined my life would bring me there. I remember being frightened by how much my mind had changed, by how hopeless everything felt, and by the possibility that I might never feel like myself again.
I remember waking up on the hospital floor, disoriented and frightened, my body overwhelmed by something I couldn’t control. And I remember the panic that followed. There is a particular kind of loneliness in being so afraid inside your own body, in a place where you are supposed to feel safe. I wanted someone to tell me that I would be okay, but more than anything, I wanted to believe them. I think about that moment sometimes. How strange it is to spend your childhood longing for safety, only to grow up and discover that even your own mind can become a frightening place to be.
I had to accept that I wasn’t okay. That I needed help. That perhaps I had needed it for much longer than I wanted to admit.
For someone who has spent most of her life trying to be independent, capable, and in control, that was incredibly difficult.
There was a lot of shame, too. Shame about struggling, about not being able to function the way I used to, about needing time to recover when the world around me seemed to be moving along just fine.
I’m still learning to let go of that shame.
Painting is still complicated. I haven’t quite found my way back to it, and I’m trying not to make that another thing I have to accomplish. Art has always been such a big part of who I am, but perhaps I can allow myself to exist outside of what I create, too.
Maybe I don’t need to turn every difficult experience into a painting. Maybe some things can simply belong to me.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the little girl I used to be.
How frightened she must have been. How much she had to understand before she was ready. How she learned to be strong because there wasn’t always someone there to be strong for her.
I wish I could go back and tell her that none of it was her responsibility.
That she didn’t have to be exceptionally good to deserve gentleness. That she was allowed to be angry, sad, difficult, imperfect. That love was never supposed to hurt the way it did.
Of course, I can’t change what happened to her.
But I can change how I treat the woman she became.
I can stop putting myself in situations where I have to beg for the things I freely give to others. I can learn to recognise when something is hurting me, even when part of me desperately wants to hold on. I can make room for rest, for joy, for a life that doesn’t revolve around being needed or chosen.
I’m nowhere near finished healing. I still have difficult days, and there are things I’m only beginning to understand about myself. I don’t know how long it will take to make sense of everything I’ve experienced, or whether some things will ever make complete sense at all.
I don’t know exactly what comes next.
There are parts of this year I haven’t fully made peace with, and parts of myself I’m only beginning to understand. Some days, all I can manage is to take care of the things immediately in front of me. I’m trying to learn that this is enough, too.
I want to see the places I’ll go, the things I’ll create, the people I’ll meet. I want to become stronger, not because life keeps demanding it of me, but because I want to take good care of myself.
And I want to experience love in all its forms without losing myself in the process.
This year has taken so much from me. I wouldn’t romanticise any of it, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I don’t believe everything happens for a reason. Some things are simply painful, unfair, and terribly difficult to live through.
But I’m still here.
And although I don’t have a beautiful conclusion to offer about everything I’ve been through, I think there is something quietly hopeful about allowing myself to imagine a life that isn’t defined by suffering.
I think, for now, that’s enough.
I’ve spent so much of my life trying to become someone worth loving, without realising that the person I kept abandoning in the process was myself.
I don’t want to spend another year proving how much I can endure. I want to find out how beautiful life can be when I no longer have to.
And this time, I choose myself.
