2022: Reflections

Looking back over 2022, it was overall a pretty wild year. I can actaully look back and say that 30 was my favourite year. I was able to take so many amazing trips last year, that sometimes it's hard for me to process that it all actually happened. I had a life changing trip when I returned back to London this summer. The experiences that I had will be precious treasures to me. It's hard to put into words all that return trip menat to me. I discovered more about my strengths, confronted some of my major anxieties and overall, started thinking about the things that make me happy. It's been a long time since I actually just let go, said fuck it and did things for myself. 2022 was that year. I started off small and ended with a bang. New and old places .Concerts, comedy shows. Take the bad with the good. Most importantly is that I did it all on my own. I've done a lot of changing over the past year and a half, most of the time for the better. I still struggle with old things and sometimes I wonder if they are things that I will never be able to let go of. Sometimes the thoughts are so crippling that they keep me from doing some of the things that I want to do or that I will never be able to just be free. The stiffness in my hips and pelvis is seriously becoming a problem. Sometimes I'm in so much pain, I don't want to get out of bed. I don't think it's because I've had that busy a year. I think I have enough downtime far and inbetween. I don't want this pain to limit me anymore. I did in Aruba, even before that in London. It's gotten so bad over the past year that most mornings I crack when I get up in the morning. I've finally gotten an order to get an x-ray, I can't deal with it anymore. I probably shouldn't have waited but I've been leary of medical professionals based on my last few experiences. Lost presciptions. Labs not ordered. Psychiatric nightmare. Botched surgery. I have a mistrust about medical professionals. The first doctor I saw when I first woke up and couldn't stand up or really move my legs because of the pain told me that it was just sciatica, gave me pills and sent me on my way after a five minute examination. COVID stuck and it was still painful here and there but I figured that it was just the injury, it was natural after what happened so I didn't really think too much of it. 2020 left me feeling more fatigured and hopeless. I had called my GP only to find out that he moved to another practice 6. months prior and no one contacted me. He was too far away for me to see him, so I needed to look into getting another doctor. There were waitlists for new doctors, so I figured I could just wait it out. The soreness could be an issue of my job, so when I quit my job in the summer of 2021. I didnt want to work freight anymore. It wasn't just the accident, but the enviornment. I had been sexually assualted by a team member and they did nothing about it. I was allowed to be hit by another employee and was treated by less of a human being by my store manager. During my time there, I pretty much broke down. I wasn't happy. I'd stayed for so long because it was familiar. It was close to home. I had a few people I was friends with there and I didn't want to start over. I'm glad that I reached my breaking poing and said fuck you to retail. 2021 was a really big year for me. I took the jump that I so desperately needed into a new job. After a few hiccups and the fear of uncerstainy, I found a job that's a pretty good fit for me. There's the usual workplace antics and bullshit here, but nothing that would be too far out of the ordinary.I was wobbly, but I was moving. I didn't know what direction I was moving in, but I knew that I wasn't just sitting there stirring. I'd had trouble reading for the longest time over the past 10 years or so, only able to focus on books for small chunks of time. It's always kind of bothered me that I'd lost the focus for it because it was something that I always loved as a chld. It was my escape, my comfort, my family. It waa my possible future, it was something that broadened my horizons. It was pretty much taken away from me when I stopped being able to hold my concentration. More so over the past twoish year I've been able to hold the concentration down longer. I'm reading more now than I have-so many books-fiction and non-fiction. Serial Killers and Travel. History amd Familiar Childhood Comforts. It's been a relief to have this to bring my thoughts somewhere else. To help me organise them and help me to culivate them into something. What the something is, I don't know until the end. Each adventure into the mind cave leaves me with new treasures, new things for me to confront. Emotions, memories, reactions. Looking back over the past year, a lot of things have been put into perspective for me. I realised how I've been putting myself out there for friends-people I thought were my friends. I loaned money and stretched myself thin emotionally. I put undue stress on myself because I was so afraid that they'd leave. They'd leave and I'd be that lonely child again. It's like I'd have to find my footing in that darkness again, only this time around I'd have anxiety rattling through me because I'm not a child anymore-I'm an adult, I should now how to handle things by now. For the longest time, I've been paralysed by that anxity for so long. The fear that I need to be perfect or no one will want me. I wasnt enough for the family that I had and now it feels like I'm not enough to make a new family. Families are a lot of things and perfect is not one of them. I don't wish that things were perfect or that they will magically become perfect, I just want to feel comfortable. The comfortable silence that fills me when I travel is the only thing that comes close to it. Travel is a high like no other..It's a thing that nurishes me. It recharges me spiritually and mentally. I was selfish with my trips last year. I didn't blog a lot of them. I just went with the flow. I didn't want to feel the pressure of having to put something together that was everything that I wanted it to be. I didn't want to have the expectations of others looming over me as I set out to see the world. I have so many plans for the future but will I be able to handle it all. A delicate balance of existance. I look forward to the race and sometimes it is fun to see the edge of what lies beyond.