Ima keep this short: this bitch tried to kill me. I’ve had nearly every weapon formed and some prospered - all the while with WHYS on my lips. I’ve become more at ease with voicing how I truly feel, and honestly - I have this year to thank for it. This year has been the most gutterest of hell-spawn timelines. During these months I -

• Shed an emotionally and mentally toxic relationship

• Spent 9 months in denial about said relationship

• Put permanent distance between myself and my mom

• Bought a new (used POS) car

• Moved into a new (effed-up) apartment

• Nervous breakdown #1

• Got a new job in a new city

• Endured the commute from hell DAILY

• Contemplated death/suicide more often than I care to admit. But here I am - admitting

• Got cleared for new apartment in new city then waited weeks for my move-in date

• Moved to new city and lost my car on the highway the same day

• Nervous breakdown #2

• Learns of ex’s engagement to person he left me for

• Nervous Breakdown #3

• Shell shatters

Here’s the thing about your entire psyche shattering: you have nowhere else to go but up. I had been holding on to being strong, projecting and performing unflappability, forging through without allowing myself to sit in what was happening. When that news came, after the dust settled and my tears flowed, I found out who I truly was. I stood face to face with all that I had allowed to reign over my life and accepted the reckoning I was running from. All the dysfunction, settling, unspoken truths, protection of habitual abusers of all kinds sat right there and demanded I face it. Demanded I acknowledge all of it. I’ve never been more drained of excuses in my 31 years on God’s green earth.

Acceptance and forgiveness are two acts I never thought I’d succeed in stomaching this year. Accepting to me meant ownership - and I didn’t want to own anything that caused me pain. But dear God, I had to. I had to accept without safety nets how I threw myself to the mercies of the world. I was hell’s puppet; heaven’s ragdoll. I just allowed and said nothing. Once I tested the waters of accepting my role in the life I had up to that moment, learned behavior or not, I chose to breathe differently as I went deeper. I questioned my silence, asked why I sat idly by as things happened to me. Why didn’t I run/speak up/stand up? The truth? At that moment, I existed as a people-pleasing, codependent shell of a human being. Until that moment, I had no clue that was a bad thing. I had a lot to own up to while also reversing the turmoil handed to me. Plenty of bags were dropped back where they belonged, and for once I didn’t apologize to them for me being so fuckwitable. Being a people-pleaser, agreeable, kind to a fault, will FUBAR you into oblivion

I wish I could tell you it all came with a pretty bow. I wish I could say it wrapped up neatly like a two-part after school special. But every day, I take more ownership of my life which means I have to take the good and the bad. And that gets messy. And 2018 was the queen of messy, baseline shit.

But we had to start over. We had to acknowledge all that’s wrong to get it right. And that meant a lot of shedding. Of people. Of relationships. Of places. Of thought processes. 2018 was a master number/teacher year (2+0+1+8= 11. Two consecutive number sequences are considered Master Numbers) which means everything we knew (or thought we knew) was up for review. Many of us lost entire caseloads of livelihood, love and levelheadedness. We endured back-to-back-to-back retrogrades, eclipses and shadow seasons. We met our inner children, began the process of healing our mother/father wounds and left some toxic shit even though it tore everything from us to walk away. Congrats, yo. We did that shit. I know the glass is part tears, but bitch we here.

So through clenched teeth, a swollen ass and a bruised everything, I give cheers to 2018. I never would’ve known myself to my core had she not broken my heart, my car, my credit, my grip on reality, my psyche, my favorite earrings, my bank account, my glasses at self-checkout, my unclockable edge control shield and my willingness to go along to get along. She introduced me to the higher version of me, cheering me on from steps ahead screaming “we made it. And the view here is life-changing”.