2019 Year in Review

Full Disclosure: 2019 really sucked for me. It was a really difficult, uncomfortable, seemingly unrelenting year. Or, at least, that’s what it feels like right now. 

I struggled because I both lost my illusions around safety and certainty and the idea that I could plan my way out of any suffering and hardship (thanks, Great Leukemia Adventure of 2018) and also tried to dive head-first back into the comfortable, orderly, safe-feeling life that I had missed out on 2018.

I started a new job on New Year’s Eve 2018 and my last day there will be this Friday, Jan. 3rd. I made it an entire year in a place that I knew on Day 7 wasn’t right for me. And part of me is really proud of myself for working with the reality that I was in, and trying my best, and doing the work to make sure that I was doing my best in all of the places that were within my ability to change. And another part of me is really disappointed that it didn’t work out, and frustrated that I made myself carry that burden for so long, and discouraged that I have to try again in a new place now, and worried that this new place won’t be any better. 

I learned how truly vital it is to take good care of myself, not in a bullshit bubble bath way, but in a way where I go to bed on time, and give up sooner on things that aren’t working, and worry less about whether I’m being a “good” employee or roller derbist or friend. But I also learned that it’s a lot of work and time and effort to take care of myself, and that it requires a lot of trade-offs, and that it often feels really uncomfortable because it goes against everything I’ve learned to do in the past 37 years of my life. 

I lost one of my major coping mechanisms - just gritting my teeth, putting my head down, and enduring things - because ever since getting out of the hospital I’m apparently constitutionally incapable of disregarding that voice that says “this isn’t right for you”. Which is great! I love that voice! I need it! But I also didn’t have the practice in setting boundaries / giving myself permission / using my words that I needed to truly make those changes, so I just felt all the misalignment and anxiety but didn’t know what to do with them. (The answer, from where I’m sitting now, is just: do something different. Anything. Do literally one thing different and see how it goes.)

I learned that, now that I’ve spent a decade-plus in therapy learning to manage my anxiety, there’s a big bubbling cauldron of depression under there, and there always has been, and I have no coping strategies for it at all that aren’t just manifestations of my anxiety because that’s how I’ve always powered through it. And that doesn’t really work for me any more.

The depression is also why, when I look back on this year, I can only see the struggle, the swamp, how hard it was to put one metaphorical foot in front of the other. When this was also the year that I saw Lizzo in concert, and spent a week in Disneyland, and skated in four roller derby bouts (thereby achieving a goal I’d been working towards since 2015), and made it a full year post-cancer, and took my max squat from 135 pounds to 225 pounds, and experienced all manner of other beautiful moments, even those as mundane as sitting in my living room and eating pizza with my husband while we watched The Simpsons. It’s why I really struggled to feel the gratitude that I rightfully should be swimming in every day, because by all objective (and most subjective) measures I lead a unironically blessed life.

I want to believe that all of this struggle and realization and learning and discomfort and frustration will lead to something - that, in some future time, I will look back on 2019 and think, “wow, that was really the start of so many things I needed to get me to a better place.” Once upon a time, I would have believed that - it would have been necessary to believe that, because I believed in an orderly world and that good always comes out of bad. I don’t necessarily think I believe that any more.

But I believe in the possibility of it. Not that it always does but that it can, if I do what is within my power to make that happen. And I think that’s enough, for now. It feels like a place to start.