A year ago, I wrote an article entitled "Here's To A New Decade".

I didn't realize just how much the article would come to haunt me. It was all about my hopes and dreams for the new decade, but specifically 2020. I talked about how 2019 was such a disaster for me; it brought about my worst bouts with mental illness and my tendency to throw myself into work to avoid people and interactions. I voiced my hope for 2020 to be a year of self-discovery and my desire to really get what I wanted out of life.

And here we are, a year later. In a way, I did get what I wanted. However, it was not in the way that I expected.

I started out aggressively working on a production of "Angels in America". I went to a conference where I reconnected with someone I had met on Tinder the summer before and proceeded to have a long distance "talking" phase. Then, I came home over spring break and never went back to school. The spring was filled with online classes, working at a grocery store during the early days on the pandemic, and being in denial about what was happening in the world.

Over the summer, a boy came into my life and I fell in love. Truly. I came out to my dad. He met my parents. I was just completely over the moon to, after 20 years on this planet, finally have found someone who got me. I made plans to return to school with him and then he dumped me not even a week into the semester. However brief it was, it was the first instance in my life where I truly felt loved. I guess everyone, at one point or another, has that kind of love.

I spiraled for the next four months and lived completely alone in my dorm on campus. It was the most isolating I have ever felt in my life. Around November, I completely lost it and packed up my entire dorm room. I left Penn State and tried my hardest to never look back. At home, I threw myself back into work and finished up the semester. My grades were great and I wrote some really awesome final papers.

Now I'm in between semesters, prepping to be completely remote at home for the semester. My parents are going through financial hardships and I definitely feel like the spring is going to be my hardest semester yet.

But.

I'm doing it.

This isn't me saying that everything is going to change drastically now that we are in a new year. It's just me manifesting that it could.