I know I’m not the only one who feels like pretty much all of 2016 has been a complete mess. I feel like every time I turned around, something was going wrong. I can’t count the number of times that I thought that things were about to get really good for me and then I’d actually end up in this semi-depressed-almost-comatose state because life thought it would be funny to kick me in the face. In retrospect, from like the very beginning of this year, I should have seen this coming. My life was a mess at the start of 2016, so it’s only fitting for that to be exactly how I finish it, right? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking for sympathy, in fact, keep that nastiness away from me, I certainly do not want it. I’m just saying that because I spent so much of this year trying to control other peoples’ happiness instead of focusing on my own, I am now motivated to actually do something about it.

According to my mother, I have a big, soft and very easily breakable heart. I get it from her, like no joke, she cries at commercials; it really is the cutest thing. I wear my heart on my sleeve and I am almost always more than willing to give another chance, even after I get my heart shattered into a million pieces for like the 8 millionth time. I’ve chalked part of this God-awful year up to this. I feel as though I’ve spent too much of my time trying to give chances to those who didn’t deserve them so as to make them happy and not enough time giving myself the same opportunities. I’m not going to say that I wasted my time and energy because I am a firm believer that everyone who comes into your life is either bound to stay, or teach you a lesson. I will also tell you that, man, I have learned a lot of lessons this year.

Growing up, I was the little kid that always wanted to sit and chat with the grown-ups, even after they patronized me and told me to run along and play with the other kids. However, it never took the adults long to realize that I was very mature for my age, and that has definitely bitten me in the butt. Because I was always hanging around my parents and their friends, I never really perfected that whole “making friends with people my age” thing so now that I’m in college, away from my parents, I’ve found it fairly difficult to actually connect with a lot of people. Part of this is because I find myself incredibly socially awkward and seem to always be put in situations that I have no clue how to react to so I basically just shut down and hide. As introverted as I am, every so often someone will walk into my life and it’s like they have a blazing neon sign saying “I’m really good for you, but only sometimes” and I’m immediately drawn to them because why not?

With my squishy heart comes a tendency to become really attached. I will admit that most of the time, it does take a while for me to really open up to a person, but once it happens, it’s like pulling teeth for me to get myself to let them go. It’s actually almost funny how often I’d sit in front of my mirror, with my eyes puffy and bloodshot because I had been crying, and told myself that I need to let so-and-so finally go but then turned around and asked them to hang out. As stupid as it may seem, I always have these super high expectations for people, even those who screw me over, again and again. It never really matters how many times they’ve messed up, I still believe that they’re better than they have been to me and I consistently assume that the next chance I give them will turn out better than the last.

So, as to conclude probably the most well thought out rant that I have ever had the pleasure of publishing, I would just like to point out that I cannot promise that just limiting my willingness to prioritize others’ happiness over mine is going to make next year any better than this one. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if come this time next year, I write an article that’s eerily similar to this one. I will however, promise all of my avid readers (Hi, Mom) and myself that I’m going to try my hardest. Of course, with my luck, because I’ve been saying that 2016 sucks so much, 2017 will probably end up being infinitely worse just because karma is going to do whatever karma wants to do.