I’m sure I’m not alone in saying this, but 2016 was tough. It was probably the hardest year of my life so far. I knew that I went through a lot, but looking back on it, I went through a lot more than I thought. Don’t get me wrong; there were some good things that happened in 2016. But it seems like it was mostly a rough ride.

Let’s start at the very beginning. (A very good place to start.) January was rough. I mean really, really rough. Imagine spending your entire 6-week winter break looking forward to seeing your friends and then going back to school and having your entire life change. That’s exactly what happened to me. I didn’t hear anything from my “friends,” not even a “Merry Christmas” or a “Happy New Year” over break. Nothing. Then I was told that my “friends” did not want to live with me anymore. Fantastic. Long story short, I decided these weren’t the people for me, and I was harassed for making that decision. I spent my entire semester alone, and as you can imagine, I was very upset. Not a great experience.

But every difficult experience comes with a lesson. I learned the kind of people I do and do not want to be friends with through this experience. I learned to value myself enough to walk away from people who, frankly, don’t deserve my friendship. I learned that it is better to be alone than to be with people who don’t treat you the way you deserve.

I don’t have a specific incident—mostly because there were so many—but the rest of the year wasn’t so hot either. I spent most of the year with someone who didn’t treat me right and didn’t deserve to be with me. Sometimes that happens because we can’t see it, or maybe we can see it and we’re just too afraid to see what might happen if we do leave. That’s the situation I was in, and it did not end well. The person I was with ended up contributing to the rocky summer I had in a huge way. I was rarely happy for real, and it made doing my job very taxing, especially because we worked together. This person went after my best friends in an attempt to isolate me from them, and that was where I drew the line. I had to end the relationship. Anyone who knows me will tell you that there are two things I value more than anything else: family and friends. No one goes after my friends and gets away with it, especially if they’re wrong. After seeing my best friend attacked by my boyfriend, I ended the relationship. Of course the breakup didn’t go very well, but I’ll spare you the details because, honestly, they’re super dramatic and like something out of a really bad teen drama. Seriously.

This experience confirmed what I had already learned from the experience with those “friends”: Not everyone deserves your friendship, kindness, and love. I learned that I needed to value myself enough to leave someone who didn’t treat me right and only took me for granted. I also learned that I was right to choose my friends and family over everything else because those are the people who will always be there and will always deserve me. Another thing I learned is that when people show their true colors, it is not my responsibility to hide them if they are bad; it is my responsibility to decide if that person is worth keeping around. If not, I owe it to myself to leave because sometimes, my happiness needs to take precedence over the happiness over others.

Those two experiences made 2016 really tough and one of the worst years of my life. Collectively, they made my year difficult to get through because they involved people who I cared about and who I thought cared about me, too. However, 2016 wasn’t all bad. In fact, I had a few great experiences in 2016, most of them after cutting out the negative people in my life.

My best friend worked with me this summer, and I loved every second of it. We work at my childhood summer camp, and we were put in the same group, which was awesome. It was just so great to have my best friend alongside me this summer, especially considering everything I had been through and was still going through at the time. For me, the best part was honestly watching my best friend grow and have an awesome experience. I saw her open up to new people and gain confidence in working with children. I saw her be her silly, fun, wonderful self with the kids and with our friends. I saw her have the experience I’ve always wished we could share together, and I think that’s potentially one of the best things to come out of 2016. I can’t wait to work with my best friend again in 2017. I love you, Jessi!

Looking back on this, I learned that there is always good shining through the bad. I also learned that there is always something you can do for someone else to make them happy and to help them discover a part of who they are. It makes me so happy when I think about working with my best friend because of everything I got to see in her and because I got to share that experience at my favorite place in the world.

Also, this semester, I got to start to experience my dream of being a teacher by teaching a two-week unit at a middle school. There is so much I could say about this experience, but it was definitely one of the things I will always remember about 2016. Teaching my eighth graders was amazing, and watching myself grow as a teacher in the process was pretty cool, too. Being able to share my love of English with a group of students and have them appreciate it with me was incredible, and I wouldn’t trade this experience for the world.

I learned a lot from this experience, but the best lesson I learned is that you cannot underestimate yourself as a teacher. If you do, your students pick up on it, and they underestimate you, too, which just makes your job way harder than it already is.

Lastly, I developed some new relationships this year that I hope I will carry with me in the future. I made some new friends at my school, and they’re just really wonderful people who made this past semester easier. (Thanks, girls!) I also developed my relationship with someone who has been one of my closest friends for a few years now, and I feel incredibly happy and lucky to have him every day. (Thank you for being awesome and all of the other things I tell you that you are!)

The most important lesson I learned from all of this is just a confirmation of the age-old saying: Good things come to those who wait. It is absolutely true, and I believe that the negative experiences of this year had to happen so that I could have the positive ones.

I can honestly say that I am way happier at the end of 2016 than I was in the beginning, and this just reaffirms to me that there is not anything that is all bad. 2016 was one of the toughest years of my life, but there were still some positive things that came out of it. And even though it seems like life has been throwing me mostly curveballs lately, I know that, in 2017, the best is yet to come.

Happy New Year from me to you! Your best is yet to come, too.