2018 has been a weird year for me, and I know for a lot of other people. I don't want to say that this year was any better or any worse than any other year because I don't think that is a fair way to describe the last 365 days of my life. I have struggled, I have excelled, I have made mistakes, I have learned, I have grown from the person I was last year, I also regressed from the person I had worked hard to become, but I also bounced back even stronger when I recovered.

Just in the last 365 days alone I have attended my dream school, grown closer to my faith, met some of the best people and even lost some of them. I loved and I lost, specifically I loved someone else and lost myself. But I grew from the past, and I came out stronger and healthier. As some know, I have struggled with Bipolar Disorder for some time now and it has always gotten the best of me in times of emotional vulnerability (probably stemmed from being bipolar in the first place)—but either way. I learned a lot to cope better with that part of myself and that's a huge a deal for me. Because of this, I had to become very self aware, self reflective, and self accepting. By this, I didn't just start doing better mentally, I also started building a foundation for myself and my future. I am able to see more clearly what my goals are, where my interests are taking me, and what I am aspiring to be.

I have also struggled the majority of this year with figuring out my "purpose."

Purpose, what even is that?! Honestly, I have had to change that word to something like "direction" or "interest" because the word "purpose" has SO much pressure behind it. It's implied that we are supposed to do one thing with our life. Someone asks you, "So, what's your purpose in life?", and you are just supposed to know like you're born with this single handed idea of what you are meant to do in this world, but it can only be one thing out of the hundreds of things there are to accomplish. So rather than feel like I have to find this purpose that my life has to surround itself by and then feel like a failure when I don't find that purpose, I am instead following my interests and figuring out that direction of my life as it comes.

I say all of this for a reason. It's not to give you all a bunch of personal information for you to just take as a grain of salt. I am saying it for this reason:

To help you.

To help you, whether it's to reassure that you are not alone or whether it is to tell you it's okay to not have your life together. If you struggle with a mental illness, if you struggle with personal conflicts, if you struggle with people, if you struggle in any way what-so-ever, it's okay. You don't have to, and you are not even supposed to have it all figured out. There is a certain beauty in being different, "damaged", unsure, or whatever you want to call it. The fact of the matter is that surprisingly, we all go through the same things. Maybe at different times and in different contexts. But it is all the same and there is a strong explanation for it all—because of that certain beauty.

So, 2018..

Thank you. Thank you for being real with me. Thank you for always kicking me down and bringing me up when I needed it. Thank you for the people who have come and gone, and thank you for the experiences I have hurt and grown from.

Next.