I am writing this reflection on 2021 at the end of Summer 2022 and I wish I hadn’t waited so long. 2021 was a year of transformation, one that made me believe people could actually stick to the mindset of “new year, new me”.

I entered 2021 finishing my college applications, crying six days a week from exhaustion and stress, and grasping at any crumbs that could my last year of high school feel like a senior year. Who I was during my last semester of senior year feels like a ghost to me. She was so insecure in herself that she refused to believe she was worthy of a happy life. She was broken inside and thought she would never be fixed. She was lost in life and a part of her didn’t want to try to find her way.

Then something happened. I had an epiphany.

I’d always heard people say that high school isn’t actually that great. And that teenagers shouldn't put that much pressure on their four years in high school because in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter that much. I want to say that I believed them for the most part, but I still made everything in high school a life or death scenario. Everything was over dramatic because I thought that everything carried more weight than it actually did. I was obsessed with everything in my life being exactly perfect and when my carefully laid plans didn’t execute as I expected I felt like the end of the world as I knew it was coming.

But that overwhelming feeling of pressure dissipated the second I walked across the stage and received my diploma. I realized that I wasted so much time trying to make my life how I wanted it that I forgot to actually live my life. In that one moment of graduating, my entire life changed.

I came up with a motto in 2020 that I never truly lived by until 2021 and I love it to this day:

No regrets just good stories.

And I can say that I have lived by that every day since I graduated. I refuse to look back on my life and realize that I have regrets. I don’t want to feel unfulfilled or unsatisfied in my life and I don’t want to put that immense pressure on myself anymore to solidify that.

The day I graduated was the day I took the stick out of my ass and learned to relax. I remember the day I told my therapist that I actually felt good about life and I remember the smile across her face like she had been waiting that day for years, and she probably had.

Now I don’t want to say that my life has been smooth sailing since, but I have finally come to a place in life where I am ready to put in the work and roll with the punches. I am unconfidently confident in where I am and I’m okay with not being the best because my best is all that matters and I am capable of so much more when I don’t focus on what I’m not capable of.

To 2021, thank you, I hated you for the most part but I came out a better person for it.