In case you are wondering, yes, the title of this post is a reference to Adele’s song, “Hello”. For the past few years I haven’t been very consistent about posting on the blog, especially this last year… (sidenote: I am always active on my Instagram…). Over the past few years big events have taken place and 2023 was the first year I was able to come up for air and honestly wanted to enjoy every second of life, soak things, people, and experiences in, and sat some thing aside.
In life, we all face personal challenges, and in some cases Adele’s well-chosen words, “Hello from the other side” resonates a little too clearly… Usually I don’t get super personal on here, and for the most part try to keep things light and fun, but thought I would share some of what has been going on to explain why I haven’t been as active and why I took a break last year… In short, the past three years have been a season of ending, loss, and healing… I broke off an engagement, lost my grandmother, and experience a family hardship. I also thought I would share more personal posts on here in the hope that at least one person feels less alone in their situation.
In January of 2020 I broke off an engagement… The number of emotions that came with that situation were too overwhelming to properly put into words… I felt relieved, overwhelmed with grief, embarrassed, foolish, alone in the worst possible way, hopeful, like I had failed on a level, and experienced an odd sense of guilt.
I think the hardest thing for me was that there are so many questions I will never know the answers to… I’ll never know how one individual could change so much in a short amount of time, why pronouns quickly changed from we/us/ours to I/me/mine, why he became so critical, why all the sudden I had to be the voice of reason when he was ten years older…It will always be a memory surrounded by whys, the unshakable feeling of humiliation that came with being kicked out of a house during an argument, and the indescribable feeling of finding out he was a father (not mine)…
I placed an engagement ring on a restaurant table, told him we were done, walked out, and with the exception of a couple necessary emails, never talked again… I eventually came to the conclusion that the love I had with him was like fool’s gold - on the outside it looked real, but the deeper I looked, the more apparent the reality of the situation became. So, if you are in a similar situation, know that the real thing is waiting for you. I haven’t found it yet, but have come close and have made some new friends along the way.
The following year my grandmother passed away at the age of almost eighty-nine. The order of a family changed, a new dynamic was slowly established, and the importance of memories was realized all too well.
The third thing that happened is something I feel isn’t really mine to share…
The 2020s have been difficult for most, for various reasons… Life is something that moves along unapologetically. At times I wish I could freeze everything, stand still, and catch my breath. Last year was the first year in a long time that I wanted to stand up, walk with time, and enjoy every moment. It was the first year I didn’t want to escape between the pages of a book or a corner of the internet. Things felt a little lighter, hope for the future was renewed, possibilities of countless futures lay on the horizon, and life goes on.
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