Sometimes time goes by so quickly that it leaves us in the dust, wondering where it went. We say things like, “It seems like only yesterday…” and “Wasn’t it just December?” Other times, it’s the exact opposite. Time drags by. One year feels like ten. Something that happened just twelve months ago seems like a distant memory. We say, “That was only a year ago?” and “I can’t believe it’s not even June.” The latter of the two describes what the past year has been like for me. In fact, this has been the longest year of my life.
This time last year, I was graduating from college. It was literally twelve months ago, and yet it feels like so much longer. If you had told the me walking across that stage last May receiving her diploma, what her life would look like only a year later, she probably would have laughed in your face. This has been a year of so many emotions, the most prominent ones being sadness, pain, shock and grief. For quite a few months, nothing was going right. Things kept happening, and none of them were good. It was like I kept getting punched in the stomach. The first few times, it knocked the wind out of me, but I got back up and kept on going. After a while though, I found myself looking to the heavens and saying, please let there be something good, I don’t know how many more punches I can take.
There are some of these “punches” that I’ve written about here, and some that I haven’t. If you’re a regular reader, I hope you know that I always do my best to be as genuine as possible, but there are just some things that I’m not ready to share. Nonetheless, here I am again, pouring out my heart, and you might be wondering why. It’s because I want to tell you something very important: this has been the longest, most difficult year of my life, but I’m here and I’m okay.
As the punches persisted, the people who care about me kept telling me that things would get better. As much as part of me wanted to tell them to stop feeding me bullshit, in a little corner of my heart, I believed them, and I held on to that hope. Here I am, looking back a year later and I can tell you that my life will never be the same. There are things that have changed, and they will never go back to the way they were. But, I’m okay. I was broken, but I’ve started to put myself back together.
Throughout this year, I’ve learned a lot about myself. I am stronger than I thought I was. If I can make it through a year where life as I knew it was turned upside down, I can probably make it through anything. And I’m sharing this with you because I know everyone has days, months, and years like I’ve had. Stress, sadness, or pain overcome you, and you don’t believe that they’ll ever go away. Take it from someone who knows, things will get better. I promise I’m not just feeding you bullshit. It’ll take some time, and you probably won’t notice it for a while. But, you can make it, you are stronger than you know. In the wise words of Dory in Finding Nemo, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”
Can you think of a time in your life when time went especially slowly, or when it seemed to whiz by? What do you think influences how we perceive the speed of our days, months and years? Has the past year gone by quickly or slowly for you?
