The Decade is Almost Over...

I saw this tweet going around this week about how there’s only one month left in the decade, and it went viral. I wanted to do a retweet reply to it but every time I thought about writing stuff out, I kept pausing.

Off the top of my head, I honestly can’t think of more than a few things that happened and all of those are recent events. A decade is a long time and I’ve been so focused on what’s coming up next and what’s immediately in front of me that I haven’t had time to be introspective and think back to a whole ten years. Also, to be quite honest, my memory has been pretty bad recently and I’ve only been able to really recall things most recently done with clarity. Yay anxiety!

I think asking what you’ve accomplished this decade can be a pretty loaded question, especially on social media. Comparing yourself to others is really easy to do, especially when it seems like other people are more successful than you are. But the interesting thing is, 2010 Stella would have been incredibly shy and stressed out trying to find the energy to post an answer to this.

In 2010 Stella’s head, she’d be struggling to write about herself in kind words and not feel like a failure for not meeting all of her goals. I’ve been mulling over this question for a week now, with this blog entry sitting in my drafts. But I think I know what I feel is my most accomplished task I’ve done this decade: I survived.

It sounds so cheesy “I survived” but honestly I feel that’s my one real answer to a whole ten years of growing up. In 2010 I was a junior in high school and had no sense of who I was or what I thought I wanted to do in the future. Honestly, for a good amount of those ten years I hated myself. I felt I was constantly letting myself and others down and I didn’t give myself the self-care or love that I needed. I had a lot of terrible abusive relationships and blamed them all on myself and thought I’d never find love that would make me happy. Then, maybe two years ago now, I went to my first therapy session and realized that it was okay that I wasn’t okay but that I really needed to acknowledge it. And then I did end up finding love but not with anyone else. With the help of therapy I found ways to accept myself and start to even like the person I was.

That took me twenty four years of being alive to even try to consider. I grew up under my dad’s strict expectations that were impossible to reach and he could never be pleased with anything I did. He also didn’t want me to explore any of the things I loved to do and had strong passions for like writing, art, or photography. In 2012, when I was attending my first semester in college, I moved out of my parents’ home and had to learn how to live on my own. I was terrible at cooking, I overflowed my rice cooker on the first try and had to panic call my mom about it, and I was terrible at being alone. I’d never had that kind of freedom and it was terrifying. But now, I’m less scared of being alone and I even embrace it. I don’t hate myself like I did earlier in those years.

It’s definitely not “fixed” or "gone for sure, I have my really bad mental health days and then I have extraordinarily great days. It’s a constant struggle. But seriously, saying that my greatest accomplishment in this decade is simply surviving is my honest answer. My mental health has always suffered. My anxiety had gone unchecked for so many years and I struggled with heavy depression and I never felt like I saw a future of happiness for myself until I finally stopped to give myself a little bit of respect and love and find the right way to care for myself. Now I’m at a place in my life where I can be proud of having overcome the darkest moments and be really happy to be where I am now. I’m working at a job that I truly love and don’t feel stuck in and I’m constantly finding new ways to challenge myself physically and mentally by trying out new things more often.

I’m pretty bad at making goals for New Year’s resolutions because it puts a ton of pressure on me, but I like doing soft goals. My goal last year was to earn the Spartan Trifecta medal and I did that. Thinking about 2020, I want to pursue something physical and mental. I want to continue to learn about myself, find what makes me happy and just bury myself in it. I feel like I’m in the right mindset and on the right track for it. I’m working a job I love that opens up a ton of opportunities for me and I also want to do more to give back to people. It’s not a clear set goal, but I want the point of it all to come together as I figure out where things will go this next year.

What’s something you’re proud of doing this decade? If you don’t know, that’s totally okay, but I hope you have a lovely New Year.

-Stella