2016 was one of the worst years of my life. All jokes aside.

Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely young but putting age aside, the trials and problems that I encountered throughout the year were a lot. You may have noticed my periodic posts here and there but that was because outside of this computer and this blog, I felt like my life was falling apart and there was nothing that I could do except watch.

I’d reached a point so low in 2016 that I was content with never taking another breath. It literally pained me every morning that I woke up and had to survive another day. I would get dressed and put on my most realistic impression of happiness before I walked outside and it worked for a while. Until around November. I’d just gotten word that an aunt and cousin passed in a house fire on top of all of the other issues that I had to deal with and the fake happiness I mentioned earlier, crumbled. I sat in class and a professor told me to stay back after class to speak with him. I’m not sure if he’s religious or not but I am, and I do believe that God sends you exactly what you need when you need it. He sat across from me after every student left the room and simply asked, “what’s wrong?” I broke at that very moment.

Every tear that I’d suppressed, every frustration that I’d bottled up, it all came pouring out. Not in words, just tears. I cried until I couldn’t anymore and he waited until I was done. He told me a story about his life and told me that his office was always open to me if need be. It baffled me that this person, who was basically a stranger could see the hurt and pain that even those closest to me could not. In the black community mental health is something that we don’t grasp as well as others.. but that’s another post for another day.

Although 2016 was treacherous, I call it the breakthrough year for a reason. Breakthrough can be defined as “a sudden, dramatic, important discovery” and the first word alone says ‘break’. I was broken. God literally stripped me of everything that brought me comfort. Deliberately and meticulously, he took away this fortress that I’d built for myself that brought me makeshift happiness. At the time, I didn’t understand it. Why are you taking everything and everyone away from me? God needed me alone. Just me and him. I couldn’t hear him over all of the other things that had my attention. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t doing anything bad but I was so focused on graduating, my classes, helping people when they needed something, etc. that when God called, my line was either tied up or I was too drained to answer him.

I count it all joy now. I learned a lesson from everything that happened to me and now that I’ve seen what it’s like to have no desire or will to live, I want to live even more so now. I stop and count my breaths, I laugh more, and when I want to say ‘No’ to something, I do. I want to travel and see new things, learn new things, and make new memories now. 2016 may have been the year of brokenness but 2017 is the year of embracing those scars and recognizing that I can make it.

-From me to you always, tons and tons of love.