perks&conundrums.

When 2017 first started, I wasn’t sure where the year was heading. I had just made a drastic change for myself, relationship wise, at the end of 2016. I knew that my relationship would be stable throughout the year, but all of the other personal aspects of my life? I wasn’t quite sure.

I was still in a bad place mentally in the beginning of 2017. I was with a voice teacher who made me feel shitty every single day. I dreaded going to my lessons. I felt like everything I was doing wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t praised for the things I did right, but instead, I was criticized for the things I did wrong. My self-esteem was plummeting, along with my self-worth and my confidence to do minuscule things. I hated myself.

I took a leap of faith and changed voice teachers after being encouraged to make a positive change in my life, and it didn’t get any easier. At the end of the Spring 2017 semester, on the first day of finals week, I had a lesson with my new voice teacher. I remember that day so vividly. I had a breakdown right in front of her. I cried for 10 minutes, knowing that I had to get my act together after those 10 minutes were up because I had my first final. I ended that semester with straight A’s, but I still hated myself. Yet, after that breakdown I had with my teacher, everything changed. I knew from that point onward, it was going to be a long road to recovery for self love.

After the spring semester had ended, I had a lot of plans for the summer. The main two being a cruise with my entire family, and finally meeting my internet best friend-turned-long-distance-relationship-boyfriend.

The cruise was incredible. It was the first time I saw my parents, my brother, my two sisters, all of their spouses and kids all together on vacation. I swam with dolphins, I visited some of the most beautiful beaches that I’ve ever seen, and even got some gnarly burns that I’ve never experienced before. I gained like 10 lbs from that trip alone but it was so great! I wanted to do things that I never thought I’d ever want to do, like snorkel with the sting rays, or swim with the sharks. Of course, no one wanted to do those things with me, and I didn’t have a chance to do them, but I added them to the bucket list. I learned a lot about myself from that trip.

The other major half of my summer was having Luis come visit me. It was the first time we had ever met, despite being internet friends since 2012. It was an event that we had always talked about, but it didn’t hit me that it would happen until it did.

We have a funny history with each other. But his three days here were the best three days I have ever experienced with one person. It felt so liberating and it was a glance of our future. That was probably the most important moral that I’ve taken out of his visit: we can hang out and do nothing and still enjoy each other’s company.

A lot of my friends ask me about him, about his plans on moving, and the fact is, is that he is planning on moving here eventually. A lot of things are going on with him and me in our personal lives that are delaying the plans and the visitations, but we have no worries. We are very serious with each other, and our goals are long-term. We have nothing to worry about when it comes to he and I.

Fall semester had finally begun. It was an okay-semester at the beginning, but an ex had started to message me again, telling me of some feelings that he had but had never had the courage to tell me when we were actually in a relationship a year prior. It got on my nerves, and I told him how I didn’t feel the same way as before, but I did it nicely. He never understood what I said and kept pursuing me. It wasn’t until recently that he tried that stunt again, but this time, I told him how I felt, and I wasn’t so nice about it. At least he got the message. Hopefully he’ll stop messaging me, though.

The semester itself wasn’t bad at all. All of my classes were fairly manageable, except for the one class that wasn’t supposed to be a problem. But despite that, I didn’t procrastinate at all in that semester. I started all of my work two weeks before it was due, and worked on my projects intermittently. Who knew, that NOT procrastinating helped with everything!

On November 14, I got my first job in four years. Between those four years, job-wise, were freaking rough. I applied to soooo many place, made it through so many interviews, only to not have them call me back. These jobs were minimum wage, no-experience type jobs; yet no matter how much I related with my interviewer, or how much we connected on a human-level, I was never employed. A lot of the times, I didn’t even receive any contact after I sent in my resume. I probably applied to over 100 jobs between those years.

My friend Izzy and Julian had been working in Under Armour for over a year, and I got the job just a few days before Black Friday. I originally started working to help pay for my tuition/ buy a Nintendo Switch. But once the tuition thing was taken care of, and I bought my Switch, I still find working at UA enjoyable.

I always liked the job, but my lack of self-esteem was getting in the way to do the smallest things: I couldn’t talk on the walkies because I got anxious, and even talking to customers and asking if they needed anything was rough. I also dwelled on little mistakes that I would think about for days, and come to the conclusion that I deserve to hate myself. But nonetheless, I asked my coworkers a lot of questions, and all of them helped me no matter what I needed. They made me an efficient worker.

A month later at this job, and I got used to everything. I started being good at the things I was required to do: folding, registers, standardizing... etc. I made a conscious decision to fight off any bad thoughts that crept into my mind. I started to call out my conscious mind and think of my sub conscious. So for example, whenever I thought of a mistake I made at work and said consciously, “I hate myself,” I would literally create a dialogue in my head and create a sub-conscious rebuttal: “No, you don’t.  You don’t actually hate yourself. You just hate the mistake that you did, and you are not the mistakes you make; you are the lessons you learned from them. You’re just saying that you hate yourself, but you actually don’t.”

I didn’t actually expect the little bipolar argument in my mind to work, but it did LOL. The bad thoughts had stopped coming my way after I started calling out myself for saying such mean things. I actually recommend this to anyone who has bad thoughts in their head. It helps being aware of your sub conscious mind, and realizing why you’re saying the things you are. That way, you know the root. The conscious always thinks its’ in control, but it never is. The sub conscious never thinks, but it’s always in control.

Fast forward to now, and I actually like working in retail. It’s not as bad as people say it is, but I’ve been told that it’s probably the team that I work with because they help me and make me more efficient every day. I’m known as one of the faster and effective folders at work and they put me in the fitting rooms when they need help. I recently got authorization to make returns, exchanges, and give discounts. I’m getting better at closing, now that I know how to. My relationships with my coworkers are actually really great, and they invite me out often and even want to play minecraft with me LOL (I don’t play but they always tell me to download it everyday I see them.) It’s actually quite nice. In some ways, I believe that work has helped me cope with my mental issues and helped me believe that I belong somewhere. It’s nice feeling useful.

I plan on staying with UA for a while. I graduate soon but I sure could use the extra money, and I take any shift that I can. My job has been interfering with my time with Luis, but he reassures me that I should do what I need to do, and that there’s always time in the future. Things will be so much easier when he lives here, and he’s always so supportive and encouraging when it comes to me and school or work.

Anyway, this year has been quite a ride. I started off hating myself, and now I actually like where I am. I don’t hate myself as much, and I’m keeping all of my self-deprecating thoughts at bay. I’ve also decided to start reading more self-help books to help with positivity and self-esteem. So if you have any suggestions, don’t hesitate to message me.

But that’s my 2017 in an long tumblr post. If you made it this far, thanks for reading it and for hearing me out. I’d love to hear how your 2017 went, so let me know if you want/need a talk :)