Goodbye 2010

Around this time last year, I was crowing about how 2010 was going to be MY year. Crowing like my life depended on it. Crowing with confidence, as if affirming it with certainty, would MAKE it a certainty. I wasn't all that wrong. I'm not saying it was a year that went smoothly in every possible way. Some moments of 2010 brought me down to my knees, and I felt that I may never be able to rise again. It may sound melodramatic, but I am not exaggerating. There were moments when I felt completely hopeless and alone as I never have in my adult life, and I can safely say I have never cried so much in any year. But I guess this is also the year when I truly faced life and all that it can encompass - a whole gamut of experience and emotion. And I still say 2010 WAS MY YEAR. I hurt, but I healed. I fell, but I learned that I can get up time and time again. You can't knock me down. I learned who I can trust and who I can lean on, and that I am not in this alone. I learned that I can cry, and yell, and feel like my mind is no longer my own - and there will still be people in my corner fighting for me, and believing in me... not because they have to - but because they genuinely do. You know who you are... and if there ever has been a moment when you have thought that I don't appreciate you, or treasure you. Think again. I know who I can count on, and who I can trust, and who's got my back. And I am blessed that there are so many of you. If 2010 has taught me nothing else - it has taught me to value all the people I have. I've got your back too.

Another thing 2010 has taught me is that I am EMOTIONAL. For the longest time I have felt that I have no heart, and I have no feeling. Love strongly, and be hurt badly, and your heart will show you it exists. I have never felt more alive - in my saddest and happiest moments than I have in these past few months. I am richer for everything, and while parts of me are still struggling, I am not defeated. I've taken leaps I never thought I could have, and survived wounds I never imagined facing. And I am so much better for it...

And I will be greedy and tell you: 2011 is MY year too. Bring it on.