I am not afraid to admit that 2020 was one of the hardest years of my life in terms of my mental health. I felt trapped, literally and figuratively. Everyday when I woke up and looked in the mirror, I was forced to face myself. All of the things I wanted to change, everything I wanted to be seen by others, and all that I was. I was afraid of truly knowing myself, turning a blind eye to everything I didn’t want to see. 

The paradigm shift in my self-perception happened when I realized that I am not the same person I was yesterday, and I will be a different version of myself tomorrow. There is comfort in the fact that the one thing we can all count on is change, that humanity is constantly evolving. The real self-improvements could be made in the smallest increments.

 Someone I deeply admire once told me that when times get hard, you have to take care of yourself the way you would take care of a four year old child. So I continue to prioritize my feelings regardless of the given circumstances. I stop myself a couple times throughout the day to ask “How am I feeling right now, and what do I need to do to take care of myself at this moment?”. Sometimes taking care of myself is doing yoga. Other days it’s wallowing in sadness or anxiety for a while before picking myself up again. 

I am going into 2021 as a 17-year-old girl, and my only goal is to grow. The truth is that I am my own life source, my own reason for being. While my life-long goal is to be able to call myself home, this year I can be satisfied with any ounce of growth. My intentions for this year involve learning more about the world and in turn, more about myself. 

When your first instinct is to turn away, that is when you know you have to face it.