I’m back – Where was I??

Writing has always soothed me. It’s always been the place where I could let my feelings exist without needing to explain them, justify them, or make them palatable. Writing is where I’ve always felt the most free. 

That’s a huge reason I wanted a blog in the first place, somewhere I could just be me, without shrinking or editing myself for the comfort of others.

When I first created this blog, I was excited. I spent hours learning how everything worked, tweaking layouts, fixing tiny details no one else would ever notice. I wanted it to be perfect. And then… I published it. I made it known. People could see it. And I panicked.

I think part of me suddenly realized that this thing I loved, this passion that felt safe when it was just mine, was now visible. Open to judgment. To opinions. To the possibility that someone might think it was weird, or pointless, or not worth taking seriously. Maybe that was just my anxiety talking, but anxiety has a loud voice, and I listened. So I stopped. I didn’t write. I didn’t blog. I didn’t touch it at all. It was easier to pretend it didn’t exist than to risk being seen.

Then I went on vacation. And something shifted. I felt that familiar pull again, the urge to write, to document, to process life through words. I came home, wrote about the trip, added pictures, hit publish. I remember feeling proud. I remember thinking, okay, this time I’ll keep going. I was excited to write again. To publish something every week, to be creative again.

And then my life fell to shit. About a week after I got home from vacation my grandma went on hospice. And a couple days later I watched her take her last breath.

I don’t have the right words for that moment. I wish I did, I wish I would know how to write how I feel, as if maybe that would help. But during that time and even know, I still don’t know how I feel other than tore apart. I don’t know if anyone ever really knows how to describe how it makes them feel. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever lived through. Sitting there, knowing this was the end, feeling completely helpless, knowing life was about to permanently split into before and after. Knowing that my last grandparent, someone I looked up too and cherished would now no longer be a part of our lives. 

What’s strange and confusing, and honestly unsettling, is that I still don’t think it’s fully hit me yet. I know she’s gone. I know I can’t call her.  I know I won’t see her when I go to my dads house. Hell, I wrote her obituary. I cry at random times, out of nowhere, when something small reminds me of her. But I haven’t completely broken down. I haven’t lost it the way I thought I would, or the way people say you “should.” Part of me is waiting for it. Not because I want to fall apart, but because I want to know I’ve fully felt it. Fully honored the weight of losing her. I don’t know if the delay is grief being sneaky, or the fact that I didn’t have therapy during that time, or survival mode taking over. All I know is that the grief is there, even if it hasn’t roared yet.

And while I was carrying all of that… work started getting worse.

I was written up for things that didn’t feel justified. I was made to feel like perfection was the baseline, and anything less meant I was failing. Mistakes,real or perceived,were treated like character flaws. And during all of this, from July to mid-November, I couldn’t afford therapy. I didn’t have my therapist to help me process any of it. I was grieving. I was anxious. I was exhausted. And I was expected to perform like none of that mattered.

Then November came. I had a Jonas Brothers concert planned, something I was genuinely looking forward to. And my body said, “Absolutely not.” I got tonsillitis. Then laryngitis. I was sick for weeks, barely functioning, feeling like I was dying in slow motion.

The same week I got sick and had the concert, I received a final write-up. So emotions were all over the place. I was incredibly ill. I’m going to be honest I don’t think the issue from the write up is fully my fault, but I guess in life you got supposed to take the fall no matter what you do or don’t do. Thankfully I was given a few different options of what I could do, which thank god because I couldn’t afford to quit and well after putting in like 500 applications and getting nothing back I was at a loss. I was able to talk with my therapist for the first time in months for 30 minutes and I got some of her help as to what I should do. I was supposed to talk with her again a couple weeks later but unfortunately with the holidays and me starting a new job (spoiler) it got pushed to February. All I know is that it is going to be a long session. 

I won’t go into every detail about those choices and my over analyzing brain on what my thought process looked like but I will say this: the old version of me wouldn’t have survived all this. And I don’t say that lightly. Therapy saved my life more than once, and I’m deeply aware of that. I am grateful that I did something for myself and got myself help. 

So I did change roles, I transitioned into a new position. Same building. Same company. A completely different world. I’m learning everything from scratch again. New expectations. New people. New routines. And I’m quietly grieving the job I knew, the role I was good at (or at least I thought I was) , and the coworkers who felt like a second family. There’s a specific kind of sadness in leaving something without actually leaving, being physically close but emotionally displaced. And underneath all of that is a fear I don’t love admitting: 

That I’ll be forgotten.
That I was replaceable.
That the people I cared about won’t remember me the way I remember them.

So yeah. Writing disappeared again. Not because it didn’t matter, or that I didn’t want to write, but because I was just trying to survive. I didn’t know how to write what I was feeling, because it was a lot and I was exhausted, my brain was on overdrive. Now it’s a new year.

And I don’t want to keep living in survival mode. I want to be better for myself. I want to make space for the things that make me happy. Writing. Reading. Creating. Letting myself be excited about things without worrying about failure all the time.  This year isn’t about perfection. It’s about intention. About choosing myself, even quietly. About showing up, even when it’s messy.

And who knows—maybe Harry Styles will finally come back and give us all something to scream about again. (Talking about the ‘Forever, Forever’ video he uploaded recently) 

I don’t have everything figured out, but I’m here. I’m trying. I’m showing up in the ways I can, even when it feels uncomfortable or unfinished. For now, that’s enough to begin again.

So I’ll leave this here—with one quiet question, for you and for me:

What’s something you’ve been meaning to come back to—but haven’t felt ready to say out loud yet?

~ V.