Blogmas Day 22: 2024 Resolution(s)

A love letter to anxious people still weathering the pandemic

As 2023 comes to a close, I’m sure a lot of us are thinking about resolutions for the new year. Mine are looking a little bit different than the typical new year new me approach, and I wanted to elaborate because I know I’m not alone. 

I am still weathering the pandemic, are you? 

When the Covid-19 conversation turned dire, I was 30 years old, on the brink of 31. I remember sitting on the living room floor teary-eyed, torn over whether or not to go to my own birthday dinner, wondering if there’d ever be another. That feels silly now, but all this to say, I’ll be 35 this winter, and I’ve still been living in quarantine, so to speak. 

The world seemed to stop turning for several years, only waking up for brief moments to break our hearts. And though the world was still, our individual lives orbited on and on, in a bunch of different directions. 

For me…

There’s been bad stuff - sick pets, sick people, bouts of crappy mental health, kidney stones, lol. 

There’s been great stuff - recovered pets, recovered people, therapy, increased water intake (also lol). 

Nearly four years into quarantine, I’m coming to terms with the fact that we’ve arrived on the other side - decidedly battered, bruised, and older, but on the other side, so that’s a win. 

This kind of brings me to my present struggle; I’ve awoken from this strange, four-year-long-daydream to find a hardly recognizable person staring back at me in the mirror. Lots of good, some bad, too. 

I’m actively, intentionally, and consistently working on my mental health and fully aware and comforted in my understanding that healing isn’t linear. That it takes work. And that bad days aren’t set backs, they’re just bad days. Thanks, therapy! 

I’m several pounds heavier and somehow brunette, simultaneously grateful for this body that carried me through the pandemic, and resenting it a little for malfunctioning occasionally and daring to be a different shape than it always was. 

I’m both more and less independent. More so in my pursuit of wellness and figuring out what that means for me. Less so in that getting behind the wheel of a car makes me nauseated with anxiety. Independence comes in many forms!

Here, on the other side, I guess I’m harmonious chaos, a mix of new and old. And so, my singular New Year’s resolution, for the year I’ll turn middle aged, is to build upon all the good and not give myself a hard time over the bad. Balance, ya know.

You are loved. You are important. You are Kenough. 

Currently listening to: “New Year’s Day” by Taylor Swift

xoxo Leigh Ann