Reflection: 2020 New Year Essay

Almost everyone has been posting their end-of-the-year essays on social media so I thought I'd write my own even if it's a couple of days late. If you're one of the people who wrote about their experiences with 2019 then chances are I've seen your essay on my news feed. I've noticed that depending on who you ask, 2019 was either a good year or a bad year. It was a good year for those who were able to achieve great things within the year, and it was a bad year for others because they lost loved ones. My condolences goes out to those who lost their loved ones in the last year.

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, 2019 for me was a year that was full of ups and downs. So much so that the ups and downs balance each other out. That's not entirely true. What I said was a very broad generalization that doesn't even begin to cover what I've witnessed in 2019.

I've experienced hurt, joy, depression, anxiety, love, stability, instability, freedom and a dreadful feeling of oppression in 2019. Not necessarily in that order. The highlight of my year happened around August, ironically when I was sent to the psych ward. While others would call that a bad event in my life, I actually think that it was a blessing. Not only was I able to curb my awful behaviors stemming out from my deteriorated mental health after I got out of the psych ward, but I was also able to meet people just like me who showed me I'm not alone during my time in it.

My lowest point in the year happened prior to my incarceration in the psych ward. I blame my troubled mental health for causing such misery on my part despite being fortunate enough to be financially stable. I was seeing everything through dark-tinted lenses; it was so difficult for me to look at the bright side of things because I couldn't see any bright sides at all.

If I was to graph my experience with this year, I would say that the months of January-May are tumultuous but generally reaching very high and very low points, while the days from June-July is my lowest point, and then the days from July-August are the highest point. The rest of the year sort of plateaus in the middle.

Despite all this, I can fortunately say that 2019 has been a year to remember happily for me. The more I think about it objectively, the more I look at the year in hindsight through the pictures and videos stored in my Google Photos account, the more I see that there are far more good things that happened that outweigh the bad. I'm thankful for all the great things that happened and I hope that more great things will come in 2020!

A Happy New Year smile from me, my mother, and my sister! :)