I am sitting on my overpriced balcony with a view for miles. I have just opened my last bottle of rose. It is my last because summer is officially over and I only have £400 left in my bank account to survive four months. I have been earning to live. And I have JUST about managed. Just.

A few weeks ago I turned 32. A younger, rather more immature version of myself, would have easily had a different life plan mapped out for me. There would have been all the clichés. Me getting married to my then university boyfriend. Me having two children by the age of 26. Me just sitting idly by watching life just happen, just exist, just be. I would have endlessly grieved for a life that I never lived. That I never even began living.

But this year has all been about grief. It has been about endless losses and failures, emptiness, sadness and personal sacrifice. I have felt those unbelievable highs of a relationship and the incomprehensible lows of losing him. I have spent hours thinking of how my behaviour has been the ruination of something so fragile. I regret everything yet want for very little. I grieve for everything I ever had. I yearn for a life that was once mine, so tightly, so securely, so happily. And yet so…

A friend of mine wrote an article that touches on this so perfectly.

“There is so. much. grief. Some days I can see it in people’s posture. And yet, I don’t see many people talking about it. It drives me nuts.”

And it is just so true. We are all sporting this unconscious suit of grief. I can see it all over people’s faces. We are wracked with it. It is spilling out of us at this uncontrollable pace. And we keep pretending it is ok. But we aren’t.

We are all just.getting.by.

But I wish to end 2020 in the way that it started. And it may not be the way I envisioned. I may not be with the person I saw myself with at the beginning of the year. It may not be spent with the friends I have so often shared happy memories with.

2020 will end with acceptance. It will end in optimism. Hope. A knowing that all this grieving was for something. That it had a purpose. Accept the life you have lost.Embrace the life you now have. My life this year served a purpose and everyone should walk away feeling this exact same way.
You are worthy of it all. I just know it. You just need to feel it.