Things I Learned in 2019

I didn't leave all my trauma in my childhood, things can still happen to me.

My life is my own.

Nothing comes easy, but every once in a while something does. Run with it.

Even if I'm not exactly where I want to be, I'm where I wanted to be years ago, life just takes time.

Writing is the hardest and most rewarding thing I will ever do.

It's easy to assume you're in love, you aren't always right.

Some people will never understand where you're coming from because of where they came from.

I'll never understand how the universe works, but I can keep trying.

Everything comes full circle.

Searching for the answers is just a waste of time when you aren't sure if there even are any answers.

I wanted to end this post here. I learned a lot this year, but these were the most important things. Although, I can't post this until I up the word count, so here I am.

2019 is a hard year to recap. I've lived through many hard years, and with them all came growth. I don't think I can say the same for last year, yes we're all growing constantly, but the growth I felt this year was different. I didn't become as new as I usually do, I think more than anything I just settled into who I am - not that I can truly tell you what that means.

I'm still trying to process everything that happened, and the only conclusion I've come to so far is I took the lessons the hard years have taught me, and in 2019, I put them into practice.

I didn't grow much, but I lived. And maybe that's all growth is, is life continuing as you're forever changing.

I don't know what 2020 has in store, but based on 2019, I know I can handle anything it throws at me, and more than ever before I'm ready for it. I didn't feel much growth in 2019, but I built myself up and I'm ready to keep building. Everything that happened to me in 2019 has to mean something. It has to lead to something, it has to matter. Otherwise all that pain was for nothing.

So, my only goal for 2020 is to make 2019 mean something. To take my pain, heartache and struggles, and make them all mean something.

Take them, and create something for myself.

-Jena

Since it's still not long enough, I just wanted to say thank you for reading this. It's the first really personal piece of writing I've put out there without hiding behind anonymity. This past year was tough for me for many reasons, but the biggest was beginning the process of moving to the states.

For those of you who have gone through it, I'm sure you understand the mental, physical, financial and everything in between stress and struggle it brings. It's a process designed to tear you down and weed out the supposedly 'unwanted'. It's one of the hardest things I have ever gone through but I'm happy I am. Everyday gets harder, some days I didn't know where I was going to live or how I was going to eat. But I'm here to write, so that's exactly what I'm going to do.

That being said, I genuinely appriciate every view on this post, even the smallest thing helps this process and that's what this site has done for me. If you're feeling generous you can also give a tip below and help me get through 2020, something I'm hoping I can do through my writing, and tips keep me posting and doing exactly that.