This year is going to be incredible.
This year is going to be the one.
All the planets are lining up for me.
This year I'm going to have fun.
This year I'll paint my masterpiece,
This year I'll be recognised.
I feel like I'll fall in love for real.
This year, this year...
This year I'll reach the pinnacle,
This year I'll get to the top.
This year I'm never going to stop.

What a year it's been.

I've loved and lost the same man twice. I've been needlessly and callously cruel to a woman who only wanted the same thing I did. I've hated myself, I've hated others. I've behaved selfishly and irresponsibly. I've been to Hell and back and survived to tell the tale.

I've kissed a gay man, I've slept with someone I thought was my soulmate, I've slept with three workmates, I've slept with someone else's man and I've slept with someone who doesn't give a shit about me.

I've loved my body, I've hated my body. I've lost three dress sizes in the process. I stood on a cliff and wanted to throw myself off. I counted bottles of sleeping pills and anti anxiety pills and wanted to take them all at once. I've discovered such an intense self loathing that I no longer wanted to exist.

I went on a journey of self discovery- and didn't like what I discovered.

I shouted at work, I screamed at work, I cried at work. I gained a team, lost a team and gained a team. I discovered allies in the strangest of places. I handed in my resignation twice. I applied for a promotion and didn't get it. I got a job I didn't want. I built two teams up from nothing.

I wrote a poem a day. They were all crap. I began collecting Terry Pratchett books. I read Simon Schaema, Ernst Hemingway and Edna St. Vincent. I fell in love with Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. I've formed a life long bond with crappy chick lit books. I've held my three hour old nephew in my arms for hours. I've watched him learn to roll over, to sit up and the beginnings of a crawl. I've felt like my heart would burst with love for this helpless little thing.

I stayed home, I went out, I got pissed and stoned and out of my tree. I drunk and smoked away anything that caused me pain, only to have it resurface later. I tried so hard to avoid being me that I fell into a black hole, and came out the other side, still me.

I once smoked two packs of cigarrettes in two hours.

I've bought a plane ticket to the other side of the world.

I've cried so long and so hard my face and eyes swelled up and I couldn't see. I've covered my face with my hands and wept into them. I've cried a river, over and over and over. I cried so long and hard I was sent home from work. I've cried at a party, I've cried at a friend's birthday, I've cried in the middle of a sunny field surrounded by people who loved me.

I've laughed at nothing, I've laughed at everything. I've laughed so hard my face ached. I've laughed at my workmates, at my friends, at my family. I've laughed at a Power Ranger in a sofa that only I could see. I've laughed at myself.

I've been loved, I've been hurt, I've been used. I've been a mother, a saint, a slut and a lover.

I've lost more than I ever thought possible- and gained more than I ever dreamed. I got nothing I asked for, but everything I needed.