This has been a really hard year for almost everyone I know, myself included.
Loss, breakups, job changes, housing challenges, friendship breakdowns, health crises - its truly been a year for wading through the sludge of life.
I know first hand how isolating this time of year can be - I've spent a lot of it working in previous years, and relationship changes mean I've spent much of the past few years alone.
I'm so grateful for my friends who keep reaching out. Offers of shared adventures, festive meals, drinks in the pool, road trips, accommodation sharing - I pinch myself sometimes about how lucky I am to have people who care deeply about me, as I do them.
But, even with amazing friends, I'm still lonely a lot of the time, particularly throughout this period.
Personal growth is hard, and exhausting, and outgrowing people and situations and things that were safe for you for the longest time is so challenging. We learn to sit with the loneliness, to challenge it until it becomes alone time, and not such a empty feeling. Sometimes that takes a lifetime of choosing the wrong people, of a feeling of complete isolation while being surrounded by others, and other times it takes a seemingly insurmountable pile of life shit to make us stop and re-evaluate, when we can't take it for even one second more.
Do I still have hope, for a better future, for less isolation, for a life filled with laughter and joy?
Absolutely.
But, I’ll still be curating my holiday season carefully, so I don’t spend my entire season pondering the past.
