To say that 2014 was ten years ago is truly baffling to me. Like, why does 2014 feels like it was only just a few years ago? It’s crazy, I am feeling nostalgic, and here’s this year’s installment of:
Where the hell was Liz this time 10 years ago?
In 2014, I was officially leaving my teenage years behind to now enter the next decade of my life: my twenties. I can’t lie; I feel like I was excited to leave my teenage years behind me. Up to this point, the last couple of years were rough for me, whether that was the transition from high-school to college or trying my best to heal from the trauma that still affected me at that point. I was ready to go into this new stage of my life, even if I had no idea where or what I wanted to go in the long-run.
I didn’t do much for my birthday this year since it fell on a weekday and, well, I was an unemployed college student currently in between semesters. Speaking of which; I was a sophomore in college that just finished the Fall semester and boy, it was a hard semester. I still had a couple of general education classes I needed to take before I was able to begin taking all my major coursework. Let’s just say that I was a pretty average student, but this one Biology class was my first and only D grade I ever received. By the time the Spring semester started, I was now traveling to and from my college 5 days a week. Ironically, it was one my favorite semesters I had as I vividly remember spending my breaks in between classes at the library watching Criminal Minds on Netflix every Friday afternoon. I was also wrapping up all of the gen ed requirements I needed and started to take the writing courses needed for my English Writing concentration degree.
My first writing class was “Craft of Creative Writing”, which was basically just an overview of the four genres of writing that my college taught and specialized in. We all sat in a circle, having to write for different prompts in different styles of writing. I remember this being one of the very first times I shared my story about the trauma I carried from high school. I wrote a short narrative piece in the point of view of that girl that lived through that trauma day-by-day, hour-by-hour. After sharing my piece, it was nice to have a group of writers to talk to about the piece but to also hear some of them say “you don’t have to carry that on you anymore. You took responsibility of that situation and that’s all you can do. Don’t punish yourself for something that you should be forgiving yourself for.” I think that was one of the first few moments where I truly began to finally heal from that part of my life, although it would be years after this moment that I finally let it go and let it live in the past.
In addition to that, I also got into screenwriting! After being heavily a part of the fandom for the true-crime drama, The Killing, I had found an appreciation for creative writing in a way that I hadn’t thought about before, which was character development. I can go on and on about how much I loved Sarah Linden and Stephen Holder as characters of this damn show, but to keep it short and simple: 2014 was when the last season of The Killing aired exclusively on Netflix and I wanted to write the way that Veena Sud wrote these characters! I knew I wanted my first tattoo to be something related to the show in the long-run, so when the series finale gave us the infamous “home was us” line that Linden tells Holder, I just knew that was it.
2014 Liz also had long hair for the first time since having to cut it short after bleach damage in 2012. I rocked the trendy ombre look for most of the year until I finally caved in and became a blonde; this time being on the more natural looking side. I can’t lie, I totally miss those long hair days, and I hope that one day in the future I’m able to get my hair to be that long again, but it took a lot of patience and hair care to even get my hair healthy looking again. I guess I’ll tell you how that went when we come back next year to talk about Liz in 2015…
And just to take you back in time, here were some of the things that I remember happening in 2014:
- Ariana Grande was taken the music industry by storm in preparation on her sophomore album, My Everything.
- “First things first, I’m the realest” was the one thing everyone was singing and/or saying it every chance they had.
- Kylie Jenner was deemed as the “it girl” with her teal color dip-dyed bob haircut and liquid lipstick makeup.
- Grunge-pastel was a thing. It was inspired by Tumblr. Yes, everyone at this point had one to reblog six gifs and dumb aesthetic looking photos.
- Boy and girl groups were becoming popular once more after the success of One Direction. Fifth Harmony was a product of that popularity in the music industry.
- The biggest movie blockbuster to come out this year was Disney’s Frozen.
- Barack Obama was two years into his second term as the President of the United States.
- Becoming a YouTube creator was everyone’s aspiration, whether it was in gaming, lifestyle, or in makeup.
Sheesh, I still can’t believe it’s been ten years already.
Letters From Liz. 