I had an anxiety attack last year on New Years Eve, sitting on my bed trying to distract my intrusive thoughts with anything at this point. I felt alone on New Years Eve, even though I was at home with my family at the time. I was scared. I was scared of my own thoughts, not understanding that in a couple of months, I will learn that this sense of inflated responsibility I have will be labeled as obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Every year, I feel like I am getting closer to honestly knowing who I am for all the good and bad. I am learning that the things that I labeled as preferences were coping mechanisms that had an underlying, sneaky motive of control and responsibility. Because of that, I began to notice just how damaging my mechanisms became, simply off of the fact that they didn’t work for me anymore. I think out of everything, realizing the methods that used to help ease your depression and anxiety suddenly not work is the scariest thing; where else do you turn to when what you thought worked doesn’t anymore?
This past year in particular I picked up a hobby that I dropped when I graduated from grad school because I didn’t think it was helpful to my mental health. The problem wasn’t the hobby, it was everything else happening during that time period. I decided to keep a daily journal and write anything and everything in it every single day. Sure, I definitely did not manage to write every single day of 2025, but at least I tried!
As I read back on the journal entries, I’m reminded of what my journey was like for the past year. It wasn’t linear, nor was it just a year of happy-go-lucky times. There were days that I questioned my abilities as a worker, writer, and even as a person. There were days I was sincerely happy and documented the day as detailed as possible so that I could remember it. There were days that I jotted down absolute nonsense, just because I needed an outlet to let it all out. 2025 wasn’t a special year, and it wasn’t one that I’ll think back in the future and document it as a monumental year. But, it was the first year in a really long time that I felt the most present. Maybe half of that was because journaling made me use my five senses to feel everything around me, and it allowed me to not live in my own head when I could be living in the outside world. In a sense, it has allowed me to really label my thoughts as just thoughts. There’s something symbolic in the way I can write down what’s going on in my head, close the journal shut, and continue to live on with my day knowing that the thoughts exist yet they do not affect how my day goes.
2026, I have high expectations for you; not because I’m looking to have such an amazing and life-changing year… although it would be nice, haha!
I have high expectations for you because I have high expectations for myself. I believe that I will finally manage my trichotillomania the more I practice ERP (exposure and response prevention) and get a better understanding about what causes it. I believe I will also finally allow myself to sit in discomfort more frequently, especially during the times I want nothing but to try to fix, control, and alter things to make them feel right. I have so many internal goals for myself this year, and I hope I can come back to this post (and come back to the very beginning of my 2026 journal this time next year) and read the journey on how 2026 shaped me into the person I will be entering 2027 in.
Cheers to you, 2026. I’m excited to see you for all its goodness.
Letters From Liz. 