Category: Overexposed: A Self-Love Project.

I still have this very distinct memory sitting in my thesis advisor’s office one afternoon for a meeting. Sure, we spoke about the progress of my Master’s thesis that was to be submitted in the upcoming months, as those meetings were meant for that. But, my thesis advisor was more than just my former professor working on a project with me; she was also my mentor. She was the first person that I casually spoke to that was older than me; 9 years to be exact. When I was 24, she was 33, which is crazy to think considering I am now the age she was when she first taught me in her Teaching of Writing class my first semester of grad school.

I spoke about some difficulties of life I was experiencing, and had asked her if it gets easier. She asked me “well, in what sense are you referring to?” and I told her, “not caring about what other people think of you or how they perceive you.” She smiled and let out a laugh and said, “Liz, you’re still going to experience such a wave of emotions with the life experience you’re yet to have. You’re going to feel like you’re going to need to get everything together in your 20s, when in reality you just aren’t going to. It’s when you get into your 30s you finally start to have this sense of ‘I honestly and truly do not care about what people think about me’ because you get a better understanding of yourself. It’s like you finally feel like a person when you finally let that go. That’s when you’ll feel things get easier.”

Hi, my name is Liz, I’m in my 30s, and I finally don’t give a sh—

Lemme explain.

I spent most of my 20s thinking I needed to have my life together. I went straight from college to grad school without taking a break, and spent most of it still as a student with no real life experience behind them. I was grateful to have a family that pushed the importance of education, wanting to give me the opportunity to pursue things that they were not able to do at my age. I was a first generation college and post-grad graduate all at the age of 24, and truly that’s when life started for me. It was hard to step out of my comfort zone of being a student to now being a young adult trying to find her place in a world that seemed to get smaller and smaller when it came to finding a good paying job with absolutely no work experience.

On top of that, my poor mental health was now creeping on me, affecting my daily functioning and coming out in ways that seemed extremely uncharacteristic of me. I was antisocial and never went out to social gatherings, I had a hard time keeping friendships after leaving college, and I lacked an identity so much to the point that I latched onto my partner being my identity. All the trauma that had been built up in the previous years came out in my 20s, and then poof. I became 30 years old in 2024 and things began to rapidly change with my psyche. I swear, it’s like a chemical reaction thing happens as soon as you hit 30.

Sure, I’m only technically 2 years in my 30s, but this last year and a half of being in them has taught me so much, and has helped me become aware of the things I was not able to see in myself when I was younger. Half of that was because not only did I want people to see me in a specific light, but I also wanted to see myself in that same light. It was ironic how for the majority of my 20s, I advocated immensely on self-acceptance and to always be your authentic self no matter what, yet I couldn’t seem to follow my own advice because I was afraid to come off as anything else besides the image I was portraying.

Tiny. Naive. Perfect. For the love of God, I wanted to be portrayed as perfect so bad.

As I mentioned in the last Overexposed post, I was diagnosed with OCD this past summer, and began taking medication to help manage it better. It was extremely out-of-the-blue hearing that, not understanding completely how I was now a person that was considered to have obsessions and compulsions. It felt like a foreign concept for me because it didn’t fit with the knowledge I had regarding OCD. But, the more I had my therapy sessions and the more I sat with the research and thought, it began to open a ton of doors or me mentally. It was like I had finally found the key to all of the locked doors in my brain that I was helpless to.

I learned my OCD was moral related. It was an obsession to be the perfect version of Liz I could possibly be, and the compulsions acted out in ways to enforce that obsession. I would over analyze situations in order to prepare myself how to go about acting them out. I rehearsed my personality for different people, depending on who the person was. I tried to prevent any negative thoughts about me that people may have had. I subconciously hid parts of myself in order to fit the character role I created for the different people in my life.

Maybe I stopped trying one day. Maybe I forgot to rehearse my lines in a situation that was high in anxiety and just believed in my problem solving skills. Maybe it’s the medication. Maybe it’s just my age now not giving a sh—

Maybe it was just me finally accepting who I am as a person.

I feel it in the way I interact with people these days. I don’t feel myself valuing the opinions of others by constantly referring to the past to take a mental note on how I should behave. As a matter of fact, I find myself not using the past as a guideline to how I should react and behave because I simply don’t see it as an asset to my present being. Sure, I still very much believe that the experiences I had as a teenager and young adult helped mold me into the person I am today, but I finally feel like I don’t allow them to influence my decision making, or define my entire being as I once did. It’s weird; it feels like the last time I truly saw how colorful the world was when I was a kid; back when I was unapologetically myself and now… I am beginning to see more of that color come through.

For once, I don’t feel so afraid of the future, and maybe that’s because I’m not living for it anymore. The future is great to look forward to, but it’s only going to be great if I make the most out of the present day, y’know? It’s hard when you’ve always been stuck in your head, mental checking every single detail in your life and labeling it as being observant when really it was an obsession.

So yeah. Maybe it was my age finally telling me to stop caring what people think o me and how they perceive me. You can’t please everybody, so why don’t you try pleasing the one person that actually matters? That person being you.

Or maybe it was my medication. Maybe it has helped me ease some of the subconscious anxiety I never knew I had until it acted out in behaviors that were out of my own character. Maybe of the side effects to this medicine is to finally stop caring about other’s thoughts and start caring about bettering mine to live a healthier life.

Or maybe, simply maybe, I just finally stopped giving a shit.

When I was eighteen, I made poor decisions. I was a teenager, trying to mask depression through different outlets that life had to offer. I thought I was able to write the pain away. I thought I was able to sing the pain away in my vocal class. I thought I was able to fix the problem; the problem being how I was as a person. I had strong moral values, even in the midst of going against everything I believed in. I based my decisions solely on emotions, even when I knew that wasn’t the right path to analyze things.

Because of that, I carry tons of trauma from that time; no matter how much unpacking I’ve done in the last 13 years. It’s something that I learned to accept as simply trauma, and it’s going to come up when familiar-feeling situations arise.

What I didn’t know was that I was unknowingly dealing with something that was undiagnosed this entire time.

Hi, my name is Liz, and this summer I was diagnosed with OCD, or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, specifically OCD that is considered high-functioning.

Lemme explain.

At first, I didn’t feel like OCD was something that I had. The media portrays this image of OCD being organized, and anything out of place would cause great distress and anxiety. I wasn’t “checking the stove 5 times before leaving the house” or washing my hands after everything I touched due to the fear of germs. Surprisingly, it was something as minor as trichotillomania that began the conversation of it possibly be OCD-related.

It took some time to fully understand what it looks like on me, as I am the only person I personally know with OCD. It wasn’t like depression or anxiety, something I could pull experience from; it was a completely new breed to learn and dissect. This summer, I took the time to fully process things and train myself to be mentally present. This included me taking a break from writing blog posts and posting on social media in general. Not only did I want to enjoy my summer and take it in before it was over, but I wanted to simply live life in the moment.

I’ve been learning to rewire my brain, to say the least. I’ve been learning how to analyze my thoughts through a different lens; one that puts the logic side in the forefront rather than the emotional side. In regular English, I am simply learning how to trust my logic thoughts so that I am able to distant myself from the emotional ones when they turn obsessive and intrusive. I am learning to accept the fact that thoughts are just thoughts, and there isn’t any way to control them from potentially happening. For me, that meant that the worst case scenario can potentially come true, but I determine how I handle it should it become reality.

A part of that was accepting the fact that this could possibly answer a lot of the unanswered questions I had about myself over the years. Sure, I’ve grasped the idea that I did experience social anxiety, major depression, and developed poor mental health as I was growing up, but nothing ever explained the thoughts. The obsessive ones. The ones that were hard to let go on hours, days, weeks on end— replaying situations and scenarios over and over in my head until I exhausted myself mentally. The ones that randomly pop into my head, no matter how long it’s been, and leave me in distress and anxiety because I’m reminded of all the things I wish I did differently. Sometimes, they even influence how I react to situations that feel similar, making the thoughts feel even more real than they did just thinking the initial thought.

In the gist of learning this, I was also trying to enjoy the days I had off during the summer, considering I unfortunately do not get a summer break, despite working in higher education. Nevertheless, my days out of the office were spent at a Mets game with my father on a rainy day, going on our annual summer vacation with my partner to Atlantic City, hanging out with my boss’ new puppy, and even going to the community pool to get my annual summertime tan! I didn’t want the summer to feel like I was solely focusing on getting to know the disorder better. The days were filled with fun activities, and the nights were reserved for self-reflection; writing in my journal and listening to YouTube videos to unwind for the day. It was seeing physical change once I began taking medication for OCD, finally feeling like the fog was gone on most days.

One thing that I am learning in my 30s is how important it truly is to take care of yourself. You begin to notice the changes in your body; your perspective on life begins to sound a lot like the adults had growing up, and ironically enough you gain this hyperawareness of yourself that feels kind of like an out of body experience (especially having therapy in your 30s; it feels so completely different to having it in your 20s). You’re more honest about the things you are going through; not because you don’t hold many guilt or shame behind them, but because your happiness and your way of living life has completely changed. You just want better for yourself.

In a nutshell, I am learning to be my own best friend. I am learning to be gentle with myself in terms of self-talk, but also understand that thoughts will always be thoughts– they shouldn’t carry so much weight on your mind.

Here’s to having more difficult conversations to learn important lessons, not to obsess whether or not they were good or bad. Here’s to learning how to be okay being uncomfortable because you know the end result of being uncomfortable will becoming more comfortable. Here’s to trusting and listening to the logic side of my brain the same way I do for the emotional side. Here’s to breaking this impossible expectation of trying to feel good to prove that I’m good, and allowing perfectionism to determine how good I truly am. Here’s to imagining myself in positive situations after coming out of difficult ones, knowing I am still growing into myself as an adult.

Here’s to… being Liz’s best friend for life.

The most exciting thing to experience in life is realizing that you’re going to be okay in the long run, despite all of the things holding you back in the process.

Welcome back to a casual blog post on a platform that has strictly became a space for my characters to live in, all while I live my own life privately in reality. It’s definitely been nothing but an adventure these last couple of months as I grown to love certain settings and things that I didn’t think I would ever actually enjoy. That sounds confusing, but lemme explain.

Hi, my name is Liz, and this is my “half-of-the-year” life update. Sheesh, I can’t even believe we’re halfway into 2025 already.

First things first: I turned 31 earlier this year! It was the first time since working that I actually took the day off for my birthday, and now I know that I should always take the day off for my birthday in the future. It was nice to have my Brian solely focused on me on my birthday, not on registration or students emailing about their grades and their transcripts and all of that higher ed stuff. It was the first time in a while that I felt loved on my birthday, especially after leaving the various online communities I was once a part of. Prior to that, I wasn’t ever super popular, and a lot of those “birthday wishes” went away as the years went by and my circle of friends dwindled down to just a simple speck. Needless to say, it was the first time that I was able to reflect on the true beginnings of my 30s, wondering where they will take me as the years go by. It was also the first time that my age felt “serious”, meaning I was thinking more about my future than anything else on my birthday. But, my birthday as a whole was relaxing, loving, and I am super grateful for the people I have in my life to make it special in the ways that deemed it.

Going out has become one of my favorite things to do when life begins to feel more like a chore than an experience. Some days, work is rougher than others, and the best way to relieve some stress is going out to get that “after work drink”, reminding myself that I am deserving of a reward after dealing with faculty/staff and students all day! It’s also been helpful to balance my work life with my social life; going out and enjoying the time I have that night is better than spending it reflecting on all the wrong things that happened earlier in the work day, feeling even more burnt out than I already did. I’ve been especially proud of myself for even being open to go out for more social settings, despite still experiencing some level of social anxiety. It is a still a work in progress; so sorry to the girl at the bar that really wanted to have a conversation with me the other night since I was not able to read the room!

Speaking of work: February marked three years since working in higher education! I sit back and truly remember how I felt when I was first offered the part-time ca position in Historical Records, not even knowing if I wanted to leave my job at the bookstore for this. Needless to say, this was the better choice (RIP bookstore, you are missed every single day) and since then it’s been one hell of a ride! Within my first year, I was offered a potential full-time position, and by the time it was a little over my second year, I was officially appointed in my full-time position.

I will always thank my co-worker/“office mom” Christine for helping me gain the confidence in the brief time she was my supervisor. In a time when I felt so uncertain and out of place in that environment, she was able to show me my potential to grow in higher ed, and gave me advice that I still go back to in the current day. I will always thank my boss Brenda for petitioning this full-time position for me with the Registrar within the first three months she started working with me. This position isn’t an easy one, and it’s been a long process to even remotely steel deserving of it, but I’ve grown such a love and passion for the work I do. I can honestly say that I love my job, and in some old way the universe brought me back to a space that I was comfortable in, working a job where I wanted to help students as much as possible (it’s a blessing and a curse on some days).

This past April, I ventured in another solo adventure and saw First to Eleven live at The Mercury Lounge. It was my first time ever being a VIP for a show! I got to talk to the band briefly, where they complimented me on my very cool style! I was able to get some signed merch, as well as a picture with the brand before the show! It was also my first standing room type of show, but thankfully I was able to find a spot in the front. It was definitely such a cool and amazing experience; they are incredibly talented and so nice with their fans. It truly felt like we were at a show supporting a group of friends in their band or something.

People still question why I go to concerts by myself, and the simple answer is that it’s my way of challenging my social anxiety. Growing up, I missed so many opportunities to see my favorite bands and artists in concert because I was afraid to go by myself, and I didn’t have a group of friends to go to these things with. Since letting go of that fear of going alone, I’ve been able to see so many of my favorite people for shows and concerts, and to be quite honest: I have a blast at these shows by myself! I’ve also developed this tradition where after a show or concert, I go to my partner’s place for “after show festivities”, which is just me tying to get my voice back form the concert and eating some well needed food, recalling some of what happened at these shows. It’s been so fun and so rewarding to challenge my social anxiety in this way, and I would like to think I’ve been beating its ass for the last 5 years, going to shows and concerts on my own.

Speaking of traditions, it seems like my partner and I have made it a tradition to go on getaways together to Atlantic City whenever we both need a change of scenery. We first went last year for a little local summer vacation, and since then we’ve been back at least once every three months. I get so excited when we have plans to go to Atlantic City; I always come back to the city with a clear mind, ready to take on everything that I have to do.

We’re actually planning to go back this summer! We last were there in March and both decided that we would wait for the summer to go back. I’m especially to go this time around because a.) it’ll be summer and b.) we’ve adapted such a routine while we’re there whereas last summer we were still feeling everything out.

In a nutshell, I’ve been doing alright. Mentally, I still fight in silence about the things I don’t have a good grasp on yet, but I know I will get it when the time comes. I am in one of those spaces where I am open to new things, like hobbies and interests! This year, I started writing a daily journal again. It has helped me put my lingering thoughts on paper, allowing it to escape my mind and open the space back up to tackle other things. I’ve also really gotten into sports! Late last year, I was following the New York Mets’ postseason and forgot just how much I truly enjoy baseball. I’ve also been trying to better understand basketball, as the time I am writing this the New York Knicks are in the Eastern Conference Finals. In a way, I am beginning to finally shed myself from my past interests, not feeling guilty that they don’t serve me like they once did.

Cheers to the second half of 2025; I can only hope it treats us well.

Saturday, March 29th, 2025 // 1:25PM:

It’s 80 degrees in New York City; the warmest day of the year so far, and the warmest day since early Autumn. Everyone is out enjoying the nice weather; riding their bikes, going on walks, wearing clothing that you would normally see in the early days of summer. The wind is creating this nice breeze, so it doesn’t make you sweat that much when walking in the sun.

As for me, I went to take a walk to enjoy this nice weather; I already had to run an errand before the store closed later, as they seem to close early on the weekend. I was going to take the bus home and call it a day, but my body was telling me to stay out a little longer. Go and get a coffee, and just do something that wasn’t planned for once. So I did.

I ended up walking down the block of where three of my childhood best friends lived in Borough Park. It was crazy to pass by the buildings they used to live in. I remember being 14, standing outside the building of one of my friends as she sat outside of her bedroom window, hanging out with me since her mom didn’t let her come outside. A couple of doors down, I remember being 8, being picked up by my mom and sister one night after spending the day with my other friend, watching the VHS tape of both Britney and NSYNC’s making of their respective music videos from 2000. Even further down the block, I remember being 11 years old, hanging out with another friend upstairs in her house, listening to the Destiny’s Child album, “Destiny Fulfilled” – singing along in her living room and playing with dolls. It’s crazy to think that this block holds memories of all these different eras of my childhood and adolescence, not knowing that all of them would move away as we got older. One of them is now engaged. One of them is now a musician. One of them wasn’t doing too well the last I heard of them nearly a decade ago, and hope that they’re living in a quiet and safe space.

I’m now sitting in the schoolyard of my old middle school, and I can’t help but think about the different memories that live in here. As a teenager, I remember sitting in the “well” area of the schoolyard, watching the boys play Yu-Gi-Oh cards on the table as the girls sat on the benches gossiping. I remember showing my first ever poem to the group of girls who wrote poetry during lunch, saying that I should consider becoming a writer. I remember taking pictures of all of my friends on my digital camera, watching the 6th graders mob the schoolyard as this girl ate the roaches off the ground (real story) and watching my friends play basketball, pretending I knew what the hell the rules of the game were. I remember graduation practice, the carnival that our class was almost banned from attending after misbehaving, the kids playing handball on the wall of the school… I am merely sitting here as my younger self, smiling as I remember what life was like during a time that I so desperately wanted to be older and grown because every other teenager acted that way. I wish I cherished those moments a little more and lived them a little longer.

This schoolyard was also the place I said my final goodbye to a toxic lover the summer after freshman year of college. It was getting dark and the lights were just set to turn on. It was in that moment that I knew I couldn’t keep going on feeling this way; living in this constant state of fear for my life and having my heart constantly broken and manipulated because I didn’t know that true love was when you find it within yourself. It was the first time that I actually put myself first, letting go of something (and someone) that I had to learn how to live without. It was the first of many heartbreaks since then, and the first of many hard life lessons I learned. I smile now, not realizing just how much of my life was lived in this schoolyard. I could even still see my white lab and Dalmatian mixed dog run in the snow, laughing as he hopped up and down and seemed yellow against the white snow. Pal lived a beautiful life and sometimes I miss his goofy personality.

Memories don’t hurt until you actually sit down and remember them. Sometimes, you don’t even realize you remember them until you’re in the place that you made them. Although sometimes I wish it was easier to forget them and act like they don’t impact you anymore, I remember how they shaped me. I’m not the same girl that was running in this schoolyard, chasing the boys as they teased me in middle school. I’m not the same girl that put on a pretend concert with my childhood friends before the summer was over. I’m not even the same girl that left out of this schoolyard that one night after watching the person I forever said goodbye to walk away from me, going towards the train station to head back home. I am not the girl that lives in this schoolyard.

I am now a woman that carries these memories, hoping that I could one day visit these places without missing the person that lives in them. I am now the woman that still struggles with memory, hoping that one day I can coexist with them as I make new memories. We seem to live so much in our past that when our present comes our past, we seem to regret not having done more to make the best of it at the time. 

I had to leave the schoolyard, as I felt myself becoming overwhelmed with emotion, sitting in my memory for too long without coming up for air. Maybe I needed to sit in there long enough to realize just how important it is to live in the moment. Maybe I needed to feel the knot develop in my throat, the steady breathing as my eyes got watery, and mentally live the last 25 years of my life in this neighborhood to realize that it’s time to stop being afraid of growing up. Growing old. Losing the ones we grew up with and meeting new ones to grow old with. 

It’s time to let go of the fear that life will never be as great as it was when we were younger. To our younger selves, we’re everything we never thought we could possibly be: Alive. Shouldn’t that be the reason why we should keep going? 

It’s crazy to think that we were living in a pandemic this time five years ago. It was five years ago that COVID literally shut the entire world down.

It will truly be one of those things that when we are asked “do you remember where you were when [insert major event] happened” and we can honestly vividly remember what was happening that moment.

For me, I was in Florida visiting a college friend, nervous that the pandemic was getting worse to the point that my flight back home was going to be cancelled. Many of us thought we would be back at work in two weeks, getting a nice needed break from life before we got back to the swing of things. Thankfully, I was able to make it back to New York before everything started to shut down, and—needless to say— did not realize that we would be home for the next 5+ months. Of course in that time, many of us went to the internet for entertainment, keeping us busy in a time that was uncertain, uneasy, and really tragic for many of us.

I was one of those people whose life was chronically online, and every interest and hobby I had involved being a part of some online community. I met a ton of people online during this time, which was something that I truly needed in such a transitional part of my life. I was in my mid 20’s still trying to find my identity after it was tied to being a student after so long. It wasn’t long that I started to surround myself with people who lived all over the world, sharing the same interests as me and connecting through this hobby of ours.

Of course, I didn’t think that this hobby of mine would just be another phase of my life. Something tells me that for many of these people, they didn’t think this was going to be theirs either.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I am no longer a K-pop collector, a penpal writer, or chronically online anymore.

Many of my readers know that K-pop was something that really defined me at one point in my life. I went through all of the stages of being a K-pop Stan, and while I cringe looking back at how serious I took it, it was a building block in figuring out my true identity. I sometimes blame my “falling out” on K-pop on the negative cognition I have with it: it’s something that associates itself of a time that was great but so damaging to my mental health. I sometimes blame it on the fact that the groups that are popular now are no longer the groups I listen to; most of which have either disbanded or now on hiatus to make room for newer (and younger) groups. Like, I’m sorry – how is there a new girl group with a maknae that was born in 2010?! Sure, that girl is 15 years old but to think that 2010 was 15 years ago is insane to me.

Anyway—

I thought that it was a mixture of those two things: maybe I just don’t connect with it in the way that I did before because it represented such a different time in my life. But, then it clicked: where in the world did everyone that was once in this community go as well?

I could name a handful of people that I have not heard from since the world began to slowly come out of the pandemic. Even in 2022 (which for me was my true last year of K-pop collecting) I started to not see the same people in the community that was once there during the height of the pandemic. It made me wonder a lot of things: how could we leave (or sell) something we worked so hard (and spent so much) in completing, and why was it so easy for us to just stop?

I think K-pop collecting, and even penpal writing (in my brain, they are one in the same because they stemmed from the same online community) was just a filler in a lot of people’s lives. In a world where we were so uncertain if we were ever going to see a life where wearing masks would not be required anymore or if we would ever return to our classrooms or jobs and interact with people in person again, I think we all needed some way to nurture the human qualities in us.

We need to socialize, we need to work on something or learn something new or do something in a way that makes us feel good. I mean, how many of the people in your life currently do something that they said they picked up during the pandemic? There are some out there still doing what their pandemic selves did, but for most it seems like the hobbies and interests we invested in was just temporary, or at least until the world opened back up and we were able to spend our money on experiences, not materialistic things.

Personally for me, I like to spend my time and energy on creating tangible memories; ones that don’t solely develop and live online anymore. My life (and identity) were once tied to solely being on the internet, realizing that the people I thought I would click with forever due to our common interests were also just a product of their social media persona. Yes, I had one as well. For me, I just realized that the things I valued weren’t on the internet anymore, and once everything began to open up, I started to spend more time outside. I went to more concerts, more parties, more social gatherings, and more vacations since I stopped putting my energy in things that I didn’t have much to show for. Having an aesthetic looking Instagram page was also becoming extremely outdated and it screamed “produced by the pandemic”. In a nutshell, I started to stray away from both communities until I completely let go of them both.

It took me some time to accept the fact that I grew out of this phase. I had thought that this was my end all be all, only because it was the first time in my life that I had a group of online friends with the same exact interests as me. By all means, I am not shitting on people that still have these close connections with their online friends in their designated communities, I’m just saying that with my observations and time to reflect on that time, I realized that a lot of people used their pandemic hobbies as an outlet. It was an outlet to pass all the time we didn’t have before, the uncertainty of when the world would go back to normal (which, in my opinion has never been the same since, but that’s a different post for a different day) and most importantly; it was an outlet to keep us connected to people when we couldn’t physically see them or hang out with them.

Personally, I will always remember this time in life as the stepping stone in the person I am now. I think I needed those experiences to understand what I truly wanted out of life, and those that I associate myself with. I’ve also learned to not always deem the person I once was as “unhappy” or “unwell” by any means. I was happy, and it was fulfilling to the person that was living through a pandemic. Like, if something that you once loved got you through something, it got you through something and you shouldn’t feel ashamed in that if this is something you relate to.

In the meantime, I would love to hear about the hobbies that you guys picked up during the pandemic! What were they? How did you discover them? Are they still an important part of your life? If not, when did you completely let the hobby go? And most importantly: how did that hobby shape you as a person?

Hey, girl.

It’s kind of crazy to think just how fast time flies. It’s kind of crazy that there was a point in your life when you were juggling all of these different things in your life, and how quickly those things were able to play themselves out. I remember how I felt during that important time in your life; feeling like it was never going to end or it was going to end in a way that would’ve been detrimental to my mental health. Not gonna lie, that was a hard fucking time for you, and even as 31-year-old Liz, we are so proud of you for coming out better than before in the end.

We both know why we’re writing this. It’s still fresh enough for us to remember, and maybe more talking about it in therapy is needed in hopes to one day go through a month of February without having this lingering thought of what my life used to look like. I don’t miss it, and I know you wish you never had to live through it, but somehow it was needed for us to understand why it had to happen in the first place.

One thing’s for sure, is that you made it out of it and we are here because of it.

Despite the outcome and how everything transpired, we are now in a place where we can reflect without resentment, or feeling any emotion that triggers negative cognition in any way possible. We’ve grown to not hold grudges (you held on to them like your life depended on it before) and we’ve learned that sometimes, it hurts more to hold on to things than to let them go. You always fight to hold onto things because you would see the good in everything and everyone. We’ve grown to learn that’s not always the case. We’ve grown to learn that sometimes, that ideology even applies to you.

Since then, we’ve done a lot of work in hopes that we would figure this whole “life” thing out. The good thing is that we did; we are undoubtedly living the best years of our lives. The bad thing is that we have reached that part of our lives where we’ve put those old worries and anxieties to rest, and now have new ones that we are unfamiliar with. I like to call them the ‘double As’: Adulthood anxieties.

Regardless, your work has not gone unnoticed. Your work to bettering yourself is why we are in the place we are in now, and that we are able to move forward towards the things that we should be focusing on at this age. I understand where you came from when you were scared and afraid of making these decisions for a better life; I am now battling a new level of those decisions being 31 years old. I am still scared, and I am still uncertain how I am going to overcome these fears, but I know I am capable of doing so because I lived to see you do it at 29.

29, you will always be such an important year of my life, and I fear that your courage, bravery, and drive to be a better person can only happen if something traumatic happens again. I don’t want to have to lose more people in order to make room for me to grow. I don’t want to feel like I have to strip my entire identity just to discover a new one. I don’t want to have to feel like I’m lost in society again because the things that defined me are not applicable anymore. I know your shaking your head, not wanting to tell me that isn’t possible because you also feared these things when going through your rough time in life as well.

29, you will forever be iconic for doing some of the things that 18, 24, and even 26 couldn’t even do. At 31, you inspire me to always go for it, despite being scared to, because you’ve shown me that we will always make it out of it being better than before.