I keep trying to think of a way to describe 2025 and I can’t find one. It was a hard year. The kind of hard that makes you recalibrate what “fine” even means.

I walked away from something I loved this year. I wanted it to work. I stayed longer than I should have, not out of martyrdom but out of hope that if you keep showing up, things eventually soften. They didn’t. What did happen instead was that staying started to feel like a daily compromise with myself. Not one big betrayal, just lots of small ones.

Leaving wasn’t a moment. It was a slow, reluctant exit. There was grief even as I knew it was the right thing. There still is. I think people underestimate how painful it is to choose yourself when you genuinely would have preferred not to have to.

I also lost friends I had assumed were permanent. Friendship endings don’t come with language. There’s no agreed-upon structure for what it means when people who knew your days in detail simply…stop. No single moment you can blame. Just distance that calcifies. Silence that becomes normal. When something happens and you reach for them before your mind remembers they’re no longer there.

Around the same time, my body failed me. I broke my knee badly, ACL, LCL, meniscus, kneecap, the full list. Surgery followed. Recovery followed. I wasn’t prepared for how much of my sense of self was wrapped up in being able to move freely. Losing that independence was humbling. It was frustrating. Small tasks became negotiations. Time slowed down. The world kept moving while I stayed still.

I lost my fitness momentum too, which sounds trivial until you’ve built your life around showing up for yourself every day. The loss was about continuity. About the l confidence that comes from keeping promises to yourself. When that stopped abruptly, I felt unmoored. Like I’d been interrupted mid-sentence and couldn’t find my way back to the thought.

If you wrote the year out as bullet points, it would look bleak. Leaving something meaningful. Losing people. Breaking a body. Surgery. Recovery. Starting again. And if you’d asked me in advance, I would have assumed this would turn me angry. I would have predicted bitterness, or at least some version of “I’ll prove them wrong” energy.

But when I look back now, anger isn’t what’s there. What’s there is grief and a surprising softness around it. I don’t feel the urge to make villains. I don’t feel the need to harden myself into someone sharper or more cynical just to justify what happened. I feel sad. I feel changed. I feel like I’ve been carrying something heavy and have finally put it down without needing to throw it.

I’m deeply grateful too. This year clarified who stays when you are inconvenient. Who doesn’t need you to be impressive, productive, or entertaining to remain close. Who doesn’t treat your hard season like something to endure on the way to the “real” you returning. That kind of presence rearranges your standards permanently.

I’m sad about what I walked away from. I’m sad about friendships that didn’t survive. I’m sad about the months that were swallowed by pain and stillness. But underneath that sadness, there’s something else I didn’t expect: space. Air. A sense that my life had become tighter than I realised, and that leaving loosened it.

A few years ago, a year like this would have convinced me that caring is the problem. That feeling deeply is a liability. That the solution is to want less. To attach less. To protect yourself by becoming smaller. Instead, I care. I feel. I stay open. Even now. Even after everything.

The next year is already forming at the edges. New people. New work. A BOOK!!. Travel. None of it feels like compensation. It just feels like life continuing, imperfectly, insistently.

So goodbye, 2025. You took a lot from me. You also didn’t take the one thing that matters most. I’m entering whatever comes next cracked, slower, more cautious and still willing to love, to hope, to show up. That feels like enough.