In order to move forward being open and honest, I have to first look back a bit. Because the last handful of years have been increasingly difficult and painful.

At the end of 2018/beginning of 2019, I posted to Facebook a long explanation of exactly how bad 2018 had been (financial worries, family problems, crippling depression, being suicidal for months), and how badly I needed 2019 to be kinder and give me a break.

So, of course, 2019 decided to double-down instead. It said “you haven’t seen bad yet! Yeet, Bitch!” It sucker-punched me and then kicked me in the face repeatedly while I was prone on the ground.

I was begging for a break, for some mercy, but instead this is what my year looked like:

1. my grandmother fell and fractured her spine in January and was in the hospital for a month
2. My mother had a heart-scare in February and was in the hospital for a couple of days
3. Also in February, one of our dogs escaped the yard and was hit by a car – he survived but my mother and I both had to take out a substantial loans to pay for his care
4. In May, just days after her birthday, my mother was laid off from her job (keep in mind, I was already mostly-unemployed excepting for some part-time work and money was already very tight)
5. In July one of our cats (my mother’s Baby Girl, Mieko) was diagnosed with cancer – after thousands of dollars worth or tests and early treatments, it was deemed untreatable
6. In August, my grandmother (still recovering from the spine fracture, and already suffering from an auto-immune disease) was diagnosed with Parkinson’s
7. In September, while caring for our dying cancer-stricken cat, one of our other cats (MY Baby Girl, Bobbi) died very suddenly of an aneurysm with no warning whatsoever
8. In October, Mieko died
9. In November, with my part-time job becoming more and more financially unstable and being unable to pay me consistently, I got a second job in hopes that I could eventually make it a FULL-time job — only to learn a couple weeks later than, actually, the store is closing at the end of January at which point its back to the drawing board.

Things were so rough at the end of there, that instead of saving the money my dad sent me for Christmas, I used it to buy Christmas gifts for others. The good news is that my mother finally has a job again, but having been financial unstable for so long, it will be months before we can crawl our way out of severe debt and back into something at least resembling manageable.

After 2016 was rough, and 2017 was a little worse, and 2018 was horrendous, and 2019 was an evil sadistic bitch, I feel tired and beat-up and hopeless. I’m afraid to even bother asking the universe for help anymore. It always responds by kicking me while I’m down.

But I keep telling myself I have to keep trying. Trying to keep myself together, trying to find more direction and purpose in life, trying to find more stable work. There are tiny glimmers of possibility here at the beginning of a brand new year and a brand new decade. I starting to read more again. I am trying to save money again (for the first time in years). I am looking at some possibly good part-time jobs (*fingers crossed*). But I am afraid to get my hopes up, so I guess we’ll see…

So here’s to the year 2020: may the world be a little kinder and more merciful this time around.

Most years (though not all), Neil Gaiman writes a new “Wishes for the New Year” on his blog that is encouraging and hopeful. He said he wasn’t going to do one this year, and then in the end couldn’t seem to help himself. The one he wrote for this year is a little different than the kind of thing he usually writes, but it seems fitting, so I’m going to end this post with his wish:

…I hope in the year to come you won’t burn. And I hope you won’t freeze. I hope you and your family will be safe, and walk freely in the world and that the place you live, if you have one, will  be there when you get back. I hope that, for all of us, in the year ahead, kindness will prevail and that gentleness and humanity and forgiveness will be there for us if and when we need them.

And may your New Year be happy, and may you be happy in it.

I hope you make something in the year to come you’ve always dreamed of making, and didn’t know if you could or not. But I bet you can. And I’m sure you will.

— Neil Gaiman, from “A New Year’s Thought”