2018: Hopes, Goals, Resolutions

2018: A Year of Health

I started 2017 banging on pots and pans with a party hat on at midnight on January 1st — in a residential program for my anorexia, surrounded by cautious social workers analyzing my every move, making sure I didn't fracture a bone or burn too many calories. Not the best setting to welcome in a new year, I know. Spending my senior year of high school in a hospital treatment center isn't how anyone would like to look back on their final years of adolescence, let alone me. The blood work, bi-weekly weigh-ins, and medications are definitely things I am beyond glad to leave behind in 2017.

2017 to me was a year of struggle, anguish, hardship. I hope that 2018 will be a year of redemption, health, and true happiness. Not the fake happiness that comes from unhealthy habits. I am talking about the real happiness — the kind that comes from unapologetically being your authentic self. The kind that comes from letting go of the chains that once weighted you down. For me, that means letting go of my eating disorder, for good. In 2018, I want to be victorious. I want to rise above the shell of an unemotional eighteen-year-old that I once was, and stop apologizing. Over the years, I have apologized to too many people for things that make up who I am — I apologized for being too positive, for following the rules, smiling too much, for standing up for what's right when it's the unpopular opinion. That stops now. This year, I want to love myself. I am going to love myself, and there is nothing on God's green earth that is going to stand in my way. 2018 will be the year that I let go of toxic people who have never accepted me for who I am. 2018 will be the year that I accept myself. 2018 will be the year I take care of myself. Gone are the days that I skip meals. Gone are the days I hate myself for existing. Gone are the days I deprive my body of the things it needs to survive. I am ready to put in the hard work to be healthy. Will it be hard? Hell yes. But if Britney Spears can survive 2007, I can do this.