Honoring My Year: Looking Back at What Has Changed

There’s a lot to say and I don’t know how to say any of it. 

So much has changed in the past twelve months, and I’ve had to let go (sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not) of friendships, relationships, jobs, choices, people, places, and things. Everything, and I do mean everything, hurt to let go of. I had to tearfully unravel my energy and influence from all of it so that I could move forward. And looking back, I have so loved the letting go process. It has been painful but beautiful – almost extraordinarily so.

For the last couple of months, I have felt like a hermit. As in, apart from lovingly honoring all of my obligations and commitments every day, I often chose to hole myself away from the world in order to refrain from emotional overexposure. This year was soaked in feelings, and I felt all of them deeply. So, I spent a majority of my time recovering from all of the letting go and the new change and the new emotional investments I was making – recovering from all of the feeling I was doing.  

Just by the numbers and in no chronological order, I sought out and started four new jobs this year, all of which have pushed my professional capacity in a new and exciting way. I applied for and earned an incredible scholarship that will enable me to go to graduate school debt-free. I re-connected with a young man who would go on to steal my heart completely; it is through our strength together that I have found new power within myself. It is also through him that I now know what it’s like to date someone with a large family – a crazy, chaotic, fun, joyful experience that I have deeply loved. I let go of many “friendships” that no longer embodied what loving friendship means to me. I signed my first credit card and I pay it off monthly, on my own. I declared my double major, kept 75 first-year residents alive for a quarter (knock on wood), and planned my 6-month study abroad trip to Sydney that will span from July-December of 2019. I finished my first year of college and started my second. I painted dog portraits, the female body, and sunflowers, everywhere. I have filled up one journal cover-to-cover, a first in my lifetime that I am inexplicably proud of. I received one heart-shattering phone call on Thanksgiving from my best friend after she lost her father in a terrible accident. I am still grieving that loss in such a disembodied way; it is both my grief but also the grief of many people who I love. This part of my 2018 story is dark and heavy, and there is so much hurt connected to it – but all of it is made less excruciating through friendship and family. I launched The Olly Project, and while I have gone quiet over the past three months in terms of publishing, it is definitely not because I have forgotten about it. I am simply sitting in my thoughts, because there is much to say and no perfect way to say it all. 

I have done so much emotional growing pain this year that it exhausts me thinking about it, but I believe that I have chosen this growth with pride and purpose. I have most definitely shed an old skin since the year before; I carry different things close to me every day, like new responsibilities and people who I love. There are so many ways to commit to transformative change and yet, I feel as though I have born the unbearable and held the unholdable in my most perfectly imperfect way. Long story short, I am proud of myself. This was a hard year. I did choose to hermit, and I will probably still choose to do so for a while. Through my emotional recovery from new challenges, I found a new sense of tired contentment. Now, I look back towards all of the things I transformed, both externally and internally, and feel deeply satisfied.

I have done a lot of truth seeking and way-finding this year. It has been quiet in my heart. There is so much to process that it is almost impossible to process everything. There have been so many reasons to weep and grieve; there have been equally abundant reasons to laugh and celebrate. I have practiced bravery. I have been grateful and gentle. I have honored my feelings more that I think I’ve ever done before. I look back at everything that I have pulled apart and created and all I can feel is a simple sense of “you did it.” Because there are many places where I stumbled, and there are many places where I failed. I can point to moments where I was snarky or petty where I should have been understanding. But far more frequently than these, I can point to moments where I intentionally chose something different than I have ever chosen before, and it is those moments that have made all the difference.

So, thank you for listening to me, both when I have words to say and when I have chosen silence; to be quiet in contemplation without feeling abandoned has been a wonderful gift that I do not take for granted. Thank you for following The Olly Project this year.

And finally, thank you for loving me, both when it was easy but especially when it wasn’t.

All my love,
Olly