I can’t avoid it any longer, I’m an adult. Getting here was not as easy as I thought it'd be. I broke things in my struggle to navigate the world and I found out that self-destruction is never pretty. I’ve realised that there's no sudden lightbulb moment that fixes everything, especially when you don't actually need fixing. 

 

During the last few decades I have found that in the midst of tragedy a single person sitting with you holding your hand is more than enough, even if they're doing it from a great distance away and that you can never love your friends enough.

 

This year I found out that feeling something with every fibre of my being isn't bad thing and that anyone who tells you you're "too much" really doesn't love you like they say they do. I also learnt that the longer you look at the stars the more beautiful they are and that humans are like that too. 

 

This year I realised how my pet loving me makes me love the world a little more, especially when I take care of her with the person I want to grow old with. If my kitten could understand me I’d tell her not to worry, that I don’t have any idea what I’m doing in this world either but I do know that there’s beauty in wading through the sludge.

 

It was in my mid-twenties that I realised that regardless of how much I want to think of myself as a fearless adult, I’m most courageous when I’m listening to my inner child. Over the past 18 months I learnt more from the homeless people at my work than from any university professor I’ve ever met and that true understanding almost always comes from the places you don’t expect it. 

 

I know that I am sometimes more bull than china shop and even though being irrational is being human, I have made mistakes that can’t be put right and I need to learn to live with that. I have learnt that growing means I can’t help breaking things and although some people will not stick around to pick up the bloody shards, it doesn’t mean I’m unlovable. 

 

 For everyone that went around the sun another time this year, congratulations. We made it and that's worth celebrating.