There's something about New Year's Eve that just gets you feeling all kinds of nostalgic no matter how much you try to fight the whole cliche 'new year, new me' bollocks. Every year on December 31st when the clock strikes 12, I cry. Don't ask me why, I have no bloody idea either. I could be sat in a pub, sat on the sofa at home in my PJs or stood on the middle of a dance floor in a heaving club, but one thing never changes...I will always become overwhelmed with emotion and start crying. I'm not talking emotional drunk bawling my eyes out in the middle of Oceana, but more a lonesome tear rolling down my face whilst I laugh it off and scream along to auld lang syne.
Don't get me wrong, I'm generally quite a sensitive little soul who is a little bit guilty of living in the past and clinging onto old memories like my life depended on it, but it takes a lot to make me cry (24 years down the line I'm still yet to cry happy tears). It only takes one timehop photo of me looking 3 stone lighter and slightly pissed with my arms thrown round my old flatmates in freshers week to get me spiralling into a nostalgic "I miss my old life when everything was simpler and easier" (and I was skinner) pit, but this is never more apparent than on New Year's Eve. This New Years was spent huddled around a fire with my 3 best friends in a beach house in Frinton-on-Sea, working our way through bottle after bottle of wine and I wouldn't have wanted it any other way, but whilst we were sat waiting for the London fireworks to broadcast on the telly, we all started reflecting on 2017 and what a year it was for all of us and it made me realise how eventful just one short year can be. 365 days and more shit can go down than you could ever anticipate. And those 365 days of ups and downs, highs and lows and unforgettable memories can sadly become forgettable memories, no matter how hard we try to cling onto them. Our brains can only hold onto a certain amount of memories after all and the past-clinging nostalgic side of me absolutely hates that. I hate forgetting unforgettable moments and my worryingly forgetful memory means that most days I can't even remember what I had for breakfast, let alone what the hell went down in my life in the year 2013. So whilst I was reflecting on what a year 2017 was, I had an idea to write myself a letter every year on December 31st informing myself of what the hell went down in my life in that year. As cheesy as it may sound, my biggest fear in life is getting to age 70 and being left with a few measly photos that I bothered to print out back in my twenties and not much else...
In a time where photos aren't developed anymore, just stored on MacBooks or hard drives that could break or corrupt at any second and the closest your life comes to being recorded on a video camera is 10 second Snapchat clips which will no doubt be a thing of the past in 5 years when Instagram stories takes over and slowly kills off Snapchat, memories are easily lost. They're no longer stored physically, they're stored electronically, making them disposable and far too easily lost, so since my memory clearly isn't gonna have my back 50 years down the line, 2018 is the year I'm taking it upon myself to write myself a letter every New Year's Eve until the day I can no longer to put pen to paper. So here goes, here's my first of hopefully many letters to myself...
Dear Sabrina,
2017 was a rollercoaster of a year for you, filled of lots of highs, but equally lots of lows.
You encountered several fuckboys (for the reference, the dictionary definition of a 'fuckboy' = a guy who doesn't respect women, yet relies on them heavily. He's a guy who's distant, doesn't care about a woman's time, won't commit and is never looking for anything serious relationship-wise) and consequently spent the entire year single, apart from the odd few dates with said 'fuckboys' which you begrudgingly found through the use of Bumble and Tinder.
You didn't travel as much as you hoped to this year, as you saved up for a huge road trip around Florida instead, which sadly turned sour thanks to the bitch that is mother nature, when hurricane Irma (a category 5 hurricane that broke the hurricane records FYI) forced you to flee Miami 3 days early, cancel your trip to the Keys and end up in Orlando 3 days earlier than anticipated. This wasn't all bad, as you got to fulfil your lifelong dream of going to Disney World and managed to tick that huge goal off of your Bucket List. You also managed to cram Universal Studios in, before the trip turned sour again and all airports in the entirety of Florida were shut down due to the imminent hurricane Irma. This meant you had to get booked onto a flight 4 states away from where you currently were. Your best friend drove through the night in apocalyptic weather conditions, through 5 states, for hundreds of miles and at one point the weather conditions were so horrific you were convinced you were going to crash and die (no joke). You drove through Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina and eventually got a flight from Charlotte to London and landed at Heathrow 2 days before hurricane Irma hit Florida.
You were faced with an ultimatum in your workplace right before you set off to Miami, which forced you to step outside of your comfort zone and really consider what the hell you were doing with your life in terms of your career. It was a shitty time for you and you spent the best part of 2 weeks crying and having several "what the hell am I doing with my life? Do I move back to Spain or go travelling?" breakdowns. It was time to step away from a job that didn't fulfil your creativity, or put your skills (or degree) to use. You left your first job out of uni which you had been at for 2 years and went off to Miami uncertain of what your future held in terms of your career. You returned from Miami to an email from a fashion company who wanted to interview you for the role of Digital Editor. You went along thinking you had absolutely no chance of securing the job as you had little to no professional writing experience, but somehow managed to impress and got offered the job within half an hour of leaving the interview. You started said job one week later and never looked back since. You spent your days writing for the company's blog and gaining valuable copywriting experience, which brought you more career happiness than you ever imagined, making you excited to go to work each day for the first time in your life. You ended 2017 feeling hopeful and excited for your career.
On Thursday, 7th September, whilst you were in Orlando, you became an Auntie to your beautiful niece Hattie-Rae-Dean and felt a love that you'd never experienced before. It brought the whole family closer together and made you realise that you are maternal after all...even if you thought you weren't. In June you discovered your best friend was also pregnant, meaning you'd become an Auntie all over again sometime in February 2018! Seeing one of your best friends transition into a Mother and grow a little human inside her was something pretty special.
After a rocky few months in the middle of the year where you faced uncertainty and doubt surrounding all aspects of your life, which forced you to reconsider whether London was truly the right place for you to be anymore, you took some time away from London, changed your job and found your feet again, consequently leading you to fall back in love with living in London again. You had your first Christmas with your niece and 2017 ended with you feeling optimistic, hopeful and excited for the year ahead.
Love,
24 year-old Sabrina x
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