7 Things I Hate About You – I love you

Another year gone since my transplant and it’s still crazy. This past year I traveled to Israel for 2 weeks and came home with a new family.  This year I was featured on Buzzfeed. This year I fell in love with myself again and found my voice.
I always tell people that I'm an open book. I mean think about it, on this blog alone I've talked about everything from relationships, friendships, medical being, depression, anxiety, the list goes on. Being shy was never something I was good at. It's still weird looking back and everything I've written and remembering everything I went through 7 years ago. I came so far from a girl that couldn't bear to look in a mirror to the person I've decided to be today.
Traveling wasn't easy, I'm not going to lie about that. The stress of traveling alone is one thing to put my body through. Then you add the difference in foods, lack of sleep, the summer heat, and everything else that would effect a normal person's body does double to someone like me. I didn't let me being sick hold me back from anything on the trip. I promised myself that before I left. But I did come home and sleep for about 2 days straight to get my body back on track. It helped that I traveled with my best friend and my cousin who know my medical history pretty well, so they were always there to keep an eye out for me if I needed it.

 I truly love reflecting on the past but it still seems so surreal. If you told me last year this is what I would have accomplished I wouldn’t believe you. I decided to start writing because I wanted to just help someone…anyone. This year was the year I finally did it. I've been writing this blog for so long just hoping that one day I'd finally be able to help someone who needs it. Luckily this year I took that next step.

Being featured on Buzzfeed wasn't something I thought would ever happen. It was huge for me. It was even better that the article I was featured in was about how depression and UC come hand in hand. It's a topic I think is insanely important and it was an honor to be one of the people selected to bring light to the topic. I have always struggled with depression and anxiety which I've talked about multiple times in this blog, but it's different being selected by someone else to share my story.

Loving myself is something I always struggle with. It's something I think everyone struggles with. I've learned that people will hate you, others will love you. You don't get to pick who thinks what and honestly you can't ever really change their minds. When you're comfortable with who you are it doesn't matter who thinks that. The people in your life should love you no matter what happens and if they don't they shouldn't be in your life. I'll probably still be reminding myself of this throughout the year, but baby steps.

All in all, it's been a crazy year. As always, I'm so happy I was able to have another healthy year. Sometimes I take advantage of my health and its days like today that I think back to where I was and can't believe how far I've come. 7 years down, the rest of my life to go.

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