Goodbye 2019, I am not going to miss you

End of the year and, as usual, people start summarising what happened during the past year and prepare a good resolution list for the next one.

I am not going to lie: 2019 was one of the worst years of my life. While thinking this I am actually smiling and also felling kind of hesitant as some bad things happened to me in the past years that would make those the worst of my life, but here I am saying that 2019 was horrible. Anyway, this was a tough one that started with a lot of hopes and ended up quite bad with a lot of disappoints and frustration.

I am grateful for my beautiful family and my happy healthy son so I am not going to complain one this. But I feel that this year has let me down in a way that I would have never imagine.

I had a picture in my head of were and how I wanted to be at 32 years old and now that I reached the deadline and compare that imagine to myself I realise that I am far away from my initial aim.

2019 was hard because I found the adaptation of my new role as a mother with my career quite difficult. I came back to a full time work in a new career path that I really wanted to pursue: being a data scientist on Risk Management using Python to develop Machine Learning algorithms. Quite challenging thing itself, I know, but this is what I wanted to do and I still like it (everyday more) but I soon realised that I was not in the right state of mind and health to demand so much from myself. Trying to study, taking care of my son, picking him up from kindergarden 2/3 times a week and having to leave the office 2 hours before the usual, cooking and cleaning the flat was all just too much for me. I was not able to properly concentrate and take time to study for my work.

Here I have to add that I am a perfectionist and I used to be a quite organised and demanding person so I always wanted to have everything done properly and by the book. You can understand that all this does not really fit well with all the tasks that I have and I soon found myself at the point of a breakdown. Most of it was due to the disappointment for my career and my unreached goals, but also not really taking time for myself gave me the final blow.

I did went out with friends this past year and I thought that I was actually taking care fo myself. It turned out that my body was joining these events and occasions but my mind was not really unloading the stress. Most of the time was like ‘I HAVE to go out and have fun!’ but these decisions where somehow latched to other thoughts like ‘I have to go out but I am so tired’, ‘I will go out but I have to prepare dinner’, ‘ I will to go out but I have do this and that first’, ”Oh, I am going out, nice. Have I done this? When I come back I still have to this this..’ etc..

It’s very difficult to change your way of things after all these years. I was not able to disconnect, enjoy the time out and properly take care of myself. I was also not able to accept my new self and acknowledge that I had to give up something.

My husband did really tried hard to help me out but I later found out, with the help of a therapist, friends and a coach that I was the one that needed to help myself and learn to let go of something.

I reached September as a total different person from I what I used to be. I was not able to recognise myself, I didn’t liked myself physically (I still don’t, to be honest) , I was not the funny person I always was, I was not multitasking and full of energies as I always been. I was not performing at work as I expected and I was not using my full capabilities in any of my daily personal and professional activities. That person was not me.

I totally lost track of myself and I had the feeling of slowly drowning in quicksand. One day I decided to seek for help in order to find a way to slow down, do things step by step and start appreciating the little things one at the time. I am still in the middle of the process but after 3 months I do see some positive changes and I am really trying to not to overload myself with (what I now find) useless activities and try to save myself a bit of time to spend on my hobbies. (the blog is one of them).

This acceptance process will take some time but I am sure it will pay back in the long term.

Today is the last day of 2019 and the only sure thing I know is that I do not want to feel like this anymore and this will drive all my resolutions for the new year.

I am sure that this is how a lot of new parents feel or felt like this a certain point in their life so I just wanted to share with you my experience. The only advice I can give is to seek for help and talk to your parent, family and friends. Talk about it is part of the recovery process. It’s normal to feel like this: you entire life is changing and it’s not always a smooth process journey. It is also fine not to feel like as I felt and not everyone, of course, might experience what I went trough this past year.

I hope this post will help someone out there. If you want to talk you can contact me in private or be brave and share your experience in the comment box.

I am thankful for my family, my relatives and my friends that supported me this year.