⚠️A gentle note⚠️: This post discusses mental health struggles, grief, burnout, and thoughts of not wanting to live. Please take care while reading.
This is for those who don’t see a future with themselves in it.
I see you. You’re not alone. You’re allowed to dream. You’re allowed to live.
Just take it one. day. at. a. time.
Eventually, we’ll get there.
If someone asked me what the three worst years of my life were, I wouldn’t hesitate.
Third place: 2021
Second place: 2025
First place: 2019
Third place: 2021
COVID-19 hit my family, and I lost my aunt — someone I loved deeply. While she was sick, I took care of her. There was an oxygen shortage in the city where we lived, so I had to manage her oxygen myself and watch her struggle to breathe. Eventually, my family took her to the hospital. She passed away there.
I miss her. And I truly wish none of you ever have to watch a loved one suffocate to death.
Second place: 2025
After graduating in December 2024, I started ✨THE✨ corporate life. Adapting to this new lifestyle proved far more difficult than I had anticipated. I was running on a few hours of sleep every night, exhausted all the time, with no space for myself or the people I loved.
I burned out severely in just a couple of months and eventually fell into a depressive episode that led me to seek professional help. You can read more about how I adapted to corporate life in this post.
I thought things were starting to get better — until they weren’t.
By the end of the year, I was denied a promotion and a raise I had negotiatedd before getting hired, even though I was doing the work of three positions. Fighting with my mom became more frequent. Some of my friends stopped talking to me without any explanation.
I ended the year exactly how I had started it: drained, disappointed, and barely holding on.
First place: 2019
Let me tell you. That year takes the cake — by far.
That year, I lost an uncle who was like a father to me. At the same time, I was living through a major depressive episode — undiagnosed, but all-consuming. I was only 17.
My relationship with my mom was worse than ever. Fighting with teachers became normal. I was exhausted all the time, sleeping anywhere from 12 to 16 hours a day. I stopped eating — not intentionally, I just lost my appetite. My self-esteem disappeared. I was bullied at school.
Technically, every support system failed me: family, teachers, friends, and even myself.
That year, I genuinely believed I wouldn’t live past 18.
Once I came to terms with that, life became more bearable. Not hopeful — just bearable. I let my mom choose my major. I enrolled in college. Everything felt easier when I didn’t have to think about future consequences. After all, I believed I had less than a year left to live.
I had no long-term goals. Not even short-term ones.
I was just existing. I slept as much as I could and dissociated whenever I was awake.
Then COVID happened.
Healing at home: when the world shut down (Quarantine 2020) ✨🪴
With COVID, a global pandemic was declared. Schools shut down. The world paused. And while everyone else’s life was put on hold, I started living mine.
Many people died, countless lost their loved ones, while tons of others lost their jobs. Hearing the news was like watching a thriller — sometimes even worse.
But COVID saved me.
I hadn’t realized how badly I needed a break… from life, apparently. I always thought I had had enough of being alive, but it turns out I just needed to rest — from everyone’s expectations and from my own.
With online school, my constant effort to obtain perfect grades disappeared. School became easier. I stopped training taekwondo four times a week. I couldn’t leave the house even if I wanted to, and for once, I felt free to live.
I had all the time in the world.
I even convinced my mom to buy an inflatable pool and set it up in the backyard — something I had always wanted as a kid.
I remember listening to my French teacher while I was dipping in said pool in my backyard. My routine consisted of sunbathing, floating in the pool (it wasn’t big enough for me to actually swim in it), reading, scrolling through TikTok (prime 2019 TikTok), and drinking water infused with fresh fruit — mango, pineapple, strawberry, papaya, lime, sometimes all mixed together. It was perfect.
Since my mom still had to go to the office, the house was mine. No siblings. Just me. And I enjoyed every second of it. As an introvert, I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything. The entire world was at home. There was no competition. No feeling of falling behind. No sense of dread from lack of productivity.
For the first time in two years, I wasn’t waiting to die.
A new future unlocked 🔓
I started university online and simply went with the flow. I didn’t force myself to create goals that meant nothing to me. I lived one day at a time, just trying to survive each semester.
It wasn’t until my third year in uni (spring 2023) that something changed. For the first time in about five years, I started dreaming about a future — one where I was alive.
What triggered it was simple: I wanted to study abroad.
I really wanted to.
So I planned. I didn’t make a life plan — just a plan to achieve that one thing.
I gathered my documents, figured out my finances, got accepted into the university I wanted, packed my bags, and left.
Living and studying abroad felt like therapy. I could feel myself healing. Many of my doubts faded. I began to recognize the capable and independent woman in me — a woman who could keep herself alive.
Whatever quarantine hadn’t healed, those three months sure did.
For the first time in years, I felt excited about life. About possibilities. I had built a new life for myself — even if it was temporary — and I started to believe I could do it again. Back home.
Showing up for me
Coming back was hard. Creating a life I enjoyed so much and then leaving it has been as close to heartbreak as I’ve ever been (if not worse). I fell into another depressive episode.
But this time, I didn’t let myself go down the hole so easily.
I didn’t dissociate — or at least, I made a conscious effort not to. I started tackling the short-term goals I had set for myself upon returning. Small checkpoints. I followed a path made of them, and that got me two things:
- It kept me moving — even if it was slowly.
- It reminded me I was progressing.
I locked in. Not for perfection — just for consistency.
I kept showing up for myself. I reminded myself that small wins deserve to be celebrated too.
I kept writing down goals — not because I felt hopeful, but because I refused to give up again. I chose the field that excited me most in my major. I even started considering studying a second bachelor’s degree in Psychology.
And slowly, things started happening. They slowly became better.
Why you have to start caring for yourself, even when you’re the last person to want to
Since 2023, I’ve worked hard. I’ve achieved some goals, while others had to wait — like enrolling in a second bachelor’s degree. Other goals came sooner than I expected, like finding a job or having an academic article of my own published in the university’s magazine.
What I want to say is this:
Showing up for yourself doesn’t mean having a five-year plan.
Or a one-year plan.
Or even a six-month plan.
Sometimes it just means making a plan for tomorrow.
It can be as simple as visiting a new coffee shop, going to your favourite restaurant, spending time with your pet, or reading a single paragraph of the book you’ve been trying to finish for months — or even years.
Sometimes it even means staying alive long enough to see the sunlight come through your favorite window and shine on your living room just the way you love it.
Sometimes it means choosing one small thing in life that makes you want to keep going.
Sometimes it means paperwork, therapy, rest, or stubbornness.
Sometimes it just means surviving long enough for curiosity to return.
“Curiosity about what?” you may ask.
Curiosity about life.
About being alive.
So if it’s hard for you to see a future with you in it, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist — or that it can’t exist.
It just means you haven’t reached the version of yourself that will live in it. The version of yourself that will feel alive living the future that is so hard for you to think about.
And that’s okay.
Take it one day at a time.
Become that version, slowly.
Right now, I’m waiting for that curiosity I had two years ago to grow in me again. I keep showing up for myself, and I have just enrolled in that second degree I told you about — even if right now, studying seems like one of the last things I want to do.
If you’re waiting too for that curiosity to come to you, we can wait together. Taking one day at a time until we slowly become one with life again.
One with ourselves.
