I know 2017 has already started in some parts of the world, but for me it’s still 7 hours away. I’m not going out tonight, in fact I’ve started to enjoy my own company. I listen to my audio books, play games on my xbox (yes, I’m a gamer chick), watch a movie or go for long walks. I love walks enveloped by fog. Makes the world seem mysterious and exciting. Adventure waiting around every bend. It’s the things I don’t see coming, good or bad,  that injects my life with surprises!

And off course, I love writing on my blog. It’s liberating to have a release. To put thoughts on paper and share them. The thoughts I tend to struggle with and that I want to pour out of me, are the negative ones. Hence why my blog can appear to be centered around hurt, pain, unhappiness.

Now, looking back at 2016 it’s almost too easy to get caught up in the negative happenings this year. I’m an optimist by nature, a glass half full kind of person. I’ve been called many bad things this year, by one person in particular, This one person was my lifeline at times, but also the biggest trigger that pushed me into a dark depression again; not once but twice this year.

As an only child, I’m extremely independent and also a bit of a perfectionist. I am my biggest critic. I have spent many hours trying to understand how I let the events of this year affect me in such a myriad of ways. How my emotions became so unstable, like a small little sailboat, in the middle of the ocean, with no way of fighting the storms and winds that hit me. Yes, the sun shone and there were peace at times, but the storm always returned.

Looking inside with the help of meditation and desperate to find answers, I looked at my timeline and realised that I was a ticking bomb that exploded in 2016.

1987 – 1992 high school.  I was bullied and very much a loner. I was content though. I would much rather read than go out. I devoured books. Any topic, fiction, non-fiction. I had and still have such a wide range of interests. I had many dreams and decided to study medicine.

1993 – 1997 university. My dreams of becoming a doctor didn’t work out. I discovered freedom and the social joys of being a student. Far away from home where nobody knew me; I could be myself without any pre-existing opinions and judgments from my fellow students. I studied microbiology instead.

The turning point came when I was raped. A large part of my hopes and dreams of meeting a special man and having a happily married life and children, changed that day. I had only discovered boys shortly before I was raped. I had my first kiss when I was 19.

In 1996 I met my first husband, two years after my rape. I fell in love. It happened fast. So quick. I thought, this is it. I wanted to be loved and he definitely obliged. He was a gentle man. For a year or two everything was great. It was a long distance relationship.

1998 – 2004 My first husband proposed in 1999 when we finally started living in the same town. At this point I had started working already and was a manager with a lot of potential to climb even higher on the corporate ladder. I ended up in finance as work in microbiology was scarce at that point in time. My then fiance, was freshly out of university. We had grown at different speeds and in different ways. My intuition told me that we were no longer that perfect match I thought we were, but I kept ignoring it. My body must have tried to warn me too as I started having panic attacks. Pretty severe ones. For no apparent reason. I thought the rape was well behind me. I was embarking on a new life. I was doing very well career wise. What is causing this?

We were married in 2000 and divorced in 2001. I was on anti depressants. I had also met someone at work that I was very attracted to. So I went straight from a failed marriage into an affair. It was very physical. Not a lot of emotional ties there. Not a lot in common. I guess in hindsight, your typical rebound. I was having fun I thought.

2006 – 2015 baby years. In 2006 I fell pregnant and we decided to get married. I was three months pregnant when I said “I do” for the second time. High on pregnancy hormones and dreams of a little baby, I was happy. I never thought I could get pregnant. Then the birth. It was like being raped again. The way I was physically hurt, it hurt me in almost exactly the same way I was hurt before. Nothing could prepare me for this. How was I to know that childbirth would rewind my body back to the darkest period of my life.

It took about a month for my maternal instinct to kick in. I was too hurt and scared. But when it did, I was right as rain, I thought. The next 8 years was dedicated to my daughter. I gave her all my love, attention, time, energy. My husband did the same. We drifted apart. We hardly spent any time alone. We were exhausted. We lost each other. We couldn’t have sex. We had so little in common, apart from our daughter, that “conversations” were either disagreements or sitting next to each other on our phones.

At the end of 2015 I remembered that I was a person. I had needs. So many. I neglected my emotional needs to the point where I didn’t even know I had emotions or desires. I didn’t know who I was. All I knew was that I was more than just a mother