I Had a Great Year, So Why Am I Sad?

When I look back on 2025, so many wonderful things happened. I met someone special, went on exciting adventures, began to express myself, and enjoyed other people expressing themselves too.

I should feel great about it. But instead, I am trapped in a feeling of tension and misplacement- like I am not actually able to grasp how good my year was. I am just swimming in a whirlpool of energy.

So let me try to ground myself.

I look around, searching for 5 things to notice:

1. The pink of the book cover beside me
2. The seafoam green sheets on my bed
3. My artwork
4. The long-ago burned incense stick that I forgot to clean up
5. The upside-down sunglasses on the table

4 things I feel…

1. The tension of my mattress beneath my body
2. My long hair falling across my typing arms
3. My slightly runny nose
4. The feel of my not-warm-enough and too-tight socks

3 things I hear…

1. The sound of my parents watching tv in the other room
2. The clickity-clack of my keyboard keys
3. The strong January wind as it brushes against the large window, and the assault of the minuscule snowflakes upon its glass

2 things I smell…

(I feel annoyed at my slightly runny nose.) I don’t smell anything at the moment.

I focus even harder.

I smell…

1. The scent of my freshly shampooed hair
2. The remnants of the perfume that I sprayed a few hours ago

And finally, 1 thing I taste:

1. The distant, lingering taste of the cup of lavender tea I had almost an hour ago

I do feel less anxious. Partially from this grounding exercise, but mostly from my writing. The unsettled energy has moved from within me and onto the digital page.

It can stay there. I don’t want it back.

My anxiety was lying to me. About my year, about my worth, about my abilities.

Instead of allowing it to fester within me, I will use it to create something beautiful. Sometimes anxiety needs to be captured within a page, canvas, or song.

This tells the feeling: No! You do not exist past the bounds of this paper, frame, or 3 minute song. The feeling is simultaneously contained, yet aired out.

It is now tethered to something that isn’t you. As you release it, it releases you too, and its control over you weakens.

The idea now has shape. The lie becomes art. And art has a transfiguring quality that turns lies into transcendent truths- truths about the reality of subjectivity, and of the human experience.

Anxiety is a hallucination, while art- through symbolism, fiction, and expressionism- is an act of truth, though not necessarily factfulness.

And that is highly regulating.

This is a reminder that you are doing better than you think, and that anxiety isn’t reality. So make it into a beautiful fiction.

Messy Bun Book Lover