A week or so ago I promised my brother if he got me a certain beanie hat I would blog more and blog while wearing the hat. I believe in keeping my promises, so here I am on a Friday night, wearing said beanie hat and I thought… I should blog about this.

But seriously while I am not going to blog about the beanie hat, while it is an amazing beanie, I do want to update my site more. I pay for this domain name I might as well use it.

So lately I have been thinking about 2018 and how I believe it was a year of change for me. I started the year living in Maryland (where I had been living for almost four years) and I had started working at a new job back in October of 2017. I really liked the new place I worked and I was finally getting to a place in my life where I was very happy and content with myself. But I had the knowledge I was going deaf in both ears hanging over me. The more I thought about it the more I realized it was time to go back home. Now home for me is not where I grew up but the town I moved to and all my family now lived in, Rochester, NY. I had left Rochester NY four years earlier, I left for many reasons and I still believe my decision to leave back then was the right one. However, after living in Maryland, by myself with no family and to start no friends nearby, I had found myself. I had grown to realize I liked me and I had proved to myself I was actually ok. Now, this may sound simple but for me, it was life-changing. For years I had hated myself, I had hated every single thing about me. I couldn’t even look in a mirror as I hated the person I saw. But for some reason, those four years on my own in Maryland made me like me, made me be able to finally look in a mirror and not hate myself. I have no idea why it did that, but I am so damn grateful it did. Because when I knew I had ten years maximum until the doctors told me I would be legally deaf, I was ready to go back home, ready to be ok with asking for help. So I took a huge chance and took a position with the company I worked at but in their Rochester NY branch. It was a big step up career wise but I knew it was the right step.

So in June 2018 I packed a Uhaul with my stuff and my dad flew to Baltimore to drive my car back to New York with me. He and I stopped in Pennsylvania for the night at a pet-friendly hotel, as I had my trusty cat Bear with me, going on another 400-mile journey with me. And once again my cat amazed me with the ease at which she handled me uprooting her. I moved into an apartment complex that my best friends and their kids live in, they helped me unload my Uhaul, with my niece Mia shocking all of us with her brute strength basically single-handedly unloading most of the truck while her mother, father, brother and I attempted to put my IKEA bed back together. Then later that week my mom and I took one final journey back to Maryland to grab the rest of my stuff and go to one final appointment in Baltimore. Then I started work at my new job and threw myself back into life.

Over the next few months, I made friends at my new job and reconnected with old friends. I also got the chance to enjoy the small things, like taking my nephew out to eat, having my nieces sleepover and being at family events. But I also allowed my family to help when my Meniere’s disease reared its ugly head. My parents have picked me up from work when I was too dizzy to drive, my sestra has brought me over ginger ale when I was nauseous from vertigo and my brother has made time for me when I needed to talk.

So 2018 was a year of great change in my life and I am hoping 2019 is just as exciting. I have many plans for the year and coming years and I am hoping to uphold my promise to my big brother to blog more while wearing this beanie. 🙂

Cheers bitches…