The strange thing about time is how quietly it changes its grammar. One moment, it’s ‘this’ year. The next, it’s ‘last’ year. And somewhere in that shift, I can feel my heart tightening.
It’s been an emotional rollercoaster leading up to the end of 2025. A lot of grief has been surfacing. A lot of tenderness surrounds me. I’m really sad about this year. There’s an ache that feels all-consuming sometimes.
On Thursday, it will no longer be 2025. And although I will be the same person, maybe even feeling some of the same things, there will be distance. There’s something profoundly different between constantly saying ‘this year is the hardest’ and being able to say ‘last year was tough’.
Every part of me wants to be the version of myself that shifts from who I am in 2025 to who I get to be in 2026. It’s not that I will become new, or that I’ll somehow start over, but a significant part of my reality and mindset will exist in the past tense.
And maybe that’s the gift that time offers us—not erasure, but perspective. Not forgetting, but the gentle archaeology of looking back rather than being trapped inside.
The pain won’t disappear at midnight. The grief won’t suddenly lift when the calendar changes. But it will become something I carried, rather than something carrying me.
I don’t know who I’ll be in 2026. I don’t know if the ache will soften or if new challenges will arrive to take its place.
What I do know is this: I survived 2025. And when I can finally say ‘last year’ instead of ‘this year,’ I’ll be speaking about something I made it through, not something I’m still drowning in.
That shift in tense—from present to past—isn’t just grammar. It’s proof of endurance. It’s the quiet evidence that, for all its cruelty, time also offers us the grace of becoming our own history.
And sometimes, that’s enough to hold onto as one year releases its grip and another begins.
