Fustany Talks: It’s a New Year, but Is It a New Me?

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The year 2020 is drawing closer, and like everyone else I look back on the past 12 months and think about everything that happened in them. Before the new year began, I had lots of plans to work on myself and on my career, I put a lot of thought into what I wanted to achieve. But as it ends, did I really do what I had planned, or am I still the same person, I was?

I asked myself that question a few days ago and here is my answer... No, I didn't do what I wanted, but I'm also not the same person at all!

You see, all the plans I had put for myself for the year 2019 were mostly ruined, because of a little something called 'unexpected situations'. Just a few days after the year started, these unexpected situations -that I had never put into consideration- started coming at me one after the other as if life was mocking me and saying "You're a big girl, now deal with it" so I had to.

I won't go into specifics of how my year went, but let's say that a lot of 'not so nice' things happened one right after the other. These things affected me greatly starting from my personality, my relationship with my family and friends, and even my work. I discovered sides of me that I never knew existed and it even showed me that some parts of me that I wanted gone were too important to get rid of.

For example, I wanted to be more independent this year and detach myself from people around me so that I could have time to take care of myself. But I quickly realized that my family might need me more than I think they do. I even saw sides of them that I had never even imagined in my life! I got to understand that there should be time for me but at the same time there should be time for the most important people in my life.

But what do these changes of plans mean for the person I want to become? I guess that vision that I have of myself, might not be what I should become, because I'm not alone in this world. I'm a small piece of a big puzzle, and an even bigger world. Whatever changes happen to me can never be controlled, since I'm connected to the rest of that puzzle. So, any changes I apply to myself, affects everything around me and vice versa.

This year has been a struggle and a lesson and it made me realize that you can never be prepared for what life has in store for you no matter how much you try. What you can do is find the middle ground between what you think you should be and what life forces you to be. Don't regret that you didn't reach what you wanted, because maybe that's not the real you at all...

Similarly to the lyrics in one of my favorite songs, I feel: "My ideal and reality, they are too far apart. But, I still want to cross the bridge and reach me, the real me."

Who is that real me is something that I need to learn and explore, and with the end of 2019 I'm not the same person I was in 2018, but I'm also not the person I wanted to be... I'm not even somewhere in between and I'm actually okay with that.