As we approach the bridge to cross into 2025, I felt the urge to look back at 2024 to see how far I have come in this journey. Starting 2024, I was in my bed feeling suffocated gasping for breath. I remember the cold sweats that trickled down me and loud burps that gave me a headache and the racing heart that never stopped for a moment. I was not a stranger to this feeling. I have been feeling this way since 2021. I do not intend this write-up to be about my anxiety yet, how I accepted it and learned to let go.
The pressure of my own expectations had come to the surface yearning for release. Around February finally being back in Malaysia after the summer break, I was feeling it taking over me. At the lowest point in my life where my confidence had lost its war to insecurity made me paranoid. I had much more to do I could not let my thoughts control me. One day, I had to try meditation without any expectation from it. I know most will tell you calm down, meditate, do yoga etc. Yet through experience I know that these words have no meaning to anyone who has not understood what it means to be at peace; especially someone with severe anxiety. Moving forward, after a month of just meditating everyday focusing on my breath, I could see a massive difference in my state of mental health, I felt fearless, I felt my insecurity disappear. I felt like I was on top of the world. To this day I still meditate every day and I know I have a very long way to go.
Although I was suffering for around 2 years with this, I learnt a lot and I am eternally grateful to have gone through it. If you asked me in January 2024, I wouldn’t have agreed with that. Hah! Funny how life works. The main lesson I learnt this year is that nothing matters, not in a depressing way but NOTHING REALLY MATTERS! This one lesson also leads me to say that your perspective matters. At a time, I felt that my anxiety was controlling me, I truly got to open my eyes to see that I was controlling anxiety but ironically, I could not get out of it. It had become a part of me that I did not want to let go. Along the lines somewhere in April 2024, I learnt to let go. This was the transformation I needed to be fearless and the fact that NOTHING REALLY MATTERS! I believe when people are diagnosed with a decease that would kill them and there is nothing, they can do about it, then you come to the point to truly value health and happiness. Until then we all run a rat race pursuing dreams, money or anything else, just to reach that one destination inevitable for all living beings. People say live everyday as your last. I would say just be content.
This year I met my darkest self and the brightest self. After all there is a saying which goes “The darker the darkness, the brighter the light”. Although I found the brightest self, it will not last forever just like the darkness ended at the end of tunnel, I might find another tunnel to go through, but one thing I can say for certain is that whether it’s dark or not, I will survive and come out on the other end. After all nothing really matters. I have many accomplishments to name this year, but the biggest victory for me is being able to be at peace. All my accomplishments could not cure anxiety, all my expectations I had for myself kept me in a storm of darkness. My accomplishments mean nothing if I am not content and at peace and that realization for me is the biggest accomplishment not just this year but for my whole life.