By: Emma Stevens
February 27, 2025
It’s hard to believe we’re already over a month into 2025. Time flies in a way that feels almost reckless. I spent Valentine’s Day alone, like I always do. It’s one of those days that’s supposed to remind you about love and connection, but for me, it always seems like a reminder of everything I don’t have. Still, I keep telling myself that it’s okay. It’s just one day, and I don’t need a day to define my worth.
The year is still young, though, and that’s the part that keeps me going. I keep thinking maybe this will be my year. The year where everything clicks into place. The year where I finally get everything I’ve dreamed of. That feeling—the hope of it—is so overwhelming at times that it almost feels too good to be true. But it’s a feeling I can’t seem to shake.
I’ve spent so much of my life waiting for things to change, hoping for something better. For once, I want to believe that the change is coming. That I’ll look back at this year and think, “This is the moment it all turned around.” I want to be the kind of person who wakes up with purpose, who moves through the world knowing I’m on the path I’m meant to be on.
By the time New Year’s 2026 comes around, I want to be someone unrecognizable from the person I am today. I want to have grown in ways that will make my 13-year-old self’s jaw drop. I want to show that version of me that things do get better, that there’s so much more to life than what I saw back then. But even though I have this vision of who I want to become, I also know it’s going to take work. And I’ve been telling myself that this time, I’m not just going to hope—I’m going to act. But hope is funny, isn’t it?
It’s one of those things that can be both a blessing and a curse. Sometimes hope can feel like a lifeline, but it can also be a source of frustration when nothing changes. But right now, all I can do is keep hoping. Hope that I’ll find the strength I need, hope that things will shift, hope that this year will be different.
So, here’s to 2025. I’m not giving up on it yet, even though it feels like the odds are against me some days. Maybe this year, just maybe, things will finally start to feel right. I can’t predict the future, but I can choose to believe in it. And sometimes, that’s all we really need to move forward.
