A blog by Pepetoe.

This is one of those blog posts you don’t plan.

I didn’t sit down with an outline or a neat message in mind. I sat down because this version of me has been loud lately. A version of me whom I spent the second half of this year being, the one I’m quietly trying to put down as the year ends.

She’s not easy to write about. She’s not the version you’d choose to show, or the version you’d be proud of. She’s messy, contradictory, and heavy to hold. But she’s also the reason I’m still here, and pretending otherwise would be a lie.

This year took me somewhere I never thought I’d go. I did things I never expected I’d do. I became someone I never imagined I’d be. Not just externally, but internally. In the choices I made, the ways I coped, the parts of myself I met and didn’t recognise. There were moments where I looked at my own life and thought, how did this become me, how did I get here?

What hurt the most wasn’t just what or who I lost. It was losing trust in myself. Realising that the person I thought I was didn’t line up with reality anymore. Sitting with the aftermath of that is its own kind of grief. You don’t just mourn people or situations. I found out the hard way that you also mourn the image and expectations you had of yourself.

And then there’s the part no one really talks about: surviving after the damage is done. When the crisis is over, but the consequences stay. When there’s no adrenaline left, just long quiet days where you have to live with what happened, with what you did, with who you were. I survived that part. The nights where sleep wouldn’t come because my mind wouldn’t let me off the hook. The days where shame sat in my chest like a weight…

But that version of me that created that pain is someone I have to be thankful for, because she showed me that I can get through ridiculously hard things, things I never thought I’d be a part of, and climb out the other side. Not unscathed, but with more lessons and truths to hold. In all honesty, I can’t say I’m necessarily thankful of her, but I’m thankful for the lessons she gave me, and who I can be after all this damage.

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This year wasn’t linear. It wasn’t progress neatly stacked on progress. There were relapses, more than I care to count. Old patterns came back when things felt out of control, when stability felt like something other people had access to. There was nothing poetic about it. It was frustrating, exhausting, and deeply familiar in the worst way. And still, I kept coming back. I kept reaching for help even when I was tired of needing it. Even when I was embarrassed that I was here again.

I also spent a lot of this year just surviving environments that drained me. Places that demanded more than they gave. Cultures that rewarded burning yourself out and being someone you’re not and called it ambition. People who put me down. I didn’t thrive there. I coped. And for a long time, coping was all I knew how to do.

Looking back, I don’t want to judge that version of me. She wasn’t weak. She was overloaded. She was doing the best she could with the tools she had, even if those tools weren’t healthy or sustainable. Even if they hurt her in the long run.

As this year ends, my life looks nothing like I thought it would. I’ve lost people, certainty, and versions of the future I was desperately trying to holding onto. There’s grief in that, real grief, and I’m not interested in pretending otherwise. But alongside that grief is something steadier.

Gratitude.

Not the glossy kind. The quiet, grounded kind. Gratitude for the version of me who stayed when things got uncomfortable. Who didn’t disappear when everything felt heavy. Who sat in the mess – even the mess she helped create – and chose to keep going anyway.

She wasn’t inspirational. She wasn’t proud of herself. She was human. And she carried me through a year I didn’t think I’d survive.

I don’t want to take her into the new year in the same way. Not because she was bad, but because she’s tired. She held everything together with shaking hands for long enough. She dealt with the rumours and the gossip and the people, the jobs, and the cultures stabbing her in the back – and that version of herself also stabbing her in the back. Now she deserves rest. She deserves kindness from herself. There’s been enough shame and guilting piercing her everyday, so for now she needs gentle love and support from who she is now. From the version who knows what she’s been through, and still made it out alive.

I can thank her without becoming her again. I can honour what she endured without romanticising it. And I can move forward knowing that even in my hardest year, I did not give up. Even if sometimes I wanted to.

That version of me got me here. In a weird roundabout way. And for that, she deserves to be acknowledged – gently, honestly, and without rewriting the truth.

Xo Pepetoe