The Year That Didn’t Love Me Back

2025 is wrapping itself up, and honestly?

It feels like a year that made promises it never kept.

I thought I’d be standing somewhere different by now.

More stable.

More loved.

More sure of who I am and where I’m going.

Instead, I’m standing in the middle of a mess I didn’t choose, trying to keep everything from falling apart with hands that are already tired.

My relationships feel strained and thin.

My family feels distant.

My finances are embarrassing.

My future feels like a fog instead of a roadmap.

And spiritually?

I feel stuck.

Disconnected.

Like I’m praying into silence and pretending I still hear something back.

I’m being forced to move houses in an economy that feels like it hates people who are barely surviving. Rent is cruel. Food is expensive. Everything costs more than I can carry. So now I’m stuck living in a place where I don’t feel safe to be soft — with someone I love, someone I believe I’m meant to be with, but who somehow makes me feel like I don’t matter at all.

I love him.

I do.

But loving him right now feels like loving someone who keeps proving I’m optional.

Even when I put on the blue dress.

Even when I try to be beautiful for him.

Even when I try to be enough.

He’s getting colder.

Crueler.

And I’m starting to feel invisible in my own relationship.

Meanwhile, I’m parenting a 14-year-old who’s mouthy as hell, disrespectful, lazy, and mean, and I’m drowning in the exhaustion of raising kids who don’t see how close we are to the edge. Ungrateful doesn’t even begin to cover it. I love them with everything in me, but some days I feel like I’m pouring from an empty cup into a bottomless pit.

We’re barely putting food on the table.

I’m counting dollars.

I’m skipping things I need.

I’m pretending I’m fine so my kids don’t panic.

And I have no friends left.

The ones I had used me.

And when I said something about it, they called me crazy.

So now I sit alone with all of this.

The times he lies to me over and over.

He knows it breaks my heart.

And he keeps doing it anyway.

That kind of betrayal doesn’t just hurt — it rewrites how you see yourself. It makes you feel ugly. Replaceable. Easy to discard.

And yet… I’m still here.

Still breathing.

Still writing.

Still hoping.

So yeah — 2025 was a shit show.

A survival year.

A trauma year.

A “hold on by your fingernails” year.

But 2026?

That year better be mine.

Not perfect.

Not magical.

But honest.

Stronger.

Kinder to me.

Because I deserve more than this.

And so do you.

— Dally