Lore year 2025

[01-01-2026]

I've never really felt the desire to write a personal year recap, but I get the sense that 2025 is gonna be a key year in my personal lore, so, here it goes.

To understand why 2025 is significant, I have to explain how the prior years of my life went. I turned 30 this year, and ever since I finished school at 17, I was completely stagnant and aimless. I don't really wanna go into details, I didn't exactly suffer, but I was far from having a good time. No clue what to do with myself, no career ambitions, dwindling social connections, suffering mental health. Even online communities I could feel some sense of belonging in eventually made me feel resentful and jaded, leading to me interacting with less and less people and becoming increasingly paranoid of group dynamics while simultaneously craving a feeling of belonging.

In fall of 2024, things eventually began to change. Feeling the walls closing in as more and more time passed as I was getting increasingly desperate and frustrated at my inability to do anything with myself, I tried being more open and outgoing, at least on social media, something I had gotten into the habit to suppress in the years prior. It was a bit of a hail mary, but I tried being more open and communicative. During a burst of positive energy, I also ended up messaging an old mutual of mine who I had known from tumblr, nearly 10 years ago. We connected well and as one thing led to the other, we eventually started a relationship. That upcoming winter, I also started applying for apprenticeships; having been in the university environment for a while, I eventually came to realize that working in a library is probably the best career path for me. I was very lucky and eventually got a response, a position in my "home" university library, this couldn't have come any better. So, I turned 30 this year, and it seems like my adult life is just about to start. Yeah, I'm one of those depressed gays who wasted their entire 20s being sad.

Newly in love and with job prospects in the bag, I started the year cautiously optimistic. Lots of challenges awaited me, but I knew at least what I had to do, at least, in abstract. While my relationship was invigorating and joyful, my now partner with whom I want to build up a life together lives several thousands of miles away in the United States, which introduced logistical problems to my life I couldn't even begin to understand how to solve. Not just were thoughts around international travel and migration now a thing I had to figure out, but also the state of US politics are now directly affecting my life and my connection with the person I love. We spent long nights together in calls, something I could afford to do cause of my malleable "gamer" sleep cycle and my irregular work schedule. But my now approaching apprenticeship starting in late summer that year was also looming over me, as it would put an end to that. Being freshly in love was wonderful, but it also amplified all other emotional experiences, resulting me in increasingly bouncing back and forth between extremes.

But things went well. Never having explicitly opened up to my parents about my queerness or even my mental health, I told them about my relationship and our plans to meet as soon as we could. They were very supportive and unintrusive, even if they couldn't quite wrap their head around starting a relationship online. Neither of us having much experience with international travel or even booking vacations, we managed to eventually book an flight for my partner to visit me and spend some time out of a small Air BnB together. Early 2025 was completely lifechanging for me, first time being openly in a queer relationship and arranging to spend time together. Getting to spend time together in person with the one I loved was not only just a wonderful experience, but it was also a sign I had finally managed to break out of the shell I had cocooned myself in the years prior.

As the years progressed, more visits followed. I visited my partner and their family in the US and was able to get to know their home turf, and they came back to vist me again not once, but twice. Unfortunately, the time was full of sickness and increasing worries about family issues, as well as the political landscape, not just in the US, but also increasingly at home. And my mental health hasn't really gotten much better. Prior to this, I had always subconsciously operated under the assumption that my mental health issues were the result of specific things wrong with my life, top of the list, aimlessness and loneliness. So why wasn't I fixed? Plus, I had the upcoming full time work looming over me, threatening to crush all of the comforts I had known. I should be fixed, but it still felt like the walls were closing in on me. Depressive phases still hit hard, anxieties were through the roof, emotional states bouncing between numbness and being completely overwhelmed with emotion, and frequently becoming highly irritable and resentful. I also dropped hobbies that had been a core part of my identity for many years, having pretty much completely given up on playing drums or livestreaming my speedruns. Just couldn't bring up the energy anymore.

But still, things went well. I'm doing well at my library apprenticeship, so far I'm doing good at the job and everyone there seems to be happy with me. I am fairly excited to learn more things and this is the first time I have a job that doesn't make me dread working more. I was very worried about adapting to a 40 hour full-time work week, and I was right to be, but not exactly in the way I expected. From moment to moment, I usually quite enjoy being at work, and the days pass decently quickly. But the problem is that after a work day, there's basically no day left, resulting in feelings of days, weeks, months, just going down the drain. At home, during weekends, I would often spiral into despair, because I didn't know what to do with myself anymore during the bits of time I had for myself. Calls with my partner were now cut extremely short, as our time overlap became diminishingly small and my energy levels to even do anything at all except for wait for the next work day were dwindling. I like my job, but I never wanted to identify myself with my work and I always prided myself in being able to entertain myself, culminating in an ongoing identity crisis.

Things are going well, but am I? Hard to tell. For the first time in over 10 years, I have a path to follow and a future to work towards and look forward to. My wonderful partner who I love very much, who is very supportive and who I've shared countless wonderful moments with is currently spending the holiday season with me. I am incredibly grateful they're here and that we have been able to spend so much time together this year. This year was truly lifechanging, but this still feels like an unstable transitionary state. Truly, my mental health is as unstable as ever, and I still don't know really how to really get settled in life. Trying to think about it for longer than 10 seconds is still nearly guaranteed to send me down a pit of despair. But the good thing is that I don't need to have the exact plan right now, we can figure that out on the way. I just hope we'll make it. So far, it went well, so that's a good sign, right?