Dear beloved readers,

Merry Early Christmas for those of you who celebrate it, and for those of you who don’t, Happy Early Weekend!

I happen to celebrate Christmas and yes, I happen to secretly love it. I say secretly because I may or may not still be stuck in that phase in which you think you are too cool to do stuff with your family…oh well. And truth be told, even if it’s not the same thing as when you were a kid anymore, the feeling is still the same and I love it. Watching Christmas movies and drinking hot chocolate, wearing ugly sweaters and waiting to eat all the food that can possibly fit in your stomach…All of that is kinda magical to me.

Every time this time of the year arrives, I think it happens because it is the end of the year, I get a little depressed, – or at least it used to happen because right now, I feel like everything but that. I was never the best when it came to deal with things ending, from relationships to years, and this mix of being nostalgic and starting over, even if not really, usually makes me kinda anxious and quite uncomfortable to be honest. But this year, not at all.

This year all I can feel is excitement. I don’t know, maybe it is because I already faced huge changes in my life this past year and if I faced that, pfft I can do anything. Or maybe is because I get to sit here right now and feel so very proud of everything that I accomplished this year that I don’t have time or room to feel, not even a little bit, depressed with this one ending. All I can do is look forward for the ones who are yet to come.

And so, I decided to make a list of my accomplishments this year, big stuff, small stuff, things that made me happy and proud about myself, things that I will be able to read this post a few months for now and still feel great about. And I am calling this one, my Celebratory Christmas List. Her we go:

• Okay fist things first, I got in college AND finished my first college year with awesome, nearly perfect grade and even was a highlight in my creative writing class (everyone saw this one coming, I know lol) with one of my infamous posts about casual sex, and boy…that made me proud.

• I made a bunch of new friends. This was honestly the year that I realized that I was able to make new friends, who like me for who I am not because we have been studying together for years and they are used to my face and my sarcasm. I met new people, made amazing new friends, a few of those I know by heart they will be there at my wedding, and having brunch when we are all rich and have our shit together, and yeah, I met people whom I love and whom I hope will be in my life forever.

• One of those friends being so special she is worth a second mention in this list. Honestly, I never thought I would have a friend I would be able to talk about being up all night crying my eyes out and two minutes later we would be discussing the mysteries and possibilities of the universe and really getting deep in both subjects. She is what I call my ‘Ride or Die’, because I swear I’d trust my life on that girl. She is my coffee date in a nearly three hours coffee date and she is the only person I’d listen to crappy music just because. And I know she will read this so thank you, for everything and for the amazing things that we know are yet to come.

• Cheesy but…Created the blog and now I am able to write those posts and feel connected with the people who read it, and with this I actually feel like I am doing something with my life, something that I love doing with all my heart.

• Went to New York (biggest sigh ever, boy I miss the city), met a lot of friends whom I’ve known for years on the internet and whom I love with everything and miss every single day. Watched three (3) Broadway shows and met Patti freaking Luponne. Met my all time favorite person and all time crush too to be honest, Darren Criss, and had a blast at a Broadway festival cause yeah, us Broadway nerds also have our thing okay. I was able to go to Tiffany’s to watch the sunrise and feel everything I hoped to feel and more, and to be even more sure that this is the future I want to myself. And this feeling my friends, is priceless.

• I quitted smoking!!!! I am not even sure if you guys know this but, around March, I decided, okay more like was forced, to quit smoking. Which was the greatest thing ever because as glamorous as it was in my head, it was in fact affecting me so much and it wasn’t great at all. And the fact that I was able to quit it like, completely makes me feel so proud.

• Watched RENT the musical 23 times and cried every single time, met the cast and became friends with the cast and that musical changed my life in 23 thousand different ways and really there is no price for that.

• Read a bunch of new books and now I literally can’t go to sleep without reading something.

• Got my heart broken, twice. Which helped me learn a lot about myself and made me see that it is true, people only die of heartbreaks in bad movies from the 60’s. In real life, we life our pain, we cry our tears and we get over it.

• Because it’s worth saying this side too: I fell in love twice. None of them worked out – one of them I am pretty sure the feeling started ages before this year, but well this was the year that I realized, – but I was finally able to understand what it meant to be up all night, or waiting for a text, or what it feels like to kiss someone and feel so right, even when it wasn’t. And considering that all those were failed attempts and they already made me feel all those feelings, imagine when the right person shows up? See, this is me seeing the bright side. 2016 me could never…

• Moved away from my parent’s house and now I have my own home, my own little shoebox apartment which I call my personal safe heaven. My kitchen is in my living room and my living room is right there in my bathroom but it is everything you expect a new adult who just got in college and still is trying to manage how to be organized and at the same time enjoy to be away from parents and rules’ apartment would be like. It is home.

• Got my tattoos, and became totally addicted. I love how they are like parts of me there were missing and how I feel so much more in my skin with them there.

• Manage to go a whole year without any alcoholic comas, *fucking self-five*.

• For the first time in a very long time, I am more excited about the future than completely terrified of it. I am able now to make my plans and let my imagination run free in the ‘what if’s and the ‘maybe’s that the future may or may not hold for me. But at the same time I am able to feel completely okay with the uncertainty of everything about it. I am able to live no day but today and be happy with it. Because this was, overall those amazing things I just mentioned and the ones that I considered too precious to say, that life is pretty fucking great, and you will see that once you find the right people to cherish it with you and to turn the light on even when darkness creeps in.

Yes, beloved readers, I had quite the ride this year, but like I mentioned it previously on the list, there’s nothing quite like being able to share it all with you. And if this list made you curious about your own conquers and accomplishments this year, hell go right ahead and write your own! I know I’d love to see everything that happened in your year that you feel like it was worth adding to your own list, specially if it includes trouble and oh my god if it does, please, pretty please, tell me all about it.