Promises

This year has been an awful one. A tear-soaked-pillows one. A work-my-ass-off-but-still-penniless-one. And at worst, an empty one. At the beginning of the year I had no work. It was my decision. I had been interning for a lovely academic publishing company, I didn’t apply for a permanent position because my heart would wander through the corridors and out the backdoors of the office every chance it got. My role ended in December and so did my money. Yet, I don’t regret this decision even slightly.

The challenges have had comebacks round every corner this year.

Wait. That’s every year.

Still, I feel as though I have spent the last few months trying to keep my head above water, while pouring myself into everyone and everything, tearing promises from my chest like ribbons that I had made to myself when all I saw was dark lines. I am self-employed now and I work three jobs (and counting), all of which specialise in teaching, guiding and caring for other people. I love it and at the same time I am confused by how much it is taking from me. I have been reaching for splinters of myself, glistening in the things, people and places I love the most.

Breathe, Nadège. Breathe.

I have not been my best this year and I have done wrong. I am learning not to terrorise myself for it. You fall so hard when you climb so high, and sometimes to offer humility is to offer the world. I am learning that too.

I would like to make another promise to myself. As soon as I get the money, I am going to book a plane ticket. I don’t know where too, yet. But I know that all I have wished for since I was a little girl was to travel the world and I must keep my promise to that little girl.