Bye 2025. You Funky Bitch!

I wish 2025 had a face so I could punch it in it. At least let me get some of my lick back. This year beat my ass. I ain’t gon lie. I am not the same. These 2020s are like lightyears worth of years. All this digitizing the world has really thrown things out of wack. It’s not just these phones. It is how the world has seized upon technology to really show its ass.

I doubt I will ever forget this year. In the future, when I talk about my life, I will have to mention 2025. It really hit a fever pitch at the end of 2024, but 2025 was my year of awakening. Awakening to myself, and let me tell you, it was ugly. It was a jumpscare to have to really sit with myself and reckon with who I have become. It’s not that I have been some horrible person. I’ve done some really bad things and some people have been hurt in the process. I’ve never violated anybody, but I have negatively effected people’s lives in ways that I still struggle with my self for. However, I had to recognize that I’m my own worst victim. I have been beating my own ass for so many years, trying to run away from myself. Trying to deny who I was becoming because it scared me. It scared me to think of what I wanted to be and worse even than the possibility that I couldn’t be what I wanted was the possibility that I could. I don’t know how to live up to my own dreams and so I’ve found every way to sabotage any means that I could have made them come true.

But in some ways it’s worse than that. It’s not even necessarily that I have not accomplished anything. I am a writer. That’s my dream. That’s all I’ve ever really wanted to be. Expressed through different mediums, I wanted to tell stories and keep records. I wanted to be on the page what I didn’t know how to be in life. I wanted to be a writer. And writer’s write. And I’ve been writing all of this time, but that didn’t feel real to me because I wasn’t making money with it. I wasn’t rich and famous so I wasn’t really a writer. I had my first poem published when I was 13 years old. I shrugged it off because I never think much of the things I do. I have written so many ebooks. Novellas. Novelettes. But I sold them to publishers as a ghostwriter. My name isn’t on any of them. They were good, I know they were. Of course they had to follow tropes. I wrote plenty of urban romance. I can be accountable for that now, but at the time I was just a young writer with no idea how to break into the industry. If you are not from the connected, you have to work practically free for years in publishing. There is no money in publishing until there is. You’re either making shit, making good money some of the time, or rich. I did so many internships. I read for writing competitions for free. I did beta reading. I submitted to literary platforms. I wrote for web sites. I have been running this website on and off since 2013. I have done some things, but I couldn’t appreciate it because it didn’t make me a lot of money.

It took me literally a decade to start making any kind of consist money from writing. I finally started getting the bigger ebooks that were 50 and 80 thousand words that got me to making $800 per book. Still not much, but it was something to me. I had been writing 20,000 words for $100. I wrote a script for a podcast series for $45 a pop. I worked as a publisher for a small publishing company for 2 years, edited at least 5 manuscripts and only ever got a check for $100. It was commission. I don’t know how it worked. I didn’t know how the industry worked. I don’t know any writers for real. I’m not connected to people in the industry. I could have networked better in college. I could have tried to build a community so that we could figure it out together and connect our connections. But it does not matter what I could’ve done. I didn’t know that then. I just knew that I could write 2,000 words per hour, writing upwards of 20,000 words per day at times, but still felt like a failure because no matter how much I wrote, I wasn’t making money.

I wasn’t where I wanted to be so I couldn’t appreciate my achievements. I have been great at things this whole time. I have had my successes, but it wasn’t what I thought it should be so I discounted it. I discounted myself because I was so focused on the many loud voices around me that made me feel like I needed to be something other than myself. The people who knew no more than I did who caused me to doubt myself. Who, in lieu of answers, simply responded with questions that I couldn’t answer, which made me feel like I wasn’t doing things right. I couldn’t explain it. I couldn’t get people to understand and that meant more to me than my own life. I could hardly appreciate the successes I had because I felt like I should be doing more, but it wasn’t even that. I knew I was betraying myself. I knew that I was not doing what I needed to be doing. I needed to write. Yet at some point I looked up and I was working six 10 hour shifts a week at a warehouse. Sure, making decent money. I got two promotions while I was there and that was after working practically every function in the warehouse. I could have been a team lead. I could have become a manager and kept going up, but it meant nothing for me to achieve things there because that’s not what I wanted. I daydreamed whole 10 hour shifts away thinking about the stories I wanted to tell. Keeping a little notepad with me and ripping off pieces of labels to jot down thoughts. I could get lost in my stories for hours. I wrote away in notebooks, but I was afraid to really be a writer for real. What if I wasn’t good? What if I failed? I was a gifted kid. I took honors and AP classes in high school. I finished high school with college credit.

I took 5 AP classes. I only took 2 of the tests because they costed like $83 and we didn’t have it like that. It wasn’t easy getting that. Even with getting your money back if you pass, you have to pay for it in the first place and if you didn’t pay for it by a certain time you wouldn’t get your money back at all. Or you just couldn’t take the test, so you could get an A in AP Calculus, but still not get college credit because you can’t afford the test. My parents did pay for 1. Wait, no, I took 3 AP tests. I took the AP U.S. History test sophomore year. I took the AP English Language and Composition test my junior year. I got a 3 on both, which was passing. I ended up with 3 AP classes my senior year because I filled my schedule thinking I would be able to change it, but we got a new counselor over the summer and she gave people a hard time changing their classes. At least that’s what I heard. Anyway, I took AP Environmental Science, AP Calculus, and AP English Literature and Composition. AP Environmental Science was one of the next sciences that I could take. I took Honors Biology, Honors Chemistry, and Honors Physics my first three years. The next step was just a bunch of AP sciences. AP Environmental Science wasn’t really hard though. It felt like a bird course. I learned a lot from Mr. Bonomo, but he was so chill it didn’t feel like learning. Mr. Bono was the one that taught me how microwaves work. He would kind of do the experiments for us, but we had to interpret them. Doing circuits was pretty easy. Sciences can be the cooler classes. My point is, that one was fine and being in it meant you were automatically in Ecology club, so you could put that on your college applications. I was also on the Newspaper, which was just Journalism class and in African American History club because I took Honors African American History. I’m sorry, but dude who taught it was a hotep. He gave us the Willie Lynch letter. I learned some faulty ass information in that class and I don’t care if he sees this. 

As I was saying, I ended up taking AP classes because I hit the top of the other classes. I took Pre-Calculus, so the next math class up was AP Calculus. I wanted to take AP English Literature and Composition. Shout out to Ms. Dinwiddie. A Black woman. Probably one of the highest paid teachers at the school. I’m saying all of this to say that I never really thought much of it because I wasn’t in National Honors Society. I didn’t do so hot my Freshman year. I barely had a 3.0. I didn’t think that was high. I had a 4.5 in 8th grade. Straight A’s because I wanted Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks. I made a deal that if I got straight A’s I could get it. I did get an F in 8th grade, but that was because I couldn’t go on a trip because I didn’t have the money, but to be fair I also didn’t write the paper I could have to pass. I don’t remember why, that was a weird time in my life. I was living between my brother’s place and my parent’s house because I watched my nephew while my brother and his girlfriend worked like 2 jobs and went to school, plus my parents moved out of district right before I was to graduate the 8th grade so my brother, who worked there, would take me to school. My standards for myself have always been so high that I never felt satisfied unless I was doing really well and even then I felt like I could do better. 2025 revealed to me that I had been outrunning myself my whole life trying to get away from what I had to deal with. I was always looking to a better future because the present was hard to bear, but we have to face the present because that’s the only place we can be happy. You will be happy in the present, not in the future. 

I do look forward to a good 2026 because I’m determined to make it good. I’m not saying what I think is going to happen, I’m saying what I’m going to make happen. Just today I got so much accomplished and I’m really proud of myself because it is really hard for me to stop self-sabotaging long enough to build up good momentum. I don’t trust myself because I always flake on myself, but what 2025 whooped my ass to get away from me was my belief that anybody else was going to make my life what I need it to be. I’m already suffering under systems trying to keep me going long enough to be able to extract the maximum amount from me, but to have myself be my own biggest opp is an obstacle that I have been on my Sissyphus tip with. I have not been able to surmount my own self doubt this whole time. I kept trying to run away and trying to figure out why the enemy kept getting me, whole time I was the weapon formed against myself. I took responsibility too early. I wasn’t ready. Even though I held it up, it cost me a lot. To hold up the facade of who I felt I had to be. I’m just a woman who is in love with writing. So much so the most important phallic instrument to me has been a pen. No man has ever made me feel the way I feel when I am writing. I have not longed to have babies. I have longed to write books, scripts, articles, encyclopedias, databases, and all such other manner of writing. I love a word more than I love myself. I tried so hard not to be a writer it began to make me physically ill. I lost myself trying to be anything else. I did it all the while. I couldn’t stand upright if I weren’t writing. Literally, I can barely stand upright when I’m not writing, and that barely is based on what I have to do. If I can I’ll lay down. Life loses its value for me when I have to focus on other things. 

I told myself were it not for money I could have been happy years ago. But I could’ve been happy anyway, I just didn’t know it. 2025 revealed me to myself in ways that were hard at first, but slowly but surely made me more determined than ever to realize the woman I’ve always wanted to be. I am a writer. Have been for many years. Most of my life. It felt like a dream until I was making enough money at it. It didn’t seem real if it couldn’t afford me luxuries. I had to go clock in at Walmart because I could barely consistently fill my gas tank at times trying to write full time. I had to get a job that paid. But I suffered for it. As horrible as this year was, what I’m choosing to take away from it is that I’m either going to write or suffer. I’m either going to be the things I want to be or suffer. The proof is my former suffering. And my continued suffering in some ways, but for all I got mollywhopped with this year, with the disgusting state of the world I still feel that I needed this year to free myself. To commit to myself. To understand that I make my life. I don’t have to only think of myself, but I do have to think of myself. I can’t count on what other people will do for me. I am most secure if I know I can do for self. I can still seek community. I can still be generous. But I have to generous with me too and I have to have as much empathy for me as I do for other people. I can’t just think of others, but I should also think of others. 

2026 is the year that I continue to reveal myself to myself so I can love myself adequately and be able to bear up for what the world is going to throw at me. It won’t get easier, I’ll just become more capable. It won’t do less to me, I’ll just have more to deal with it. I am so glad to see the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026. The world is worse, but I’m better, so I’ll figure it out. Bye 2025, you funky bitch…