January is the accepted time to talk beginnings and fresh starts. In January we talk about the new year and the big plans we make as a New Year’s Resolution obsessed culture. Even people who don’t participate tend to make noise about their non-participation.

But spring is that too, and all the more so for me. At the most basic level, I was born in spring. My birthday is probably a more profound moment of, “Where is my life at? How has it changed in a year?” than January 1st. (We’re still a few week away from that, so I’m not done yet. Fun, right?) The next one is a boring birthday. I’ve cleared the age-based significant milestones (I did rent a car two weeks after my 25th birthday and that was exciting) and the only one that’s going to hit me on April 4th is the end of being on my parent’s health insurance. Party!

This time last year, though, I was returning home. I’ve now been back for a solid year and a long one, at that. These checking in moments are always strange times filled with, “Everything has changed and nothing has.”

This time last year I was beginning to fall apart. I came back to Missouri in part for that very reason. The reason I never shared: I figured that home was the best place to be if I was going to self-destruct. It’s a long story for another day, but suffice it to say that I was a wreck for much of the time between then and now. Anxious about everything. Long before everything that happened in the fall, which I was emotionally ill-equipped to handle. Although, I don’t think there is such a thing as being emotionally equipped for all of that.

A year later, I am writing this post from a hotel room in New York. This is the first of many adventures this year. In the first half of the year I’ll be hitting all four continental US time zones, and boarding planes almost every month. I won’t have consecutive non-travel weekends until June. I’m spending a month of the summer in Europe with family and one of my best friends. It’s going to be an exciting year. I forgot to properly get pumped for that here on the blog.

Am I loving where I live? Not really. But I get to do all of that in large part because I don’t have to pay rent. I don’t have to pay rent and I can work from my hotel room in Manhattan. Life is good. I forget that sometimes because life is also stressful. Right now, on this bachelorette vacation weekend, it’s really important to remind myself of how good things are.

I’m also trying to take a step back and appreciate it as a beginning of sorts. A fresh start. This is me, coming out on the other side of an emotional struggle. It’s not done, per se, but I see an end. I feel the hole in my heart filling back up.

This time last year I was waxing philosophical about the bad feels I had experienced in the past. I felt the floor tremble as it prepared to drop out from under me, and I tried to remind myself that I’ve been down that hole before and survived. I didn’t quite know how to keep it from happening — the floor from dropping out, as it were — but I closed my eyes and tried to remember that I could get through it.

It seems only fitting, then, to come back a year later and say, “Yes, you can.” It would be nice if present and future selves, with all their wisdom, could go back and hold the hand of past selves, letting them know that there is something better around the corner. Since that’s not possible, it’s worth at least checking in to acknowledge when that time comes.