2015 has been an extremely difficult year for me. In all the best ways possible. It was a year that challenged me, broke me, and put me back together. And it taught me that life doesn’t have to be lived inside of the grays.

What is that way of life that we are searching for so anxiously? ‘To live happy’, ‘To find happiness’, ’I want to make you happy’. We talk about it like it is a static state of mind. Yet I learned that after my experiences of last year it isn’t.

We can call ourselves happy when our good days can conquer the bad. When we can rationalise that life will never go easy on us, and we can see that after the rain, the sun can come out. I see people cower away because they can not see that balance. Because they cannot see that life is one huge scale. We weigh the quality of our life, the weight of our struggles and the heaviness of our hearts. And it doesn’t matter how much weight you carry and how it is all balanced. As long as you can understand why it is there, and that after that moment of altercation, there will be new experiences and breaks where we can relish in just feeling ourselves rather then being judged by the things that we went through. That is happiness to me. The breaks, the sunshine, that "top of the wave" kind of feeling... That high point of life. I am happy for waking up and knowing that I have a day for myself. In that moment, right there, I experience happiness. When someone cracks a joke and my tummy hurts from laughing, right there, is happiness. When I meet my friends and hear how they feel, no matter how long I see them, is happiness.

The most monumental thing that was happening was that I wasn’t having to change many of my traits or characteristics, all I was having to change was the way I viewed them.
And that changed everything.

We can only be happy when we can see that this is it. This is life and it isn’t going to get better or worse. We get a hand of cards and it is how we play them, that will define our life. it’s not the cards themselves that will guarantee you a win or a smile. So stop letting yourself get into the way of happiness. It’s never always here. It’s all in between.

These past 12 months have been quite a ride. Through it all, I have experienced humbling failures and endless lessons. I would like to thank those who I came across for their patience, wisdom and honesty. For their unconditional support. For not telling me what I wanted to hear, but what I needed to hear, in order to progress. But most importantly, I want to thank them for believing in me.