2016

There's a theory that time goes by faster as you get older. It's not just a feeling. When you're four a year is a quarter of your life. When you're ten it's a tenth. Time gets smaller as you get bigger.

In 2016 I was 23 then 24, and in a few months I'll be 25. These numbers pass me by like I'm blinking but not really thinking about it, like one of those unconscious habits we are born with. Do we learn to forget about time or is it in our nature?

Every year we wait for the new year with a strange excitement. What are we celebrating? I wonder what the next 365 days will be like, what they will be and... what was last year? Will I be a different person in 2017? I felt the same last year. It fades fast; the sense of excitement marred with melancholy. Probably something to do with the Christmas comedown.

I first identified with depression when I was 20, but there had been sadness before then. There are clues that are so blindingly obvious to me now that I wonder why it never hit me sooner. But there is always a reason for my sadness, and none for my depression. Having said that, depression is now an underlying reason for all my sadness and I know this is not right.

This Christmas has been my first break without plans – something I've longed for all year. There are always drinks with school friends and family gatherings that have become tradition, I suppose, but there has been more time spent alone doing not very much. I packed to come home for ten days, and each one has stretched out so far that I begin to wonder if I'm four again.

I remember details from last year, like ornaments on windowsills and conversations the other person probably forgot. My list of resolutions; to travel more, to start saving, to read more, to write more – the same every year – only two I can say I ticked off, but I'll make them again anyway. And soon I'll forget this period altogether, until next year – or do I mean next week? – when it begins again.