At the start of 2025, I had a very clear picture of who I would be by December. I imagined a version of myself who had gone on real dates, opened her heart a bit and maybe even fallen for someone. But the girl who wrote that idea down in her notes app way back then is very different from the one who actually made it to the end of the year.
In January, I was freshly out of a talking stage that only lasted a month; it was long enough to teach me something, short enough that it should not have mattered. But in its own way, it did. It was the first person I genuinely considered as a potential partner since my last real relationship, which left me seeing physical intimacy as something to fear. Even though this talking stage was not the one for me, it reminded me that I deserved to take dating seriously again, so I promised myself I would try. I would say yes more. I would complete my goal of two dates within 2025. But life did not follow the plan I wrote in my notes app.
Instead of romance, 2025 brought me loss in forms I was not ready for. Loss of a family member, loss of trust, loss of confidence and even loss of that hopeful part of myself that once believed something real could be around the corner. The year I expected to build something new became the year I learned how easily things fall apart.
Do not get me wrong, I did put myself out there, sort of. Hinge got me to go on one date. We spent most of the time conversing about politics rather than getting to know each other, which was the most peculiar date I have been on. It was not a dramatic heartbreak when we both ghosted each other, but it was one of those moments that quietly shifts the way you think about dating and what you actually want from it.
And then life handed me a much heavier loss.
Losing my cousin, someone who was not in my everyday life but shaped my understanding of family, made me realize how fragile everything really is. It taught me that loss does not depend on how often you see someone; it is felt in how your mind reshapes itself afterward, in the way you start handling the world with more care.
Walking into senior year, I imagined it as one long, sentimental farewell to the last four years. But senior year has a way of testing you in ways you do not expect. It brings moments of broken trust, challenges the foundations you thought were solid and forces you to see that maybe outgrowing some parts of your life is what is needed to move forward. Although being “ready” to move on does not feel like a sense of relief, but a bittersweet feeling. Like closing a door you once could not wait to open, or learning how to carry the past while stepping forward.
On the other hand, senior year is also reflective in other ways. You start looking at your freshman year self with this ache I cannot fully describe. That girl felt so innocent compared to the person staring back at her in the mirror now, someone who has been forced to question herself more times than she expected to in college. She gained confidence in some ways but lost it in others. And somewhere in all of that, the idea of romance stopped feeling like a priority. A relationship is not the missing piece; it might actually be the thing that would distract me from the version of myself I am trying to understand.
But here is what 2025 taught me that I did not expect.
Loss does not erase the memories or the progress you have made. It reshapes the new goals you create for the future. I learned that even in the times when nothing goes as planned, I have gained the agency in how to respond. I can choose to stay open, to build better boundaries, to show up for myself in ways I used to hope someone else would. I realized that what I needed most this year was not someone to sweep me off my feet, but the clarity to understand what actually matters to me.
Some days, it feels like all I can do is hold onto this year, to the moments, people and experiences that still feel real. And yes, finding the right person will probably always be somewhere in the back of my mind, but 2025 reminded me that seeking them cannot be at the forefront of it either. So for 2026, instead of setting a goal to open myself up for love, I am setting a goal to open myself up to finding better parts of myself and celebrating them. Whether that is finishing senior year with better clarity or being present with what I have instead of chasing what I think I am missing. 2025 was not the rom-com I imagined, but it taught me more than I could have asked for.
And for the first time in a long time, I am content with this year being not-so-romantic.