The last five years

Timehop is an interesting app. I resisted downloading it after seeing so many people in my newsfeed using it, but it actually provides a very interesting look into my life over the last five (or so) years. Sure, I could just go back on my Facebook timeline and look at the entries from any given day. I like Timehop, though, because it curates a daily update for "this day in history."

In an interesting turn of events, the anniversaries of several big changes in my life of the last five years -- getting my own apartment in Lexington, parting ways with my old friend group, and finishing my degree/moving to Cincinnati -- are rapidly approaching. I've seen a bit of the prelude to this come through on my feed, peppered with other random anniversaries of times long forgotten. But it's interesting to see where my life was and how I was feeling about it at the time.

I've written before about how there was a point in my life where I did not feel comfortable enough with myself that I could go out to eat, to the movies, shopping, etc. I constantly had to have someone else around me to be able to do anything, maybe for fear that I'd miss out on something fun? I noticed that one day when I was going through my Facebook timeline, because I apparently like to stalk myself, and I had made a comment that some other people had hung out and it seemed snarky and jealous and sad. And most recently, I posted three years ago about wanting to hang out with people before school started and no one called.

And really, looking back at where I was even three years ago, I was very passive aggressive and negative in my social media habits. I posted a lot of subtweets and was vaguebooking a lot. I even used my blog as a way to subversively dig at people. But it wasn't until I made those significant life changes that I allowed myself to break free from that negativity and use social media in a much more positive manner.

Five years ago, I was attempting to start my second senior year of college after dropping off the planet during the previous semester. That ended up being a colossal mistake which took me back to college three years ago. And of course, there's 2013, the year that doesn't technically exist, which has its own share of ups and downs.

But the one thing that Timehop has shown me while I've been using it is how successful I was at Weight Watchers. I posted my progress every week, sometimes annoyingly so, but it kept me motivated. If I put my successes and failures out into space, then they were more tangible somehow. I need to start doing that again, I need to channel my success from three years ago and allow it to center me again.

No matter how things seemed five years ago, four years ago, and so on, I know that the Natasha of today is so much stronger than she was before. I was able to turn adversity into the thing that allowed me to hang on and come out all the better for my struggle.  And here I am, after all this time, with amazing friends, getting ready to apply to graduate school at UK, and working full-time to support myself. It's a great feeling to know that with hard work you can turn everything around. I'm still able to spend time with my amazing friends and have a good time doing the things that I want to do.