Twenty Twenty Five

I didn’t have a breakthrough.

I had a dismantling.

Not the cinematic kind.

The quiet, administrative kind.

The kind that arrives as an email, a pause, a door that doesn’t open

no matter how many times you knock politely.

Things fell away.

Work. Structure. Certainty.

The version of me that knew how to succeed inside systems

clocked out without asking my permission.

And suddenly I was alone

with the one thing I’d spent my life circling but never choosing:

my own authority.

No one to impress.

No one to blame.

No timeline to borrow.

Just me,

a body that refused to go back,

a nervous system that rejected safety when it required self-betrayal,

and a truth that kept getting louder the more I tried to be sensible.

I tried to reason with reality.

I tried to wait until I felt ready.

I tried to heal one more layer, understand one more pattern,

so I could move without fear.

Reality wasn’t interested.

It kept removing options

until the only direction left

was the one I kept calling delusional

because calling it true would have meant choosing it.

So I chose it.

Not confidently.

Not gracefully.

But completely.

I stopped pretending my ideas were hobbies.

Stopped shrinking my depth into digestible reassurance.

Stopped asking systems built on repetition

to recognise something designed to evolve.

I named it.

New Hollywood.

Not as a brand.

As a line in the sand.

A refusal to build pretty decks instead of real worlds.

A refusal to confuse visibility with power.

A refusal to keep packaging truth so it would be approved faster.

This year showed me the pattern clearly:

Everyone looks busy.

Everyone looks branded.

Very few are actually building anything real.

And I realised -

I wasn’t behind.

I was early.

And early feels like doubt

until it feels like direction.

My body knew before my mind did.

It tightened when I tried to sell my time for safety.

It expanded when I spoke without proof.

It shut doors I kept knocking on out of habit.

I learned the hardest thing I’ve ever learned:

Security isn’t money. It’s self-trust under pressure.

By the end of 2025, I wasn’t healed.

I was oriented.

I stopped asking,

“Will this work?”

and started asking,

“Can I live with myself if I don’t try?”

That’s when everything shifted.

Not because things magically resolved -

but because I stopped outsourcing permission

to begin.

I didn’t become fearless.

I became unavailable

to lives that required me to disappear.

I didn’t lose the year.

I shed what couldn’t come with me.

And now, standing at the edge of what comes next,

I’m not waiting for hope.

I’m moving with momentum.

Because 2025 didn’t break me.

It stripped me down

until there was nothing left to hide behind

except who I actually am.

And this time -

I’m not looking away.