2025, I don’t hate you

Everyone has started posting their highlight reels, and I’ve been watching them from a very different place.

Promotions. Engagements. Babies. New cities. Smiles I can’t relate to and loud wins wrapped up neatly in a square frame with a caption about gratitude and growth.

And I am sat here thinking, how do I even begin to explain a year where nothing looked impressive but everything changed me.

2025 was the year I completely lost myself.

At the very start of the year, words like cancer, chemo, and treatment were already part of my everyday language. They weren’t abstract or distant. They were familiar, heavy, and sitting right at the table with us. Then the language changed. New words arrived that I was not ready for. Relapse. Clinical trials. Waiting. Hoping. Bracing yourself before every phone call. Learning how quickly the ground beneath you can move without warning.

Watching someone you love go through cancer changes you in ways you don’t see coming. You carry their fear alongside your own. You learn how to smile while your chest feels tight. You learn how to function while quietly breaking. You watch strength and vulnerability exist in the same breath, and you realise how powerless love can make you. I don’t think anything prepares you for how deeply it seeps into every part of who you are.

I learned very early on this year that life does not ask for permission before it rearranges everything you thought was stable.

I don’t think people talk enough about what it feels like when your whole nervous system is switched on for months at a time. When your body never fully relaxes. When anxiety becomes the background noise to everything you do. Health anxiety became the centre of my world. Every ache felt louder. Every silence felt dangerous. My life felt paused while everything else kept moving forward.

I floated through this year. That’s the only way I can describe it. My anxiety grew quietly but relentlessly. Some days it felt like my chest was permanently tight, like I was always waiting for something bad to happen. I overthought everything. I feared everything. My mind never rested, even when my body did.

No big achievements. No major milestones. No version of myself that felt impressive or ahead or even recognisable. Just existing. Just getting through days. Just learning how to breathe through uncertainty without falling apart completely.

2025 broke me in ways I didn’t know were possible. It tested every belief I had about control, fairness, strength, and what it means to be okay. It forced me to understand that health physical, emotional, and mental is the foundation of everything, and without it, nothing else matters the way we pretend it does.

There were so many tears this year. Quiet ones. Public ones. Ones I swallowed down and ones I didn’t have the energy to hide. I cried more than I ever have in my life. I cried in cars, in bathrooms, at night when the world felt too loud, and in moments when I didn’t even know why anymore. I watched other people’s lives grow while mine felt stuck in the same place, circling the same fears, asking the same questions with no clear answers.

I also learned some hard truths about friendships. About where I stand with people I thought were close to me. About who shows up when life gets heavy and who quietly fades into the background when it stops being convenient. That hurt more than I expected, but it also gave me clarity and clarity is painful before it’s freeing.

The gym and running became the only places where my mind finally went quiet. The one place where my body could burn off the fear, the anger, the sadness, the helplessness. Every run felt like proof that I was still moving even when life felt stuck. Every workout reminded me that my body could still show up even when my mind felt overwhelmed.

I come from a broken family, but family is everything to me. That truth became louder this year. Travelling back and forth to where home is, crossing oceans to be where my heart already lives, made me realise how fragile time really is and how love stretches across distance in ways nothing else can.

If I’m honest, my biggest achievements this year didn’t look like achievements at all.

What carried me more than I realised this year was community. Running races for Cure Leukaemia didn’t just look like medals or finish lines. It became a lifeline. A reason to keep moving when everything felt heavy. Standing beside people who understood loss and fear without needing explanations changed me. It softened me and strengthened me at the same time. Being surrounded by people who had lived through their own versions of this pain made me feel less alone in mine. It reminded me that even in the worst moments, connection still exists and sometimes that’s enough to keep going.

Right now, awareness for this horrible disease matters more to me than anything else. I’m witnessing it first-hand, and I refuse to look away. If showing up, running, fundraising, and speaking about it keeps even one family from feeling alone, then it’s worth every step. I’m proud of that. And next year, I want to do more of it. I want to keep showing up for something bigger than my own fear.

Towards the very end of 2025, something shifted.

Not in a dramatic way. Just an acceptance that I am living in uncertainty, and for now, that means I’m not walking into 2026 with big dreams or loud ambitions. I’m walking into it surviving.

Maybe 2025 wasn’t my winning year. Maybe it was the year that stripped me down to the bare essentials and asked me to rebuild slowly, honestly, and without pretending.

Going into 2026, I know what matters now. Health. Family. The people you would drop everything for without thinking twice. Everything else comes second.

I know grief. I know what it means to lose someone and still have to keep breathing, keep functioning, keep showing up to a world that doesn’t pause with you. When you’ve lived through that kind of loss, your priorities change permanently. You stop fearing the wrong things. You stop treating small problems like they’re big ones. You stop pretending that plans and timelines hold more weight than the people you love.

I’m walking into this year with uncertainty beside me, but I’m not scared of it in the way I once was. After everything 2025 asked of me, fear doesn’t have the same grip. I’m not taking life lightly, I’m just not letting it overwhelm me anymore. Nothing can top what I’ve already lived through, and that truth has settled deep in my bones.

I still care. Deeply. About my work. About my health. About my mind. But I care most about being present, about loving fiercely, and about protecting what truly matters while everything else fades into the background.

2026 is still uncertain. There is still waiting. Still fear. Still unanswered questions. But I know now that I can carry all of that and still keep going. I don’t need to have everything figured out. I just need to show up as I am, on the days I can.

I wasn’t sure what to call this. I didn’t know how to wrap a year like this into a title. But I think it’s this:

2025, I don’t hate you.

Because even though you broke me, you taught me how to survive. And that, for now, is enough.

Mariam x