2014 is over, and a new year has begun. Hopefully 2015 will turn out slightly better than last year. 2014 was a year full of trials and tribulations if you care to be dramatic about it. My back giving up on me again, a relapse. But the worst blow of all was losing two very close friends. One last spring, and the other just barely two months ago.

Masy was a wonderful and strong young woman who I met in my self-supportgroup. I've been attending the self-supportgroup for two and a half years now and made lots of new acquaintances. One of the rules at the centre is that we never spend time together outside group. Despite this, or because of it, I grew close to Masy. Our stories were very similar. Anyway, Masy had suffered from both Bulimia and self-harm since her early teens, it was how she coped with what she was going through. She was finally recovering and made progress practically every session. Just to clarify, the support center is not specifically for eating disorders or self harm.  But all the years of purging had taken a toll on her body and one day her organs just gave up. I was completely stunned. One week she was alive and happy, the next she was found in her apartment dead from multi organ failure. Had this been a few years ago, I know I would have relapsed. All these years I've been terrified to feel the pain, fearing it would suffocate me. But instead of relapsing, I dealt with the pain by taking long walks as soon as the grief grabbed hold of me. Still, I had a few months when I couldn't really take initiatives. Of course the pain grew less and less and finally I could talk about her again without getting choked up.

Olly, the other one, held a special place in my heart. No-one really understood just how close we were. It was one of those cases where age didn't matter. He was 70, I'm 28. He was one of my mothers oldest friends and we spent many hours together riding in the woods, having heartfelt talks, heated discussions during dinner parties etc. He was one of the few people who really understood what I went through, living with intense physical pain himself. A few years ago he got sick and lost his short term memory. Some people found it very awkward talking to him, but I didn't. He had a favorite song that he used to quote, Diana Krall's Pick yourself up and do it again. I've been thinking of getting a tattoo of those words in memory of him. The pain of losing him is still very fresh, and at his memorial service last weekend I could finally cry. It was a real relief.

What's changed is that now I'm strong enough to realize that although self-harming might give me temporary release, and that's the key word really, temporary, it will not bring neither Masy nor Olly back. Even if the emotional pain sucks while it lasts, it always ends at some point or another.