Dear 2020: Why I’ve decided to focus on my happiness

We asked young people across Ireland to take some time to reflect on 2020, and to put their thoughts down in a letter to themselves that we’ll send them back in 6-12 months. Find out more here. Below is one letter from a reader in Cork.

My Dear 2020 letter to myself

This year has been the weirdest year of my life. From school to struggling with personal problems and building myself into a new person. It started when the first lockdown happened and I was thrown into an unknown world. I was stuck in my room five days a week from 8:30 to 3pm just doing schoolwork and study. I felt like I was in isolation, almost like solitary confinement.

Lockdown gave me more time to be in my thoughts as everything was shut down. I started to overthink. I felt really sad and just felt alone, like I had nobody to turn to. For two or three weeks around May, I was in one of the worst states of my life. It almost felt like depression. But all my life I was subjected to criticism and insecurity and I vowed to myself that it would stop now.