Oh my God, I thought to myself in panic, I’m almost thirty.

This fact dawned on me late on a Sunday morning in a messy room whilst I was trying (and failing) to build a chest of drawers from IKEA. I had moved out of an apartment with someone who I didn’t get along with into a house with three people I considered some of the few good friends (my social circle had reduced considerably due to exclusion from a clique) I had left in this town and for all of a week before the move, I had been relieved and happy, and life? Well, it was going just as I wanted. Things seemed to be looking up after a rough beginning of the year.

And then, I lost my job. I fell apart. I found myself in pieces on my bedroom floor on a Sunday, inconsolable, unable to even build a basic IKEA chest of drawers. My friends were all getting married, were settled in great jobs, some of them even had kids by now. And there was me, having moved house thrice this year, (almost) friendless, partnerless (4 year relationship that had ended this year) and now jobless. By now, I was supposed to have a full fledged career in my chosen subject (design at the time, which was of course, the wrong calling), a house, a family of my own. This had all been part of the plan from when I was 15.

So what do you do when you realise that you have strayed so far away from your life goals that there is nothing you can do to possibly come back and make that time up?

You invent new ones.

Oh don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t that easy. I spent a lot of time on my bedroom floor, sobbing and feeling sorry for myself.

Until I one day I grew sick of it. I picked myself up off the floor and sat down at my desk, made plans, called my friends (who thought at that point I was dead or a hermit). I changed every life goal I had. I crossed them out of the book I carried around since I was 15 and then threw the book away. That book was meant for an alternative universe Nikita, not me. Then, I began a new book, with new goals.

The first goal: “Learn how to love yourself again.”

And I did. I began to meditate every morning. Wake up a bit earlier. Have a healthy breakfast. Stop myself from apologising all the time. Accepted my flaws for what they are and learned to live with them. Tried to do two good things for other people everyday.I took myself on long walks out in nature. Read all the books I had been meaning to and never got around to. I began to slowly live my truth, unapologetically. Have confidence in the fact that I was a good person, and that no one could take that away from me. I decided to throw myself into the career of my dreams – writing instead of trying to be a designer again. And I travelled. I travelled more in this one year than I have in the last six.

The person I was at the beginning of this year. The jobless, loveless, broken person…I remember her. I remember how much work it took to stop being that person. I remember how much it hurt to start living my truth to the extent that I became disciplined and committed to doing it.

I do not apologise for my emotions and I do not associate with people who are fake/two faced anymore. I do not feel the need to prove myself to anybody except myself and the people I genuinely value and want to keep around because they are good humans.

I started again at almost thirty. And as I watch the sunrise again this morning, a smile on my face welcoming a new day, I would not change a minute of this year. If I did, I would honestly not be able to call it the greatest year with the greatest lessons I have ever learned.

And I would not be here, living my truth and being the happiest I have been in a long, long time.