2025 didn’t begin the way I imagined. One medical report shifted the pace of my life before the year even picked up speed. I had walked into the doctor’s room thinking I’d get a simple explanation for the discomfort I had been brushing aside. Instead, I was told I had an endometriosis cyst.
Hearing it was strangely grounding and unsettling at the same time. I wasn’t imagining my pain. I wasn’t being dramatic. I wasn’t tired because of overthinking or laziness. There was an actual condition behind the days when my body felt heavier than usual.
Once something gets a name, it’s hard to ignore it. Suddenly, the skipped gym days, the random fatigue, the stiffness during normal chores, all of it lined up and pointed towards that diagnosis.
It forced me to slow down. Not in a huge way, but enough to feel the difference. I stopped pushing my body the way I usually do. I rearranged my routine around energy levels instead of plans. Everything became lighter, slower, and more careful.
While I was still adjusting to this new pace, something completely different slipped into the year; an email I wasn’t expecting at all.
It was a regular day. Nothing special. I was scrolling through my phone the way we all do, half-engaged, half-tired, and there it was: an acceptance email.
For a moment, I couldn’t even react. I read the message twice just to be sure. My story had been selected for the Blogchatter Anthology.
I didn’t jump or scream. I just sat there absorbing it. After weeks of feeling weighed down and uncertain about everything, this one email felt like someone had quietly opened a window in a stuffy room.
That story wasn’t something I wrote during an ambitious burst of creativity. It was something I wrote honestly, on a normal day, without expecting anything from it. So having it selected felt personal. It made me feel seen in a way that wasn’t loud but still mattered.
It shifted the energy of the year, not dramatically, but enough to give me a small internal lift. I carried that feeling with me for days.
Then came another surprise. The editor of BIE Volume One reached out to all the authors from Volume 1, asking us to contribute to Volume 2 , a story about mental health, something that could support anyone going through a similar journey.
Writing about mental health is never simple, and this time it felt even heavier because it wasn’t my story. I had called her, wanting to understand what she had been carrying for so long, and the way she spoke… it stayed with me. There were pauses where she was choosing her words carefully, moments where her voice dropped, and parts where she tried to sound stronger than she felt.
When I sat down to write, none of it felt easy. I kept thinking about how deeply she had trusted me, and I didn’t want to reduce her experiences to neat sentences. Some days I managed a few lines before stopping because it felt too emotional to continue. Other days I spent hours trying to capture the feeling behind her words instead of just the events she described.
It took time. It needed time. And when I finally finished, it didn’t feel like I had completed a task… it felt like I had carried something fragile for her and tried my absolute best to place it gently back on the page, without losing the honesty she shared with me.
And then the year, in its own quiet pattern, offered another twist.
In November, I ended up writing two fiction stories for another anthology. They came unexpectedly, one from a quick idea, the other from a random late-night spark. These stories reminded me why I love writing fiction.
It allowed me to step away from real-life heaviness and slip into imagination for a while. It felt refreshing, almost like stretching muscles I hadn’t used in months.
With these two stories, something clicked. My year, which had begun with confusion and slow, uneasy days, began to feel like it had some rhythm again. Not a fast one, but steady enough to feel like progress.
When I look back now, what surprises me is how quietly everything shifted. Nothing huge happened. Nothing glamorous. No dramatic turning point. Just a series of moments, a medical diagnosis, an unexpected acceptance, a meaningful writing request, and two spontaneous fiction pieces.
Each one changed the year in small but definite ways.
The biggest realization was this: even when life slows you down, it doesn’t mean you’re stuck. You just move differently. And sometimes, that slower pace gives space for things you would’ve hurried past in a faster year.
2025 ended with something I never expected when it began: four stories heading into anthologies that will release in 2026.
Four stories that came from very different parts of my life, health, vulnerability, imagination, and pure chance.
Four stories that marked a year that felt scattered but turned out to be quietly meaningful.
The real plot twist wasn’t the publications. It was what they taught me about myself. I didn’t pause my life. I wasn’t losing my voice. I wasn’t drifting away from writing. I just needed a slower year to breathe and reset.
Sometimes, the shift isn’t loud or dramatic.
Sometimes it’s a doctor’s room.
Sometimes it’s a single email.
Sometimes it’s a message on WhatsApp.
Sometimes it’s a late-night story idea.
All these little moments added up and changed my year more than any big event could have.
2025 didn’t roar. It whispered.
And honestly, that was enough.
This blog post is part of the second prompt of the Blogchatter challenge #BlogchatterWrapParty
