2025 Kicked Me in the Teeth

Usually I do a year-end Instagram post, and usually I actually post around the new year.

Usually, I post some of my favorite photos from the year and write caption taking a broader look back on the impact it had my life.

This year I wanted to do something a little different. I’ve grown to largely hate social media and I love writing, despite my job managing social media, and the amount of time I actually spend writing (practically none).

Long story short, this year kicked me in the teeth.

2025 has been one of the most challenging years of my life, and I’ve considered myself a very resilient person who has been through some stuff. I’ve been knocked down and still gotten back up (with the help of The Lord) numerous times. But this one just had me close to my wits end.

This is a rather long post, and while I tried to make it entertaining, it is mostly for my own reflection and documentation. If it’s not something you’re interested in reading, no hard feelings, I don’t usually read every word of other people’s yearly recaps, either.

January

Homeless. Jobless.

That’s how I started the new year.

When I say homeless, I mean homeless in the same way as described in my How I Survived Being Homeless post. We had a place to live, but it was extremely short term and was not our own. Since we expected to have to move for Andrew’s job, which never came, we were avoiding signing contracts or getting stuck in one place. We stayed in furnished short-term rentals, month-to-month and frequently moving around as we fought for the best deal.

The place we had in January was particularly miserable.

It was the cheapest we could find, but we were confined to a single, dark bedroom, a bathroom intended to be shared with any other tenants renting rooms, and a poorly equipped kitchen without a dishwasher, a lizard that fried the A/C unit 3 days in, an electric door lock that locked us out of our own room, and a pipe that disconnected and flooded under the kitchen sink.

I had done what I felt was the right thing by keeping the family updated on our plans, including that we would be looking to move at the end of the year if nothing had come along. The family replaced me sooner than I was ready to be replaced, and I felt I was being punished for doing the right thing.

But this ended up being a blessing in disguise. We realized that job was the only thing actually keeping us in Florida, and we made the decision to move in with my sister up in Georgia where we would be stable and have a much lower cost of living.

February

We made the move!

As a newlywed couple, having a roommate was not our ideal, even if (especially if?) that roommate was family. My sister also had probably not wanted her sister and brand new brother-in-law as roommates. To make matters even more tense, my brother had not fully moved out. Essentially, we had four people’s belongings in a very small two bedroom, one bath apartment.

Oh yeah, and three cats.

We had to make two trips to complete the move. The first trip we took separate cars and just got our most important belongings and the cat up to Georgia. Within the last few hours of the drive, Andrew’s power steering went out, which made for an exhausting drive, and worries of an expensive repair.

The second trip we took my car down, and paid some movers to load our stuff into a U-Haul, which Andrew then drove back to Georgia. We did not have a good experience with the movers in Florida. Luckily for everyone I do exercise some restraint when it comes to my temper.

February was not all bad though.

Andrew went job hunting and found a job very quickly (though it did take a few weeks for them to actually get him onboarded and started).

We also enjoyed a lovely Valentine’s Day and a 25th birthday for me. The birthday sent me spiraling to be honest, I was no longer in my early twenties, and that was difficult for me to make peace with.

I took a trip back to Florida and spent a long weekend with two of my dear friends. We spent some great time together, visited Universal, and went kayaking with manatees.

My mother and grandmother also paid us a visit, and we enjoyed a trip to the zoo, and a trip to the aquarium. Andrew and I love animals, so we never turn down a visit to either.

March

March was actually a pretty good month for us! I had still not found a decent job, but I was putting in a few hours at the local church to bring home a few bucks, and was actively looking for a nanny job.

We kicked off March by visiting with friends from out of state. With both couples being tight on funds, we shared a lovely picnic on Lake Lanier, and visited a few shops nearby.

My youngest brother also ended his trip to New Zealand and came back to the states, staying with us for a few nights. We went back to the zoo and aquarium – my mom had bought Andrew and I year passes to both. We got my siblings in for free, claiming they were our kids.

Just kidding.

They did get a discount though.

We visited our grandparents and uncle on our dad’s side (Andrew could not join for that visit, sadly) and played a LOT of games together.

We capped off the month with Andrew’s birthday! I really wanted to surprise him, so Delly helped me blow up a bunch of balloons, and I decorated the living space with his card and gift, streamers, a sign, and a big helium balloon.

April

April was when things (and by things I mean shit) really started to hit the fan.

I was at home when I get a call from Andrew. Already alarm bells are going off in my head. We’re texters. Especially Andrew.

He had been in an accident. Thankfully, he and the guy in the other car were totally fine. But my Cadillac, my taste of luxury, the car I’d been gifted by my parents when I moved out at 19, and had carried me from Maine, to Minnesota, Texas, Florida, and finally Georgia (Not to mention all the places in between), was wrecked.

I loved that car. Not as much as my first Caddy (also wrecked while being driven by someone who wasn’t me), but I was quite fond of it.

A few days later, I got a call from insurance. They had put together an offer, which was incredibly low. I made that clear to the agent, who said I could contest it. So I took a few days, did my own research, and sent them an email with cars I considered much more comparable to my car (they didn’t even compare it to cars of the same model or year it their initial assessment). Then began the waiting.

We had to spend quite a bit of money that month on rental cars. It was less than what we would have spend on Ubers, but still an expense we had not anticipated or wanted.

I had finally found a reasonable part-time job at the local JC Penny, which I had to postpone a day or two due to the wreck, but at least we had new income to help offset everything. My sister was also gracious enough to either drive me to work or let me borrow her car when I needed it.

We ended the month with our first wedding anniversary! It was a MUCH needed mini vacation out of the little apartment, which remember, we still shared with my sister.

May

We FINALLY got a reasonably offer from insurance for the wrecked car (it was worth the wait and worth the fight). I officially said good-bye to my Cadillac, but at least it was a good trade.

The month was a bit more fun. Aside from work, there were some visits with friends, a trip out of state for a bridal shower, my friend Hope and I continued our podcast, some other fun happenings I won’t mention. We even got to see some of my old high school squad up in Pennsylvania, where the last member of our group got married.

I also decided it was time to test the waters again and try to get a job where I could actually use my learned and self-taught skills.

June

June started out great! We went to another wedding, this time in North Carolina where I was a bridesmaid and Andrew got to go to the bachelor party, and help with the music during the ceremony.

I actually got a new job! It had been years since I’d been able to work full time, remote, doing what I enjoyed. And extra bonus points, I work for a company where I don’t have to hide my political and social beliefs, which is incredibly freeing.

However, June took a bad turn. Pipes burst in our walls, leaving huge stains and untold water and mold damage that our landlords did not seem concerned enough about to investigate. A storm knocked a heavy branch onto our “new” car, cracking the windshield, which is no longer fully covered by insurance. My sister, who was starting school a few hours away, moved out with her two cats, which was nice space-wise, but would immediately double our living expenses as we fully took over the apartment lease.

I started my new job and took a trip to Salt Lake City for training. Just a few days later, my mom was visiting to help my sister move out of our current apartment and into her new one. Since most of the furniture in there was hers, the apartment was mostly empty, and Andrew and I were at our storage unit getting our own furniture, when we got a panicked phone call from my mom.

Our apartment building was on fire.

Mom grabbed the cat and Andrew’s flight bag and ran out. We didn’t know it, but Mom had her AirPods in when she called us, and had run out of the apartment without even grabbing her phone, so she was not answering our texts. We had no idea where the fire had spread, if our unit was on fire, and if the $5000 in cash Andrew had just pulled out of the bank and had left on the kitchen counter was about to go up in flames.

With no word and nothing but our speculations to go off of, we decided to finish loading what we had in the car, and make the drive home.

Firetrucks and firemen were all over the place, but thankfully they had caught the fire fairly early. Our unit had not caught on fire at all, but because of our location in relation to the unit where the fire originated, there was severe smoke and water damage.

Our unit was uninhabitable. We were allowed to gather some bare essentials and stayed at a hotel.

July

We ended up relying on the kindness of our church for about two weeks. Even though we were displaced for that long, we still had to pay full rent, and what ended up being a $400 electricity bill from the fans and dehumidifiers the landlords put in. We saw blessings throughout, but this was an incredibly hard time. My sister took the cat, who randomly decided to get a cyst on her paw and needed a visit to the vet.

Eventually it was determined we would need to move into a new unit. We got a smaller apartment, but still paid almost as much as we did for our previous, larger unit. Frustrating, but we have been making it work.

We did get to go to a 4th of July party, visited the zoo again for a 21+ night, and Andrew really worked his butt off moving our belongings into our new unit while I worked out of coffee shops at my new job.

August

My dear friend Hope was pregnant at this time, and I was able to visit her for just over a week and attend nearly all her baby showers. We had a wonderful time chatting, playing games, and even recorded a fun in-person episode of our podcast. Andrew was able to make it up for a little over 24 hours to attend one of the showers

September

I visited my sister early September (Andrew was doing something, I don’t remember), and together we visited Stone Mountain and their huge Yellow Daisy Festival.

Towards the end of the month, Andrew’s parents visited for a weekend. This brought another trip to Stone Mountain and the aquarium. I was also able to briefly see my brother as he made his way down to Florida for some training.

We ended the month with a visit to a local car show, which brought cars from all over the state. Andrew, as a car guy, especially enjoyed this.

October

Andrew and I started attending a new church, feeling our spiritual and community needs were not being met at our current one. We actually very quickly joined a brand new group with other young married couples our age, who were also without many local friends.

We did some shopping (thrifting) for Christmas decor, our first holiday decor shopping since marriage, made a visit to my grandparents on my dad’s side, carved some jack-o-lanterns, and attended a “Halloween Music Bingo” night at a local restaurant, hosted by a friend. The year started to make a turn for the better.

November

We spent Thanksgiving with mostly family on my dad’s side. We stayed with my grandparents and went to dinner with my uncle and his family. I took over the traditional recipe of my grandmother’s party potatoes, and made a new personal favorite of Cranberry Tirimasu.

December

Andrew and I have a disagreement about when Christmas decor should be put out. He thinks the sooner the better, I say the holidays should not run into each other, and Thanksgiving and Christmas are each deserving of their own time.

As the woman, I won out.

We got our very first Christmas tree, and enjoyed putting up our very first decorations as a couple.

I also made a very brief trip back to Austin, TX, for an eye appointment, and stayed with my friend which was a nice visit.

We travelled to St. Louis for Christmas and stayed at Andrew’s parents’ house. We were quite busy the whole time (everyone wanted a piece of Andrew it seemed), but still managed to visit my cousins in the area. Our visit included a trip to the Gardens Aglow at the local botanical gardens, which was great, a trip to the shooting range, and visits with Andrew’s friends and more extended family.

In Conclusion

This year was a hard one. Every year has its rough patches and challenges, but this year I felt as though we weren’t even recovered from the last major challenge before the next one hit us full force. Both of us struggling with finding good work, expenses only going up, a car wreck, and our apartment building catching on fire wasn’t even everything that happened. There were several more burdens in the second half of the year I didn’t mention, but were still significant and contributed to the overall sense of getting kicked in the teeth.

Writing it all out and looking back at old photos did remind me of the good, uplifting parts of the year, even if they often felt overshadowed by the troubles in the moment. The day to day was a struggle most of the time, because I’m very good at looking at the bad, and thinking of ways it could get even worse. I told Andrew I am constantly operating with the mindset that we were just one misstep or one more major trial away from being homeless in the streets. Thankfully, that never happened, likely due to my intense and constant worrying (hey, you can’t prove otherwise).

I feel as though our family has finally reached a sense of stability and normality. We’re actually building a local friend group, we both have good jobs we like and where we’re appreciated, we’ve found a church we enjoy, and we’re even making enough money to start slowly paying off some debt.

I still look towards the future. I long to build something more with my husband, but I’m trying to look back at the year and say “See? Everything was a part of God’s plan to get us here.”

And that does help.