I turn thirty-one tomorrow. I know everyone groans a bit about turning another year older, but honestly, this birthday has me upset.

I have had an incredibly rough couple of months. There was the five-day oasis of the Grand Cayman trip (which, yes, I will get around to writing about) and some other happy moments, but for the most part, things have been pretty miserable.

I did find a new apartment. Finally. It’s a nice place at a reasonable price that’s not too far from the place I lost in the fire, and I’m moving there sometime next month. But it took a really long time to find it and the whole process was incredibly disheartening. I only lived in my old apartment for a year and it didn’t take me very long to find, but somehow in a year, one bedrooms and studios in my area became very scarce. It’s really weird how they decide what to charge for apartments—the place I ended up signing a lease on is much nicer than a lot of the more expensive places I saw. At one point I filled out an application for a place I didn’t really like, just because I had no idea if I’d ever find anything else. At another point, after finding out that an apartment, which had been listed for almost two months but that the realtor couldn’t show until a month before it became vacant, was being shown at 5 PM, I requested to leave work an hour early and showed up with about fifteen other people to see the place, discovered that the price had been raised $100/month due to demand and that the sample unit pictures in the ad looked nothing like the actual apartment, filled out the application, and found out the next day that the landlord had picked someone else.

Also, I cannot believe how rude people have been to me. I’ve had some very good realtors, but I have also had some HORRIBLE ones, including one—let’s call her Danielle Felice of New England Properties— whom I’m going to report to the Better Business Bureau. (Seriously. RUN, do not walk, if you ever have the misfortune of coming across an apartment she’s showing.) It’s really sad when I consider “actually listens to me” and “treats me like a human being” and “expresses sympathy when someone is displaced by a fire” to be positive qualities in a realtor—I cannot believe how many people did none of those things.

I have spent an unbelievable amount of time in tears recently and I’m sick of it. Even before the fire, I was lonely and hated a lot of things about myself, and the fire just made it worse. When it comes down to it, I think I am less happy right now than I have ever been in my life. Something needs to change, and I’m doing my best to make that happen, but I’m afraid that it won’t. I’m afraid everything is going to get worse and worse. That eventually I won’t even be able to hope, that I won’t have anything to look forward to anymore.

Maybe once I’m settled into the new place, it will be easier to pull myself together and move on. I certainly hope so—and I also hope that I’ll never get to the point where I stop saying “I hope so.”

Here’s to the end of the awful first year of my thirties—may things get better from here.