Dear 2016,

Well, the time has finally come for us to let you go and welcome in the new year, and I can promise you that I am not the only one to say, “Thank f*cking God." In all fairness, I’m sure that you probably didn’t expect your time to be full of chaos and crisis and probably come out as the biggest hot mess of a year anyone could ask for, but unfortunately you were. The past 12 months have been an adventure full of surprises, and you managed to keep the world as a whole on the edge of its seat just waiting to see what bad thing could happen next. You, my friend, never failed to leave us speechless.

It all started 12 months ago when the ball dropped, the clock struck midnight, people kissed, champagne bottles popped, and it was officially a new year. Just two weeks later you took Alan Rickman, one of the first of many pop culture icons and legends that you claimed this past year, and in all honesty, we really should’ve seen the downhill spiral we were destined for when we lost Professor Snape. But you didn’t stop there, along the way you took David Bowie, Prince, Glenn Fry, Doris Roberts, Muhammad Ali, Nancy Reagan, Harper Lee (author of “To Kill A Mockingbird”), and in just the last week of the year we lost Carrie Fisher, George Michaels and Debbie Reynolds. It’s to the point where Charlie Sheen is calling on God to claim our new president-elect to be your next and there’s literally a GoFundMe page to save Betty White from 2016 and yes, they have raised money (over $6000 to be to be exact).

No but really, what made you think it was OK to take Princess Leia AND Grandma Aggie Cromwell within the same couple of days? You really think people are going to take that lightly with all of the sensitivity and hostile attitudes that people have developed this past year? They’re not “snowmen” they’re “snowpeople," that shirt with “OCD (Obsessive Christmas Disorder)” was too offensive to people with OCD, and the Mall of America was wrong for hiring the first ever African American Santa Claus simply for the reason based on the belief that Santa Claus has been and always will be white. It’s almost 2017 and people immediately lock their cars if they see a black man walking by because you know he was going to rob them while they were stopped at a light, and that tan guy with a beard you saw at the grocery store is for sure a part of ISIS. Fun fact, Jesus Christ was Middle Eastern and I’d bet money that that he would be “randomly selected” for a security check at the airport.

I’m not going to take the time to try to figure out what went wrong in the presidential election because I’d be sitting here until the next race. If you’re liberal you’re wrong, if you’re conservative you’re a racist, if you’re pro-choice you’re pro-abortion, if you’re pro-gun control you’re not for ‘Merica, Hillary is a liar, Trump is an idiot; we’ve heard it all. Even though Trump ran as a joke at first and people talked so much about how much he shouldn’t be president, not even half of the United States voted when the time came. Thus followed by the repercussion of even more racial discrimination, harassment, along with fights brought on from both sides of the political parties. Yet, we still keep trying to use the phenomenal response of “it’s 2016” when a Caucasian makes an ass of themselves while telling foreigners to go back to where they came from. Now we know, it’s 2016, the year that “Build the Wall” was chanted vigorously after our new president was elected. Congrats America, you played yourself.

Now when it comes to sports, you weren’t shabby. Michael Phelps won 30 medals at the Olympics after coming back from time in rehab, the Warriors blew a 3-1 lead and the Cavs won the national championship, the Cubs won the World Series after over a hundred years, Cristiano Ronaldo was named the highest paid athlete in the world earning $50 million a year, the Browns won their first game since Johnny Manziel was their quarterback, and Cam Newton had every man, woman and child dabbing.

In terms of pop culture, you did somewhat decent. Some fire albums were dropped by Childish Gambino, Drake, J. Cole and Kid Cudi. But let’s not forget Beyoncés’ releasing of “Lemonade” that was considered to have too explicit of lyrics to be on Spotify, Kim and Kanye naming their second child “Saint," and the divorce of Wiz Khalifa and Amber Rose. I could name off more things that went wrong such as Brad Pitt and Angelina filing for divorce or the fact that one of the top memes of the year was Harambe, but I’d rather not think about how much of a “WTF” this whole last year has been.

Furthermore, 2016, it’s been an overall eventful year and I bid you ado. Hopefully you had fun these last 12 months, and I do have to thank you for the valuable lessons that I’ve learned: always have patience, and if you think you’re in a bad situation, it can indeed get worse. Thank you for all of the memories and long lasting imprints you’ve left with us, and don’t worry, 2017 doesn’t have too big of shoes to fill and we’ve already faced what was considered one of the worse years in history, so we should all get along just fine.

See you never, beautiful bastard.