2020: Year of Survival

For the 12th year, I sit down to think about my year and write that down. 12 years is a very long time, and you would think my writing has improved. We grow older, our skills improve, and most years what I came to conclude was how much I had grown. I reflected on my various fortunes and all the things I learned: some years I managed to build a career as a journalist in the Middle East withstanding prosecution, some years I got a couple of Masters Degrees. Most years I could at least look back at my advanced skills. And then... 2020: I survived 2020. I am still here. Yaaaay! When I think back at the biggest moments, the Lady in the water finding peace at Bly Manor and purchasing new yoga pants online come to mind. This year wasn't about progress, this year was about waiting. It was about holding on when it seemed like there was nothing worth fighting for. It was about survival.

Let me tell you something about my year 2020: I started it with a therapist who was going to help me work through the last 31 years of life. Childhood and the years since coming to England, it turns out, have caused something they call trauma. I'm not saying this as a complaint, you guys probably all have your fair share, whether you know it or not. My issue was that I couldn't cry. I hadn't cried since spring 2019 and then only because I had pretty good reason. I came home from a party on NYE 2019, ringing in what we expected to be the Roaring Twenties, and unloaded a gallon of tears. I knew I had so much work to do. I knew emotions would be coming up if I continued this work I had started. Let me tell you, this year I did not struggle to cry. 

I am not a person who usually struggles with mental illness and I am not now, so those who want to read this account of a year with those glasses on are wrong. What we all had to go through has nothing to do with a chemical imbalance in the brain, it has to do with disillusionment about what we thought we were. Most of us were on a path, and we believed things that had proven to be true, like "work hard and you will be rewarded". We lived for the advancement of our dreams, whether that is a job, finding a partner or partying in Ibiza with our friends as long as our livers allow if. And then suddenly, there comes an event, and it's not about dreams anymore. It's not even about what is achievable. It's about pausing, it's about accepting that what you were believing, what you'd been doing, is no longer true. You just have to wait. Just wait. Struggling with accepting that is not depression, it's disappointment. Disappointment is a luxury problem in 2020 but it was a problem... 

At the same time, you look around and everyone is in the same boat. You realize you have to be grateful for the things that haven't been taken away from you. Dreams are the casualty of the spoiled in 2020. I woke up every day since March 16 writing into my gratitude journal how lucky I am to still have a job. But I had never signed up to the job I was doing. It was a job, yes, but it wasn't MY job. I knew that day 2020 would bring me no closer to the skills I wanted to learn the day I accepted the job. Some skills, sure, but not what I was hoping for. Years and years I had spent investing into professional fulfilment, and there I was working 15 hour days on things that had very little to do with what I was hired to do. But I had a job. I had to be grateful. And I was still alive.

My 2020 struggle was forcing me to love things I don't love. I felt obliged to love my job because I had one. The comfort of my room became the best thing in my world although my world involved people, usually. Never in my life was practicing to appreciate the "little things" so vital. I was scared of standing still every day but ran for my life on the Heath in order to avoid cabin fever. What a problem to have, right? But despite my survival, and often prosperity and luck, I was struggling so much. So much. I had to simply accept that I wasn't going to advance professionally or privately. All the plans for my personal development, maintain a successful relationship, spend more time with the people I loved, were on hold, too. It wasn't exactly possible, was it? My most successful week was the one where I learned how to do the Crow pose. I missed so many people, sooo many, but it wasn't acceptable to complain about it because everyone missed their friends. 

Yes, readers, I can hear myself. I sound like a spoiled brat that has everything and sits in a golden cage quarantining. I managed for months to not despair over the color of my cage but I felt trapped, too. My point is not to indulge in my misfortune because, honestly, I had none of it relative to this planet, but I never do. I am the golden cage kinda girl in any year, too lucky for her own good. I created some of my own luck but man, I deserve none of the gold inside my cage. And when you feel bad regardless, shame also kicks in for feeling bad although you have it better than others. But all I was feeling was grief: grief for my old life, the people we had lost and couldn't see. And constant worry: will everyone I care about be ok? I could only make sure I don't get Covid, but what about mom? What about my pregnant sister trapped in Egypt? Will those s I love keep their jobs? I started being jealous of those #Covidiots Twitter was so vocal about because at least they didn't seem to care. I cared too much. 

The absence of hope, I learned, is the beginning of the end of everything. Covid is not the worst thing that has happened to me in life but it has robbed me of doing a bad thing with the help of those I love. Without my roommate, the treasure sitting on our rooftop for hours, days, weeks with me, there would have been days without speaking. Together, we imagined what this year meant for all the years to come. Would we stick with the path we were on that was, as of this summer, on hold, possibly gone for good? All those considerations I had to make without getting to see the people I planned to have in my future. I couldn't see my family, my boyfriend, any of my friends. All I had was hoping for the days to change. Without the hope that one day I could see them again, hopefully in the not too distant future. The dreams of better days is all there is. Maybe that's what makes today so special: turning the page has never been more necessary. 

I can look back on two years, one I just elaborated on: a year of darkness for many, of standing still and surviving until the light returns. This depiction is true for me, and I know for many of you. But I have to be careful not to discard the good which I know is the key to happiness. I am not a fan of telling people to count their blessings in a time they are feeling low, so I decided not to do another of these posts that would depict the "other" year I could look at: a year of learning how to better deal with bullshit, of the sunny days on the rooftop while locked up, a year of teaching myself valuable lessons and "becoming a better person". No, not this time. I decided to look back at an unsuccessful year. A year not to remember. I will not miss it and I will not force myself to appreciate it because I'm alive. It is pressure to love everything you are given. I encourage you to have the courage to admit to yourself that not learning Spanish this year is ok. You were busy surviving. And today a new year starts and I had 10 months to practice hope. And I have never been more hopeful. Bring on the vaccine, I'm ready for my Roaring Twenties alright!

According to Spotify, and my own perception, my most played song 2020... and feeling!

Covid Diaries: How A Virus Destroyed The Word "OK" This Year

Been a while, huh? Expression feeds off feelings, and feelings are dangerous in a year like 2020. I want to say "Congratulations!" to everyone who is still here, reading, without falling apart. Because while I watched the world fall apart this year, I tried hard to hold on to the very fragile thread my own world was hanging on. This said, consider that I have a job, a wonderful home, and most importantly, a body free from Covid-19 and any other detectable disease that has symptoms. The truth that I am one of the "lucky ones" is both devastating and unfulfilling to my own emotional household. And as I pack up my life for the 10th time in my life because keeping this house in Covid-times has proven unprofitable for my landlady, I am reminded that even a good existence is bad this year.

There are two opposing stories I can tell about 2020. The one I choose to identify with is the one where there is a global pandemic, I keep my job, I am safe, I work on great but exhausting projects and I spend a great summer with people I love. The other is the one there is a global pandemic that comes close to destroying the life of the people I love most, I watch people I don't even know lose everything and I can't do anything about it and I try to focus on my own luck by being able to turn away... but I cannot do it. It's not who I am. And I cannot change it. I am not dying myself and have been told that I need to be grateful for being "unaffected", however, it has not been easy for me to watch others do exactly that. 

Of course, my pain doesn't compare to the pain of being the one who lost a loved one. Or a business. Or a job. How I feel about my own pain is comparing a bowl of rotten Skittles to a swimming pool filled with them. My bowl full of shitty Skittles reeks and tastes like crap, sure, but it's a bowl. Of all the things that happened to people this year, my pathetic little bowl is one meal of bullshit and possible completely consumed by 2022. I should stop indulging in the pain the pandemic inflicted on my family and I. We have a very high chance of survival, bigger than most. But living in a world surrounded by pain IS pain. I see it. And it takes away all joy which, granted, is not my breath but a tough thing to lose. The threshold of pain this planet can endure is blown over and over again. 

In the beginning of the year, we celebrated great news: My sister was pregnant. In Egypt where she lives. Fast forward a few months and her partner is actually dead, we cannot get her out of the country because no flights, you know, and we have to worry about her care as Egypt isn't a huge fan of reporting a true picture of their Coronavirus cases. She's alone in Egypt, mourning a death while preparing for new life, and nobody is allowed to help her. This just doesn't happen. It's not an issue we were ever prepared to have. And hence, we were all splendidly overwhelmed. Through this all, my sister continued to teach children online, I work like a maniac but that's not new, neither is the lack of it actually being worth it. And even in these moments that teach you there is really only one thing that matters, and it's not work or (insert bullshit), you realize that even without a positive test you have lost so much this year.

Putting my own pain into perspective of the tsunami of terrible news this year has been challenging. My painfully optimistic outlook on life externally is a big pile of deception. Fake it until you make it, baby: If you can't actually enjoy life, pretend you are. We are going to do this for as long as we can because letting reality in is probably the end. I am mourning this year and everything it took from me. Covid did not take my nephew's father. Covid didn't take my boyfriend out of the country, making it impossible for me to see the only person I need. The emergence of Coronavirus did not make me work my ass off until I almost burned out. But the Coronavirus is taking away our opportunity to heal from these things. But look at me, talking about "healing" in 2020; foolish little girl thinking that healing can start while we are still bleeding.

While you might think I am not in a good place writing this, the truth is I sit here with two arms and two legs, a healthy lung as far as I know and the worst thing that happened to me this week is that a concert I had tickets for does not happen. I am definitely ok. However, my heart hurts knowing that whatever I feel is on the lower end of the spectrum of possible pain felt in 2020. If I am the lucky one, the one who had an easy ride this year, something is insanely wrong. When the life I have lived this year, with an excruciating amount of loss and pain, is branded "the good life", an inflation of meaning is happening to the word "good". When being ok means surviving until the vaccine hits the veins, "ok" has become a dire existence. Even John Mayer knew that waiting for the world to change is not where we should be at, yet here we are, trying to minimize scars rather than preventing damage. The damage is done. Non-negotiable. We just have to wait to see how bad it is.