The Lost Year
I have a confession to make. I didn’t hate lockdown. The introvert and homebody in me enjoyed the slow down and the days of quiet in my own space. Lockdown for me was the giant pause that I needed. I didn’t realize this of course when it started. I was just like everyone else: scared, slightly panicked, shell-shocked. Im still a bit shell-shocked. It’s crazy to look back at where I was when this year began and where we all are collectively now. Time lost meaning is so many ways this year. This entire year in fact feels… lost. A strange ellipses in time. 2020 feels like it started three weeks ago and has lasted three years all at the same time.
The world changed right before our eyes and we witnessed it in real time. I often ask myself if this is what it feels like to live through a historic moment. A global sea change where it feels like a clear before and after. There was 9/11. I remember when it happened and in the moment it felt like the world was ending. But this...this felt different. Bigger and I daresay scarier. This was the entire world experiencing the exact same thing at the exact same time.
It was a reminder of how small this world actually is. We like to think that it is massive and that we are all scattered across it like grains of pepper. Covid has shown us how connected we all are, for better or worse. I had high hopes that it would connect us for the better. And in some ways it has. And in a lot of way it has not. It has uncovered and revealed a lot of unpleasant and sad truths about human nature: that we can be selfish, that we can be averse to being uncomfortable for short periods of time even if it’s for the greater good. But it has also shown our ability to adapt and to grow in new circumstances. I learned a few years ago to not enter a new year with high expectations. Expectations are dangerous things. But instead, to enter a new year with INTENTION.
Personally, this year has been a roller coaster of feeling like the abyss ahead of me was both exciting and fucking scary. And it depended on the day which one it was. I turned 40 this year. And on turning the big 4-0 I felt quite good. It didn’t look anything like how I wanted it to or planned it to. The plan was to be in Paris eating copious amounts of cheese. Instead I spent it eating macarons and a takeout steak dinner while watching TV. It wasn’t a bad birthday. And I was quite proud of myself for releasing any feelings of unmet expectations (there’s that word again) and just taking the day for what it was. I struggle with this when it comes to birthdays.
As the year has gone on my feelings about the abyss morphed. In July I was let go from the job I’d worked in for nearly 14 years. I was shocked at being let go, but I wasn’t upset. My feelings were more complicated than that. I felt equal parts shock, relief and panic. Panic in that way you always feel when something as important as a steady job and income are no longer there. Relief in the way that you feel when you finally get out of that toxic relationship you have grown too comfortable in. Sure, they broke up with me and that hurt a bit. But they did me a huge favor in doing something I probably wouldn’t have had the courage to do myself. The universe is like that sometimes. It certainly has been for me. When I am too afraid to make the leap I am often pushed off the ledge by circumstances out of my control. And for the first time ever it didn’t scare me like it always had. Change has always scared me. I am good at it in the sense that I can adapt. But it scares me in the way that it scares most people: the uncertainty of the unknown. I didn’t feel that. At first anyway.
I feel it now though. Not in the dramatic “what will become of me way?!” Though my anxiety can let that shitty thought creep in sometimes as well. I feel it now in that way where you have been afforded an opportunity and the possibilities are so endless that you are slightly paralyzed. I remind others to be kind to themselves during this time but I sometimes do not afford myself that same grace. I think “you should have this shit figured out by now”. When in reality I was in a job for 14 years and I should allow myself the time I need to figure out what I want.
My lost year has felt like a walk through a dark forest with peaks of light shining through here and there. At moments scary, at moments quiet and peaceful. But with each step I am grateful. Grateful for my family and their well-being, my own well-being and that despite it all I have been carried by forces far more powerful than me. I want to remind you - and myself - that fear can be a catalyst. That it can be the very forest itself. But we can walk through it. We aren’t beholden to it in anyway. And that fear isn’t always a bad thing. It can be a means to survival. And a call to action.
This was a hard year for so many people, in so many ways. Specifically those who have lost and continue to lose loved ones to Covid. Those of us who continue to be unable to see our loved ones. And who have passed birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays away from our families. And so I will reiterate to you and to myself this: Allow yourself grace when you look back at this lost year and at the year to come. This ellipses that the world took. Not all of us will come out of it speaking a new language or with a shiny new hobby or business. And that’s okay. Give yourself grace and carry it into this new chapter.
Happy New Year.
