2020, 20/20
My hindsight is not 20/20 for 2020. It is still a work in progress, a quick intake of breath before another year crippled by disease. But keep reading.
2020 started with illness. I sat in a cafe and flirted with the guy I was dating, only to have him tell me that he was seeing someone else, too. That he’d rather be with her.
‘But you’re really cool.’
Okay, I thought. This is news that will hurt in just a little bit.
2020 was going to be a ‘clean’ year for me. But when I got home I destroyed my upper arm. I hacked into it with all I had. The next day, in Urgent Care, I admitted this to a doctor and he called the police.
It was a pleasant conversation. Oh, gosh, officer. I’m just so. Burned out at my job! I guess I’m just a girl who’s a bit lost, oh my goodness, it’s all good!
‘Are you taking meds?’ Why, yes! Xanax!
‘Ah - a six pack in a pill.’
Yes, officer. Sure.
It got worse. I was 51/50′d at the ER just a few days later, after my sister told me to stop talking to her. I’m not going to elaborate. This was in February.
I remember distinctly watching an Asian girl across from me in the ER. She was wearing a mask, the first person I’d seen in 2020 doing this. I remember staring at her in pity. What a thing, to feel threatened by the air you breathe.
In the mental hospital, your cell phone is taken away. The only means to contact someone outside of the ward is through a pay phone. My sister called me and told me that things would never be the same between us. My mom called me - I had hoped she wouldn’t find out about the ward - to tell me it’s all in my head. Again. We’ve been through this, mother. For twelve years it’s been ‘time to grow up.’ Imagine my voice cracking, repeating STOP over and over until I sobbed and bascially threw the pay phone back in its cradle.
The nurses didn’t come after me. Doctor: the nurses saw you crying. Then why didn’t they come after me?
Cue April. The month of magical thinking. I jumped on a website called “Prose.” and started ranting about having to endure quarantine for a whole month until things would go back to normal. So goes: oblivion. But how could I have known? Typing, typing. So it goes.
I find that happiness is boring. Who remembers sitting on the back deck, drinking a margarita and watching the sunset, when you can remember being carted away in an ambulance and spending $2,500 to go two blocks to the ward? It’s just so much more - real.
But happiness is real, too. I met my boyfriend in June, through a friend. I’ve hung out with friends, social-distanced style. We’ve gone pumpkin picking. It’s October, fyi, and it’s still sunny and warm in California. I got a job in June that I enjoy. I’m moving into a new apartment soon, a beautiful studio downtown. I’m getting a dog, the one I’ve always wanted. I’m getting a new therapist - I made that phone call, finally.
2020. What a year. And as for hindsight being 20/20?
Maybe there’s some realness in this new normal.
My 2020
Patience: My year started with this unsavory trial. Waiting to hear whether I’d be hired for a part-time job at a public library in addition to my full-time gig as a school librarian.
Panic: I got the job and worked evenings and on Saturdays. It was not the picnic I’d envisioned! But I never missed and filled in when flooding hit our town, closing schools.
Cramming: I’d worked elections to carry on my grandmother and her mother’s volunteer work. For the first time I agreed to work the March Primary as Officer of Election. Yikes!
Excitement: Attending an all-day in-service on Women’s Suffrage was most scintillating! Sharing the learning with my faculty by enlisting ‘actors’ to bring it alive - awesome!
Uncertainty: Submitting for work as an ‘extra’ for films was always iffy, but fun. If hired, would I find a sub for my personal day? Then I found I wasn’t selected, after all.
Unpredictability: School systems were closing here and there due to COVID-19. Then one Friday came an announcement that our county schools were to be out for 2 weeks. The next day I worked my last day at my part-time job, as it was shuttered for weeks, as well. These 2 weeks turned into 7 months, a little at a time. My school library job I conducted remotely through May. The public library where I worked was closed for 6 weeks after which I resigned. In July, I retired early from my teaching career.
Dependability: I tell myself I’m doing all right. I shop for groceries online and get them at ‘pickup lanes’, something I’ve never done. I walk every day. I started visiting my mom in June. I take care not to go to public venues except open air parks. I don’t go into stores or public restrooms, to restaurants, including curbside or drive-throughs. I cook for my family every day now. I get a chance to act in a virtual community theatre performance, portraying a narrator from the 1890s. This affords the opportunity to be filmed outdoors at a historic mansion and see acquaintances in person for the first time in 7 months.
But there’s one more trial I have yet to share, though I dare not dwell on it.
Heartbreak: I received a note that one of my 950 students had written about me via a former colleague in September. This child had been in Kindergarten when last encouraged by and read aloud to by me. The note is pictured, but in case it’s not clear, I will transcribe it here. The now 1st grader had misspelt a word, so I will add the missing letter to the word, ‘favorite’. “Do you want to know something? Mrs. Kelley was one of my favorite teachers! She was super nice. I love her soooooooooo much!!!!!!!!!!” You see, I was so focused on not getting this coronavirus that I had been deliberately pushing down any emotion I felt as a way of protecting myself. But it all came pouring out, rising up, tumbling down, and bubbling over when I read this note; for I love these kids, too!
Nothing New
All Ive learned this year is things never really change.
Ive hear this year refered to as the worst year in human history, the year everything fell apart, the year the world started ending. But is it?
This year sarted with me realizing I couldnt attend college. It felt like a shock at first, but is it? In eighth grade I wrote an essay for my english class about how going to college was an unnecessary and classist expense, and how I would never do it. Sure, eventually I got swindled into stressing about the Common App just like everyone else, but is it ultimately a shock to anyone that I didnt end up going?
Then Covid hit. To be honest, I wasnt shocked by it. Four years ago when Donald Trump got elected I saw a video where man stood on the street talking to Trump supporters and asked them if they would still vote for him if he stood on fifth avenue in broa daylight and shot someone. They all said yes. Now he may as well have lined up 200,000 people and shot them all, following thw shot by spitting on their dead bodies. And hee we are, days away from an election, new sureme court justice in tow, on the precipice of world war III and his cult following is holding their cup of Kool-Aid, knowing full well of the arsenic inside, and ready to down it like tequila. Diappointing? Maybe. Shocking? not a chance.
The the epidemic of protests, calls for revolution, and police violence. People saying things that made it seem like Donald Trump revolutionized racism - that Trump's America is some sort of breeding ground for violence. But this shit has been around. Police were born out of slave patrol. Literally formed to oppress, to keep in line, to marginalize. I could not be more simultaniously hearbroken and unphased by this call for revolution. This isnt Trump. This isnt new. This is America. This has always been America.
I started seeing someone in June. When he broke up with me I idnt even cry. I wasnt expecting it, it sort of came out of no where but, you know, why not? its happened so many times just like that, that I hardly even noticed. Its almost second nature to delete a contact, to block a follower, to forget sharing my life with people.
I started seeing someone again a month later. I fell in love with him and then he left me. It hurt, significantly more than the other one. It felt like my heart was being lit on fire, like my life was falling apart, but it was familiar somehow. It felt like ultimately that was where I was destined to be. That that was how I was destined to feel. Maybe not forever but for now. It felt like coming home. A home I hated, a home that made me sob in the bathroom at work when I saw something that reminded me of him, a home that made my room unbearable to be in because all I could think about was him helping me move in, but a home none the less.
All of it hurts. All of it issad and soul crushing and difficult to push through. But isnt that life? Hasnt that always been life?
None of this is new. None of it feels shocking. Maybe a culmination, maybe a more public expose of what this world is, but not a boiling point, not a eye opener, simply another notch in Americas belt, my belt, and probably your belt of shitty moments. Things never really change. Shift, maybe. But, ultimately this is the life we have all been living this whole time, most people have simply only become self aware enough to realize it now.