Personal Reflection | The Year That Wasn't

The stillness of this year fades in and out of my mind. So strange how small our worlds have become. The grief and loss are insurmountable. But yet we hope for the future, even if we are currently still not able to make plans. Every time I thought about sitting down to write this, I became distracted or became at a loss for words. This time though, I finally put forth the effort to actually put metaphorical pen to paper.

In my worst nightmares, I never imagined a time when nothing was as it seemed, once, not very long ago. Nothing in a nightmare could have prepared me for the living hell that actually awaited. I feel almost compelled to list off all of the reasons, but we all know the reasons. There are even too many reasons to name.

Yet, in the darkest fringes of my mind, I keep getting looped on, “how do we move on from this”? What does anything beyond right now look like. How do we ever return to a life even partially resembling what we once knew? Will we again, one day, not feel like we are drowning in quick sand with every news headline?

I have never been a hopeful person, it has always been glass half empty for me. Yet somewhere, some small sliver of me tries to remain with maybe one day, we will see those that we love in person again, we will share celebrations and happy memories again, we will eat dinner at our favorite neighborhood jaunt again, and just maybe we will once again expand our small worlds to that great big world we once lived in and explore it again. Hope is all I have left, even if it is small and hard to hang onto. But it is all there is left to do.