2020. Wow! How my thoughts and opinion of this year have changed over the past several months.
When I first started hearing about the Corona virus, I downplayed it. Yes, it was more contagious than the flu and maybe more deadly, but it’ll turn out to be similar to the flu. That’s what I thought. I pretty quickly shifted that thinking and accepted the new facts that were coming at us. Very early on, I started calling what was happening “Coronamageddon”. I just wanted to take some of the dread away with a little humor. I was still working and we didn’t know if we’d get the virus and a lot of people weren’t wearing masks and it was stressful and Coronamageddon sounded right.
As 2020 continued to roll on and more things happened, people were talking about how horrible 2020 was and how it just kept getting worse. I was slow to get on board with that idea too. But eventually, 2020 got to me. How could it not? This has been a ridiculous year.
Schools were closed, businesses were closed, people were only leaving their homes for groceries, sports were cancelled or postponed. Even doctors were cancelling all non-urgent appointments. Just stop and think about that. Even the gates on the outdoor tennis courts we use were locked up. That’s about as intense as anything in my lifetime (and I’m not as young as I look).
Let’s pile the rest on now: Murder hornets. What a lovely name for an insect. This was a real thing. Murder hornets pose such a threat to other bees, our pollinators, that even 3,000 miles away, on the other side of the country, I was reading about these hornets and the scientists search for their nest(s).
To stick with insects, how about Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) in Michigan? I’ll bet a lot of the country had never heard of EEE, but here in Rhode Island we’ve known about it for years. Apparently, there were cases of EEE in Michigan and it was enough of a concern that people were told to stay inside. That’s two viruses in the same year that are a serious enough health threat that the Michigan government told people to stay home.
You may also be aware that large portions of California and Colorado have been on fire this year. It may seem easy to dismiss the fires because it’s become more common to hear about seasonal wildfires in the West. Honestly, that in itself should be a concern, but these fires were also worse than “normal”. I happened to be in Colorado while the fires were burning and I couldn’t see the mountains as I drove west to Boulder from Denver. If you’ve never seen the Rocky Mountains, they are real mountains. Not the stuff we have on the East coast. Those mountains should have been staring back at me on the entire drive west from the airport but they weren’t. They were hidden behind a smokey haze.
Every year many people die and every year people die that have affected our culture or have had an impact on us personally. So, this isn’t unique to the doom of 2020 but it’s still a part of it. The list of deaths that you took notice of or were affected by will be different than mine but here’s a few lives on my mind:
Kirk Douglas
Kenny Rogers
John Lewis (As an entitled white American male, I didn’t know how important this man was until after he died.)
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Tommy Heinsohn
Gerry Browe
Eddie VanHalen
Sean Connery
Toots
Hey, how about Black Lives Matter? Yes, they certainly do matter every year, but this year a lot of non-Black people finally started thinking about what Black Lives Matter means. A lot of people started opening up their minds a little bit. But a lot of people also dug in and resisted. One of those people was our president who took the opportunity to further the divide and the hatred and the fear in our country instead of using this opportunity to further the dialogue and bring about some small bit of mutual understanding.
Then the schools reopened. Whichever side of that decision you fall on, it was an added stressor in our lives. Not just making the decision but then living with it. Be careful what you wish for. If you wanted your child home and chose that option then you got it. All the time! No more breaks from each other and get ready to be the IT department and the teacher’s assistant. If you wanted your child in school, you got that too with all the exposure to other kids, with the positive Covid results and last minute school shut downs. And Covid cases continue to peak in October and November. We are not through this and schools are open now with more cases than when the schools were shut down in the spring.
But possibly the biggest stressor this year has been politics and the election. There’s enough here for me to create an entire post just about politics. I’ve been disgusted and worried and confused and even angry. I ain’t no Republican but I ain’t no Democrat either. For me, this is not just about disagreeing on foreign policy or fiscal policy or whatever your policy priority might be. This is about what we say it means to be America. This is about decency and humanity. And part of my turmoil has been how it isn’t about that for more people.
And we all have our own personal events that have added to the Darkness of 2020. For us, we were going to take a road trip in April down to South Carolina. Part of the trip was about seeing where my grandfather grew up. After a few years of trying to get this trip to happen, I’ve still never seen where he grew up. Still on the to do list. We were going to see a River Dogs baseball game while we were there too. They were affiliated with the Yankees. But, in true 2020 fashion, the Yankees broke ties with the River Dogs this month so even if we do get down there, in the future, we won’t be seeing a team of Yankees’ prospects.
Much worse than the canceled road trip was getting the phone call telling me that my friend, Mark, had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. His diagnosis came early on in the Covid mess. Cancer is never good news. Pancreatic cancer is especially never good news. But blending that up with Covid has made it more complicated. It’s been more difficult for people to visit Mark and it continues to be a factor as his holiday visitors have had to cancel their travel plans due to the ever increasing number of Covid cases.
If you kept reading because you thought I’d wrap this up with some positive tidbits or a silver lining, this is the part where I disappoint you. I’m writing about 2020! This is a piece about the Darkness that has been spreading and growing throughout the year. The Darkness that has covered us and made it hard to see the horizon.
The only positive 2020 spin I can think of is that I’m still here to write this. I never really knew what burn out meant or felt like until now. Despite being burned out, I’m still plugging along, trying my best to snap out of it, trying to get through the day and trying to appreciate the little good moments that pop up during the day. Trying just like you are. My feelings of gratitude are helping to keep me moving forward, but they are not waking me up from the burn out. Living through this year has become like walking through mud. Each step is harder, heavier and more tiring. Even if we make it out of the mud, we won’t really be done with it. We’ll still be wet, tired, and covered in heavy mud.