A 2020 Reflection: Where Do We Go From Here?

We made it to November. Or November has finally (dear God, finally) made it to us. It’s been a helluva year, hasn’t it? I think we can all manage to agree on that. 2020 was clearly not taught to practice proper manners, or proper pace when it comes to executing traumatic events. I don’t know what your experience has been like, but for me, most of the year has felt like I’ve just been along for the ride—like I’ve just succumbed to being forcibly pushed downstream by proverbial rapids that I have no real ability to manage or control. I’ve spent a lot of time just going through the motions, resigning myself to the aggression of the violent river that has been this year.

For being someone who cries without fail at any commercial involving an old man at Christmastime, my feelings have been shockingly quiet this year, simmering just below the surface; easy to numb. I was jobless for two months—this was my first big personal loss of the year—but I was able to go back to work sometime mid-May. When I did, it felt like maybe everything would go back to normal. Like maybe the pandemic had packed all its bags and finally got the hint that nobody really wanted it at the party (dear goodness, isn’t two months long enough?!). It felt like a fresh (albeit masked and socially distanced) start. 

I quickly learned, however, that as unideal as the first two months of living in the presence of a pandemic seemed, trying to navigate constant change in the real world has been undoubtedly harder than being predictably locked inside my apartment. The way I’ve handled it over the last couple months has been to decidedly not handle it. 

I wake up, go to a co-write, attempt to write a song, go to work, get off work, drink ciders until I feel a little lighter and fun again, then go to sleep and do it all over the next day. Ignoring the reality of this year and all of my sadness and disappointment in the name of not having an absolute mental breakdown felt completely fine and necessary until suddenly it didn’t anymore.  

One morning a couple weeks ago, I grabbed a coffee from The Well and drove 3 miles south to Radnor Lake right as dawn was beginning its initial ascent. Once upon a time, during an autumn from a past, pre-2020 life, this was a weekly ritual for me. I loved watching the leaves commence their seasonal dance, enthusiastically blooming with oranges and reds before falling to retirement on the gritty dirt. I loved the solemn quiet that was only broken by a handful of those willing to face the modest implications of the coming Tennessee winter—photographers hoping to catch shots of owls taking flight and older women gossiping breathlessly on their power walks. The start of the trail greeted me like an old friend.

And as an old friend does, it pierced me with the inability to be fooled by my calculated bullshit. Coffee in hand, watching the sun skip in and out of tree branches, the turkeys hissing at the empty path, I felt like I was really seeing myself for the first time in eight months; really seeing the contents and depths of the disappointment that I had made myself an expert at avoiding. Sadness finally found a spot to break open within me. 

“What were you hoping for this year?”

This question hung solemnly in the air between flickers of tempered sunlight. I thought back to January. A strong gust of promise. Rock climbing; old friends and red wine; a surprise party (for me!). Sitting in a coffee shop, blissfully lining my planner with significant dates and goals I had pre-destined for the year. The opening number to The Best Year Ever, January seemed.

I thought back to February. New friends and dive-y east side bars; combing the internet for music venues to play at in the fall; that one time we watched the snow fall in clumps outside a rounded, frosty window after singing every word at a Ryan Hurd show. My heart swollen with excitement.  

I remember telling my roommate that I felt like this year would be the year that we would look back and everything would be different. Just a feeling I had deep in my gut. And just like the Eternal Romantic I am, I never suspected that this could be a bad thing. I assumed it meant that our careers would soar and that we would collect plane tickets and travel stories and maybe meet some boys who wouldn’t turn out to be Huge Bummers.  

I thought about all of these things as I walked around the lake, longing greatly for the hopefulness that once accompanied me everywhere but is now nothing more than a stranger, just Someone I Used to Know. What did I hope for this year? I hoped it would be different in almost every way.

I’ve spent a lot of time the last couple weeks since that fateful morning just being sad. Holding space for grief, as my therapist would say. But I’ve also been trying to figure out where I, where we, go from here. There’s no use building a permanent residency in the theoretical what if scenarios of the past, but there is also something to be said about not being able to execute being present in the now if we choose to ignore the grief we were dealt this year. There has to be some sort of balance, and I’ve been doing my best to unearth it.

In my experience, grief requires two things—acknowledgement and acceptance. It doesn’t do very well being ignored. It tends to act like a three-year-old who refuses to stop kicking and screaming at the floor until you finally turn around and recognize whatever need they are presenting to you. We must feel our disappointment and fear and sadness. We must make room to say that this year was not what we wanted it to be; it is not what we hoped for. We must reflect and talk it out with those closest to us over coffee or wine or pints of ice cream. And then, once we have made adequate space for real reflection, we must begin to move forward.  

I recently spent a couple days at a condo in Kiawah, an island about twenty-five miles outside of Charleston. The first morning I was there, I filled up my coffee mug, pulled a sweater on, and camped out in a balcony chair overlooking the ocean, scribbling points of gratitude in a journal. Since becoming acquainted with my sadness, I have been asking myself what I want the last two months of 2020 to look like. What do I want more of? What do I want less of? How do I want to fill my time? As I sat watching the sun bathe the ocean with strips of silver metallic, the fall air gently nipping at my exposed skin, only one thing came to mind: I want peace.

I had a lot of expectations that this year simply did not live up to. They all involved things that I thought I could control but ultimately found out the hard way I couldn’t. Trips and concerts got cancelled; I didn’t get to release music the way I wanted to; I ended up filing for unemployment: all things I thought were much more within my power than they actually are. What I’ve learned is this: moving forward into the last two months of 2020, I want to concentrate on what I can actually control: cultivating an environment that breeds internal peace and rest and joy. I cannot go back and change what has happened the last ten months (neither can you), but we can both choose how to proceed from here. 

So I will unapologetically take opportunities to sit on a beach with margaritas and good company. I will choose a book or baking a new recipe over scrolling through my phone when I can. I will burn candles that smell like pumpkin and spend mornings writing, if for no other reason than because words make me really, really happy. I will put my little Charlie Brown Christmas tree up and take some deep breaths and spend more energy working on being a good friend than comparing myself to strangers on Instagram. When sadness comes up, I will not stuff it down in hopes that it will go away. I will be kind to myself because, my goodness, this year has been hard enough without self-shaming.

I wonder if you can find some pockets of peace in the last two months of 2020, too. Make a list of things you want more of; a list of things you want less of. Stop and reflect; acknowledge and accept; make some holiday cookies and move forward.