2020

Wow. It is very hard to believe 2020 has come to an end. At least for me, a year has never been this significant in my life. I mean I had a year where my life changed quite a bit, but I always thought things happen when they need to, and not once blamed the year on my calendar for anything. This year, however, I felt like I didn’t even know what the hell was going on. At first, I had literally the greatest first months of a year, to an extent that I was even surprised how incredible it had been. The funny thing is most people around me said the exact same thing about the first months of 2020. Well, turns out we would eventually get what we thought we deserved. This doesn’t mean that it was already an extraordinary year by then, things were pretty much average, but travelling, enjoying life outside, and spending time with family & friends are things now we all know that are amazingly valuable. Maybe at the time, I was not feeling that great, I don’t even remember. Probably there were moments where I was having a hard time deciding what to wear to prom, or complaining about the university application process, but little did I know that those times would stay as the better parts of the year.  

When the lockdowns first came, I was kind of thrilled, to be honest. Of course, I was sad that many people were suffering, but looking at the bigger picture, I was just fascinated to see the world transforming to a depressing sci-fi version of it. My irrational positivity about the situation could have resulted from the kid inside me who deeply appreciates science fiction comics, movies and video games, or the fact that I realized I went to Chinatown in London to get ice cream every day and then stayed with two Chinese tourists in Edinburgh just to turn with a “heavy flu” back home and most probably had immunity. I thought I could spend my days exercising at home, having some family time, read the books I have been procrastinating for a while, and do all the other things I was usually too lazy to do. Surprisingly I managed to do some of them for a while, but at some point, I also jumped to the Netflix & Pringles train. My social interactions got limited to FaceTime calls with friends, and staying at home alone started to get in my head. After a couple of months, I had a summer where everyone tried to act like everything was alright and normal but actually had an emptiness in their soul.

The sad thing is, this was more than half a year ago, and the situation is in some ways even worse now. Studies show that this generation has been facing traumatic psychological effects, and frankly, we were already a pretty messed up generation. Although I solely focused on the pandemic that defined the year, in 2020, we also had lots of different things happen all around the world. I think the Black Lives Matter movement was also a very important milestone that could define nearly any other year on its own, and we should never forget the chain of events regarding it but only examine deeper even when we try our best to forget about this past year. That showed us how good we are at both dividing and unifying, even in an exceptional year. All in all, there is no way to put it kindly folks: This year sucked. I can’t wait for better times, and I want to say “thank you” to 2020 for the lessons that you have thought us, and “fuck you” for everyone you have hurt.