One Year Ago Today

One year ago today I was anxiously waiting to feel a cough rise in my chest. I had flown home a few days earlier from a week in Atlanta, and I became more uncertain as the world became more afraid. When I made it through a week without any symptoms I relaxed, but only slightly. In one week, our country went from proceeding with caution to paralyzed with fear.

It was during the next week that everything shut down. Running through my city’s downtown last March, it felt eerie. Like everyone had fled in a hurry. Like we were warned that a hurricane or zombies were coming, so everyone left. And they took only the things they could carry.

All that was missing were tumbleweeds blowing through our abandoned towns.

What I remember the most from those first weeks of the pandemic is the quiet. There was a settled stillness unlike anything I’d experienced before. It was middle-of-the-night quiet during mid-afternoon in our highly populated town. Before last March, I had to be miles into the woods to ever listen to birds sing like that.

Time shifted. Minutes felt longer and days passed slowly while people talked about life being on pause. For those first few weeks it felt that way. All of the uncertainty of how long this would last made it easy to wait and wonder. So we did. And while we waited, we talked about what parts of life we had paused and what we would do when things went back to normal.

Spring came. Those last cold days of winter gave way to blue skies and warm sunshine. The changing season reminded me that even if it didn’t feel like it, time still counted. Days were passing, one by one. April was still April, even if St. Patrick’s Day decorations were still hanging in the windows of an empty and dark bar down the street.

Dissonance occurs when what’s happening in life doesn’t match what we know to be true. It’s jarring, but you have accept the things that close the gaps in order to move forward. Or else you’ll just be stuck, living in a past that no longer exists.

Last March tested our concepts of time and life. We struggled to accept that time would keep moving forward when life was on pause. And because all of us were experiencing this time-warp, cancel-or-postpone-all-our-plans world together, it was easy to delude ourselves. It’s been easier to wait for the world to go back to normal than accept that we will never go back.

Things will continue to reopen, and slowly life will become a less cautious dance. Our hesitation and our fear will linger, but eventually we will stand five feet apart [and then maybe four]. But there is never a going back to life before the pandemic. This past year will always exist, and it will shape how we all move forward.

After the first few weeks of the shutdown passed, and when the abrupt disruption to life settled, I became uncomfortable when people said life was on pause. I didn’t question what anyone meant or argue. But the way some people talked, I always felt like they were certain time was paused too.

The thing is, time never stopped. It never does, nor does it speed up or slow down when we ask. Time is constant and unshakable, even when everything around it is falling apart.

By the time summer was winding down I heard about life being on pause a lot less often. I think by then most people had closed the gap and accepted that we were living in this year whether we wanted to or not. But a lot of people were still clinging tightly to when things go back to normal. 

A lot of people are still clinging tightly to the idea of things going back to normal. But we can never go back. We can only go forward. Wishing for the past only breaks your heart.

There’s been a new phrase these past few weeks that’s been gaining momentum. I’d bet it will be short-lived, but it’s another one that makes me uncomfortable. Can you believe it’s been a year since [insert pandemic related exclamation here]? My inner asshole immediately thinks well yes, I’ve been living here in this year too. 

But before I speak, I remind myself that I have no idea how jarring this past year has been for someone else. I can’t know how mismatched their life feels to them. I only know what the year has been like for me. And that behind their uncomfortable words is a desire for connection. A hand reaching for another to hold, to feel less alone. So I choose to be kind instead.

How well we handle a storm is never a reflection of our capacity to survive. It is only a reflection of what storms we’ve already experienced before this current one. Do we already know we can tread water in battering waves and riptides? Or are we afraid and figuring out if we can swim right now, in this storm? Knowing if you can swim in choppy water makes a huge difference. If this year is the worst storm you’ve ever seen, how do you know if you can keep your head above the surface?

Sometimes I catch myself wondering why there are so many people flailing these days. Maybe you do too. Or maybe it’s the opposite and you can’t figure out how everyone isn’t falling apart. It just comes down to whether or not your past year is the toughest storm you’ve ever faced. If you’re confident the water around you is manageable.

We can’t know how petrifying a storm feels to someone else, or what their legs are tangled in below the surface. Which means there is no point trying to compare our storms and figure out whose is worse. It’s not a contest or a question worth asking. There is only one question when our water is manageable, and that is if we will hold our hand out to someone else. If we will give them something to hold onto, to feel less alone.