Looking to the Future

“My bones and my brain and my heart would just crumble if it wasn’t for that swirling wind of nothing in me that keeps me moving and moving.”

Carolyn Ferrell, "Proper Library"

Bitterness is a slow killer.

There are so many godawful things going on in the world right now. As in, even more than usual. It almost seems petty and weird to talk about personal bitterness at the moment. And yet, it seems important.

One thing about being stuck in quarantine (more or less) for over a year is that you’re stuck inside with — yourself. Your own fears, your own hopes, your own mistakes, missteps and misdeeds. There’s no easy escapism like there is when you can go outside and temporarily forget about your problems.

Because of this, I sometimes feel I’ve lost a year of my life. And this means that it’s easier for me to still be bitter about things that happened a year ago.

You know that popular saying that “time heals all wounds”? What does that look like in a year like 2021, when time doesn’t even seem to have the meaning it used to have? What does that look like during a time when every day looks more or less the same, you find yourself pacing the same hallway over and over, and you don’t remember the last time you had a quality face-to-face conversation with someone you didn’t live with?

I don’t want to think that this past year has stunted my emotional or personal growth, but part of me wonders if it has. I wonder what the implications of this pandemic will be for all of us, including those who’ve had to bury someone over the past year. Resentment, survivor’s guilt, recklessness, trauma… will we address it all? Or will we just be grateful when we get to some semblance of “normal” and try our best to pretend 2020 never happened?

History has shown that the latter option usually wins out. I hope history is wrong, though — just this one time.

-D.