How I survived 2020

Here is something I will never forget: I was about 13 years old when I woke up at 11 o’clock in the evening with water up to my knees. Up to that point I have lived my life with no major natural disasters; flood has never befallen neighborhood, even during my grandparents’ time. I remember feeling eerily calm as I rushed to my parents’ room and knocked to wake them up. “May baha!” I shouted. It was completely dark, and only the sound of the swiftly rising floodwaters filled my ears.

That night, we watched our entire material life sink in the flood. We fled our house for higher ground. I remember my father hoisting me up his back and me thinking that this was a weird adventure that I will talk about someday. We spent the next two weeks cleaning up, throwing away our mud-covered things, and salvaging what we could. It was a shitty time but life went back to “normal” soon enough. Anyone can get used to anything - they just need to survive the experience.

When the lockdown was announced last March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it felt just like that day when I woke up in a flooded house all those years ago. I felt eerily calm as I shut down my business and picked up the pieces afterwards. Those first few months of the lockdown were traumatic for me - I was afraid that everything I’d built is gone, and that it was meaningless after all. Then my dog died.

I read somewhere that the best way to deal with trauma is to look at its cause as a learning experience and to learn to be grateful for it in a way. Yes, it definitely sounds easier to say than to do, but that’s the most effective way I’ve found to deal with the shit storm that is 2020. It’s a process and it can take me to some very dark places. But I’ve had to learn to trust that there is always a lesson in everything, and that I am not alone in figuring it all out.

Indeed, what helped me survive this year are the friends and family who are always here for me, and of course you who have been part of this community for so many years. You don’t know - you can’t know - how grateful I am for all of you. This pandemic has been so exhausting and it’s far from over. But knowing that we’re going through it together simply because we enjoy being beautiful and empowered has made the struggle less heavy for me. My hope is that you feel the same way.

I want you to know that you are not alone. You might feel alone, but you need to reach out to other people because perhaps they are lonely too, and need someone like you in their life.

And with that, let’s put 2020 to bed and hope that the next year will be kinder. If it is not, then we should be at least kinder to ourselves and to other people.