2020: The year of time

Writing about this year was always going to be through retrospect, it’s fake to say that it’s challenging haven to experience the realities of last year and be expected to write it in real-time when emotions, thoughts and logic weren’t fully explored - too much of life was happening for any space of it to be written about.

When I close my eyes and I visualise last year, one of the scenarios that play so vividly in my mind is being in the middle of the largest library I can think of, with all the books organised and stacked to perfection and all in order of author, genre and popularity. As I walk through this long hallway of literature, I see every single book drop from its place onto the floor, with the expectation that I’ll still go in there to find the book I want with only an hour to search. This was 2020 to me. I battling time, I was battling fiction and non-fiction problems, perspective and organisation, relationships with the known and unknown, plans and maps, where was my sense of direction? work and creativity - are they two in the same if my creativity is work? Every aspect of life was challenged, and everything was on the floor, what book should I have picked up first? And when will I be finished organising all of this? That was the biggest question of last year, when?

Time was something I faced so clearly, something that teased me constantly - when was this baby going to come? when was the right time to leave home? when should I write? when should I rest? All of these questions really brought on more questions and more and more until the day was near the end and it was too late to battle myself on something I would repeat to do again the following days. How was it possible to be held in a cycle of what seemed like an endless experience of nothingness at home, whilst being saturated with the reality of how short life is? How is it possible to experience that consistently till this very day and not somehow be scared?

The world was challenged, and we were all at the mercy of the game of life at the same time. With all the time to face the truths of our feelings and the unprecedented amount of time, we had to experience the void of it all. We had to face ourselves and the realities of the world, we had to face death and its disciples, life and its angels, but one of the important battles of last year was learning the importance of mental health like truly understand the fragile line that existed within sanity and perspective. I’ve danced with depression over the years in its many forms, last year I realised that depression was a woman who smiled and often wore yellow, she didn’t always look like the intention she came with and like much of the world as we watched the false edited versions of ourselves over our social media, we glimpsed her smile through it all - she was there in the background of every picture.

Though the year brought many stresses and obstacles, I was blessed with opportunity and growth, a lot of beautiful growth that I can’t help but be grateful for. My biggest achievement was surviving every single moment, keeping threads of my sanity together, all whilst bringing life into this unknown world.

As I write this post at woo hours of the night, patiently waiting for my new small master to let me know when my time belongs to her again, I realise I am too exhausted to express anything more. 2020 was so much in so many ways, that it may take twice as long to fully unpack all the things it came with, but know that I lived to this moment to be able to say enough for me to keep going forward.

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A generation of mothers: Where do we go from here?

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Must I write in a vacuum?