For much of 2020, time has been elusive. January was a month for cleansing, for dreaming, for planning, for feeling like there was a whole year to do all the things. February was a time for signing up and committing to the calendar. A marathon here, a wedding there, a vacation here, a dentist appointment there. Then came March and this mysterious virus and keeping count of the days and weeks since quarantine, since the first case in the US, since the first death, since they told us not to wear masks, since they told us to wear masks, since the last time I could secure disinfectant wipes, since they officially announced it a pandemic. Then the police shootings, then the protests, then the counter-protests and all the while a “leader” refusing to acknowledge racist systems that have always existed, refusing to acknowledge the scientific community who knew how to stop the spread of the virus. Time moved slowly. But I did believe, eventually, we would get through this and some sense of “normal” would return.
And then it didn’t. And then time faded away. It was all a blur of groceries and cooking then cleaning or not cleaning and keeping up with a little human who, amidst a global pandemic, was taking her first steps, learning her first words and week by week was in desperate need for friends her own size. And then the heat waves and fires, which seem to rage bigger and earlier each year. Apocalyptic skies. Impossible air. Confined to the indoors when we were already confined to the indoors. At a certain point I think I stopped caring what day or week or month it was. I’m sure many of us have had a funny relationship to time in a year where “unprecedented” seems like the overall throughline. But then time kind of came to a screeching halt back in 2016, too.
We were at a bar down the street, having beers, watching the election results roll in. Early in the night the energy was joyous, vibrant, light and loud. As we kept our eyes glued to the screens the bar got more and more quiet, people started closing out their tabs, and then they began to leave, one by one, like slow motion, including us. I had to get to Hemet that night for a work trip. It was already much later then we’d planned to leave. After all, we thought we’d know by now. We went to bed in a Hampton Inn, phones decidedly put away, with a sinking feeling in our gut that we refused to fully acknowledge. We woke up and it was done. It could not be undone. My husband couldn’t get out of bed. I wasn’t sure I could either. How do you move forward when the unimaginable has become reality? But I had to get to work. Fox news was playing in the breakfast room. I didn’t want to watch but it was on every screen. I was already thinking about November 2020. I’m sure many of us have our 2016 election story. It was like 9-11, you remember where you were and who you were with when you heard the news. And though I thought the 4 years would never end, here we are. With less than a month left until the election, time is on my mind again. It’s speeding up and slowing down with every crazy news story coming out of the White House, daily, sometimes hourly. It feels as though I can’t move forward until after November. Big questions like buying a house, moving cities, embarking on a new career, are all hanging in the air until November. Sometimes I feel like this year was lost. Sometimes I feel like the last 4 years were wasted.
Another way to look at it: In the last four years I made new life-long friends, I reconnected with my love of writing and of art, I traveled, I even had a baby. I also woke up out of the comfortable slumber I was in, a bed of “it will all work out, it always does.” I felt comfortable in Obama’s America. But in the last few years I woke up, like a lot of us, to the overwhelming realities of global warming and climate change and racial injustice and systemic racism and income inequality and transphobia and the evils of ICE and all the systems of oppression imbedded in our country. Though I lean towards optimism out of habit as much as principle, I am also aware that the bed I was sleeping in was incredibly privileged. If we inaugurate a different president on January 20th I don’t expect these realities to be fixed. But if we get the same person for another four years, I’m afraid we’ll get too far off course to come back and fix anything at all. I hope that after November time will feel normal again, that I can continue with life decisions because it doesn’t feel like the world is ending, that I can look forward to little things like trips and museums, and big things like gun reform and abolishing ICE and universal healthcare.
Also, just in case this wasn’t clear: please vote =)