A lot has honestly been said about 2020, and maybe mine will be similar to yours in some way. I’m stuck between the good and the bad, but anyway, wherever the pen directs, so shall the ink spill.
When 2020 began, there was nothing special about it. It was just another day of the year, another day of the week. Of course, the hours and minutes did their thing, but there was nothing special about it. Everything was normal, as normal as it could get for an introvert like me. I had just gotten out of campus and waiting for my graduation, which was definitely postponed because of the coronavirus.
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t even looking forward to my own graduation. I mean, it was just another day, one that people would be appearing on lists, and ranks that would never be used anywhere.
When the virus struck the country, everything was normal at first. Nothing changed, until the panic about the virus set in. Humans turned to vultures, but that was expected because neither of them had ever faced that in the present decade. The news spread and so did the virus, but you already know that.
Schools closed, but before they closed, I had the horror of watching my baby sister lack sleep and get anxious because she didn’t have a hand sanitizer yet. She was scared that the virus would hit mama, and all of us. I remember making her home-made masks. She was too scared to even go playing. She was either on the veranda, or watching her favorite cartoons. That shit was supposed to make her happy, but her fear was evident.
She was scared of being alone.
When Monday came, she refused to go to school because of the fear and everything she was watching on television. It was scary, but mama understood and my sister and I stayed home because she was just in grade two. The school could wait. Her mental health and her sense of security were more important than everything else. Eventually, schools closed and everyone was back home. It could have been a nice feeling if we had cash, but we didn’t have enough.
The supermarkets were empty. There were no stocks and it was sad. The basic ingredients were suddenly out of reach. Maybe it’s a good thing we had a small shamba because that could sustain us for a week before we started looking for other means of survival.
I took up online jobs, but I wasn’t earning enough though it could keep us safe for some time. I saw my mother crack under pressure at night and during the day she would get up and go to her day job that had slashed her salary by half. But that was okay.
We were neither rich nor poor, even though we had started as extremely poor. Instinctively, we got to adapt to the conditions. Breakfast was for our youngest, lunch was served but then we never really take lunch at home, even on normal days, because we are used to light foods. Maybe the subconscious dismissal for lunch was a blessing in disguise, but whatever.
The only meal we all ate was supper. The five of us and mama would gather around the table and eat, even though we all took tiny bites so we could have a meal for the next day, that way if we survived the night anyways.
Well, that was the life of 2020, but we survived, right! Cheers to us..haha.
During the year, I got to distract myself with the Tiktok app, which wasn’t hard since a good population was there. People were sharing their happy and sad moments, some were making fun of others and all that shit. But then I got to understand something from the app. People were sending videos of their loved ones, of their flops, of their weaknesses. Well, I came across a lot of that.
I couldn’t understand them. They were posting their weaknesses and most of the time people used social media to flaunt their successes. There were instances when they even committed suicide on their lives (well that’s what it’s called) though I can’t quite say I have a reference or that these were just pranked recordings.
I didn’t even have the energy and patience to watch those. Again I didn’t understand, because growing up, I was told that being weak is a curse, so I just couldn’t understand why they were putting themselves ou there. I also got to realize the importance of mental health from these videos.
The app is quite diverse.
I saw people unmask themselves. It was no longer about the beauty of filters or even the number of likes, but people were putting themselves out there. Calling out to their fellows to help them. Well, the least we could do was share their videos.
It took me six months to actually understand the app and the people on the app in even the posted failures. I realized that I was being judgmental in a way, that I was expecting perfection, just like everyone on Instagram is showing their perfect moments.
I had expected TikTok to be full of masks, but then I saw the masks fall. I saw the people introduce trends for fun, but after watching a video thrice, I understood that it was just fun because that’s what fun was supposed to be like. But then again it wasn’t fun because some of them were clearly hurting.
Maybe they were good actors, but even actors have their highs and lows. The lows were performed better than the highs and that’s how I understood.
I got to learn more about mental health from the app more than I could have learned anywhere in my whole life. I’m introverted so that quite makes sense. It was there that I learned that I could cut myself as many times as possible, leave myself with a million and one scars but at the end of the day, I could only feel better for the little moments.
I got to understand that in my quest to cope and make everything better. In my desire to make my siblings live normal lives in a time that was harsh on everyone, I was a depressed fuck. I got to learn that there were people who were going through the same.
However, that was not to make me inferior or to dismiss my pain. I got to understand that it was okay for me to be weak, for me to fight back and lose. For me to pick myself up in bits. For an app that was supposed to be just fun, I learned a lot.
2020 was a challenge that I fought hard to win, well I was left with scars, but then we are all scarred, in my own messed up way, I won.
I tell you of my 2020, not out of pity or because I feel motivational. I write this down because I think it really was a good idea. I actually feel a little bit better after writing this.
Until next time ?
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