A few more words about 2020...

A few more words about 2020…

The year 2020 was one of the darkest years, but also a year in which I learned a lot about myself. ‘Everything that could go wrong, went wrong’. That is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of 2020. I lost my job at KLM before I even started, I had to go through a lot in terms of love, I had to say goodbye to my little hamster girl Roo, who got a nice spot in the garden, and most of all I have lived in a lot of fear, uncertainty and loneliness. All thanks to the arrival of the coronavirus.

2020 was not my / our year

It was not my year; which is something many people probably will agree with when we talk about the year 2020. But when I think about it a bit longer, 2020 was also definitely not the year where everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. My family and friends are still or thankfully healthy again; I quit smoking; found a new job at Eneco pretty quickly after being suddenly unemployed and was able to let love conquer. But still, even though it sounds pretty good on paper, 2020 still feels like a fucked-up year. Pardon my French.

Two (or three) different persons

In the first half of 2020, I saw myself as a fierce, determined and active person. The goals I set myself were achieved and I was quite fit. The summer felt like a highlight. In those few weeks it was possible to have a drink on the terrace, celebrate birthdays and enjoy the nice weather. Until a stupid accident caused the bone in my toe to tear and prevented me from running, towards the end of the summer the coronavirus situation worsened again and the days slowly started to get darker. Outside and inside my head… I slowly lost myself and turned into a person who had become depressed. The sofa became my best friend, I had stopped exercising (partly due to my ‘broken toe’) and my lust for life dropped to an all-time low.

From 2020 to 2021

For the first time in my life, I spent New Year’s Eve alone. At first, I was not looking forward to it. But in retrospect, it was one of the nicest New Year’s Eve’s I have ever experienced. It was almost identical to any other ‘normal winter evening’ in my cosy little house, and that’s what made it so nice. The music played softly. The candles filled my house with light and warmth. And with a cup of tea, I wrote a lot that evening and thought about 2020: the stupid year that was finally coming to an end.

Meanwhile, January has come to an end and now we find ourselves in February. And even though it is ‘a new year’, has it gotten any better? Not really, right? We thought we had seen it all in 2020, and now we started 2021 with a number of new corona varieties, measures that were tightened and my little home country, The Netherlands, even showed strange signs of civil war on some evenings.

New energy

Although we still live in the same awful reality, the arrival of the new year has brought me new energy. I am starting to find my lust for life again. I want to set goals again, get fit, write more, be happy and stop doubting myself. Why would I? I should be proud of who I am, even though I still struggle every day. With myself, with the world and with the future. But that is okay. And normal too. Especially in these times. As long as we keep believing that this too will pass again. And in the meantime we will make the best of it. Deal?