Unchangeable A look into my version of the year 2020, and learning to deal with change.
January
In January my 2020 started off on a rough note, with the loss of my grandfather late december and still trying to cope with that through the winter holidays.
January Instead of dealing with my feelings and emotions in a healthy way, I decided to try to distract myself instead. I did this by throwing myself into too many projects and committing to too many things, overworking myself and frequently staying up late to finish everything.
February By February it seemed that overworking myself was paying off though. I was finally getting the attention as well as some of the respect that I wanted from performing, so I thought that it was all worth it.
The thing about overworking yourself is that if you don’t put a stop to it or slow down, your body will for you. And that happened one night, when I was performing and suddenly felt a sharp pain in my leg. I tried to ignore it but the bruising and the pain was bad and I eventually went to the doctor. They informed me that I had in fact torn my hamstring, and that I had to rest for a while and take it easy. They also said that I should look into talking to a therapist, or a counselor for my mental health.
March
March seemed to be off to a better start. While I was doing more than i probably should have while my leg was healing, it seemed to be doing well so I just kept going. I had also finally found an apartment in the city and signed the lease.
However, just when it seemed that things were going sort of ok for me again, the world that I knew came to a stop. Everything shut down in one weekend with the news that COVID-19, a highly contagious disease with no vaccine or cure started spreading rapidly spreading across the US and the entire world.
April
April was a month of many adjustments. Abruptly switching from constantly overworking myself to not being able to do anything was hard. School was suddenly online, and my work closed. I was also completely alone, because my roommates had left to go stay at their parents house. The days all began to blend together.
Trying to adjust to so many changes was difficult, and even though I only left the house two times, I felt extremely anxious and guilty when doing so.
May
With May, there was a lot of time for me to actually slow down and think about the things in my life. I was stuck staying at my parents house while waiting for the lease on my apartment to be ready, and I didn’t have the energy to do anything. I thought April was a rough month of the days seeming to be the same, but the days in May were all exactly the same to be and it seemed like there was no end in sight.
Eventually there was something that sort of woke me up from the blur of days that I was living though, and that was paying more attention to what was happening in the world outside of just myself. A major thing that I paid attention to was that while I already knew that there was change that needed to happen in the world, I realized that I needed to make change in my personal life as well.
June
June was a month of a lot of change for me. My reflections from May lead to actions, and I knew that I had to make a difficult decision. I decided that it was best for me to confront someone who I saw as an important person in my life about the way that they treated me. While I had sort of expected it ending up this way, it led to the end of our friendship, which left me alone.
Though there were changes that were hard for me in june, change isn’t always a bad thing. I decided to bleach my hair for a change. And in an even bigger change, I decided to adopt a cat now that I had moved into my apartment, and got a tiny two month old kitten who I named kiki.
July
July was a month of trying to grow. With no news of if my job was reopening in the fall, I began to look for a new one. I had also gotten an internship and was taking some classes to try to keep myself busy once again, instead of dealing with my emotions.
Another part of July was my birthday. At this point in my life I hadn’t really come to expect much on my birthday. However, spending my 21st birthday completely alone at home wasn’t any of the ways I thought it would have gone when I was younger.
August In August I began to test the waters of leaving the house a little bit. Some of the places that I used to go to were opening back up, but I was wary of going out, and instead saw a couple of friends in person in uncrowded places for the first time since March. While it was nice to see them, I felt guilty for leaving the house for days after doing so.
At the end of the month, I got a bunch of emails about resuming my life even further. Both my work and school said that they would be starting back up, with new regulations at work and school being blended learning in the fall, being a mix of virtual and online classes. I wasn’t sure how I would adapt to being around people again though, especially because the pandemic wasn’t really showing signs of slowing down.
September There were a lot of adjustments to my life in September. Everything seemed to be in the valley of the uncanny, being something similar to what I was used to, but just a bit different. Adjusting to COVID guidelines was something I was used to at this point 5 months into the pandemic, but it was still strange.
The promise of blended learning also turned out to not be happening, and with the loss of it was also the loss of the hope of some form of normalcy with school. Eventually, everyday started to seem the same yet again, with going to work and back, doing school virtually and then sleeping just to do it all over again the next day.
October
October was a bit of a confusing month. It flew by, and it seemed that I could get nothing done.When you can only go out for essentials, it creates distance. And with distance comes doubt. A lot of the people that I care about don’t live near me so I don’t get to see them often, but now it has been the longest time that I hadn’t seen them for, which can really take its toll. I was also beginning to doubt my past actions, and began to wonder if the choices that I made were the right ones or not. But through it all I continued to push myself to try to keep going with my life.
November
With November came expectations. Suddenly I was very close to having only one semester left of college. But, I still didn’t have my life figured out yet, unsure of who I really am, or what I wanted to do, all I knew was that the time to make important decisions was approaching quickly.
November also came with health issues. I got my first ever uti and found out that a major cause of it was because I was neglecting taking care of myself again. I began to wonder where the person with so much ambition to do better had gone and when exactly I had become like this again.
November With my future looming closer everyday and my health not doing great it was rough on me; but then suddenly it seemed that everything was piling up and it became even harder for me to find motivation to do almost anything, everything seemed to be overwhelming and too much.
December
After a very long semester, I was completely drained. I figured at the very least I would have a bit of time to relax and try to recharge a bit.
But, apparently even the brief break I was looking forward to from being overwhelmed with life was too good to be true. When I got the news that I had been in close contact with someone that had tested positive for COVID and then I myself tested positive I didn’t know how to feel or react.
December Was it always just inevitable? I had been so very careful for 8 entire months, keeping myself protected, not going out or seeing anyone, and avoiding things I wanted to do, was it worth it ?
Unchangeable
The thing about the unchangeable parts of life is that no matter how hard you may overthink a decision, no matter if it is before or after you do it, there’s no way to change it really .
Unchangeable I don’t think I’ll ever truly be able to stop overthinking the decisions that I make, because that is just part of who I am. I think that no matter what there will always be a ‘what if’ in the back of my mind. What if I never got sick ? What if the world didn’t stand still for a year ? What if I never stood up for myself ? Just how different would my life be ?
Unchangeable
But at the end of the day, I’ll never really know the answers to these questions, and they’ll only exist in my head. Figuring out what’s best for me and trying to take better care of myself is new and still difficult at times; but i guess i’ll never change if i don’t try. And while I may still be a bit lost with the new direction that i’m going in, I am slowly making my way.