A Year of Reflection BY A. MANA NAVA @BOOKS.WITH.MANA
A. Mana Nava is a freelance writer and a dog-walking-while-reading hazard. Their fiction has been nominated for the Best American Short Story anthology. The nominated piece can be found in The Hopkins Review (issue 13.4). Currently, they are an editorial coordinator at Overachiever, contributor for the Drizzle Review, and editorial intern for the Macmillan Economics Team. Nava has received support from Kundiman, Asian American Feminist Collective, and Representation Matters Organization.
a
year ago, our lives became so unpredictable, so unknown. The COVID-19 pandemic is an undeniable tragedy that has changed all of our lives. As time passed, we lost so many lives. Everyone’s lives have been upended, and a new social etiquette is in place.
We continue to collectively yearn for our lives from 2019 and collectively grieve for what we lost in 2020. These are normal reactions. However, after a lot of reflection, I want to acknowledge another facet of the pandemic: gratitude. Before the pandemic, my
life was busy and comfortable. I graduated college, saw my human companion every day, was finally able to jog after foot surgery, and worked with my best friends at a bookstore that connected me to the local creative community. There were problems with our clients and the corporation: endangerment, emotional abuse, exposure to dangerous substances, racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, colorism, and more. At the time, I just dealt with it. My human companion hated listening to me complain about the physical and emotional abuse I endured as a bookseller. He grew tired of my soapbox diatribes and begged me to quit. He wanted me to be challenged,
earn more money, feel respected, and grow. I responded with a slew of excuses: “I need health care.” “These are my friends.” “My writing isn’t ready.” “I’ll apply for grad school next year, I promise.” I was in an abusive relationship with my day job. I had normalized middle-aged white women screaming at me because I couldn’t buy their scrapbooking guides from 2007. I shrugged when finding thin, folded sheets of burnt foil inside video game cases. All of that was okay because I got to see my friends every day and got a killer discount. The truth was: I had outgrown my job. I was no longer happy working at the bottom of the bookstore’s labor hierarchy. When I watched the early American news coverage of
11 | Overachiever Magazine
