My word of the year was tenderness.
I should know better by now. Every time I set an intention at the precipice of a new year, monumental things appear just around the corner.
I have been alone for most of this year.
It is a weird time. I’ve seen all four seasons of whatever we’re calling this time, this year of coronavirus, at a distance. This is the most solitary time of my life. I see this as neither good nor bad.
I have been alone physically, but also emotionally. Feelings are not for wimps. But all those gnarly emotions are information, guideposts for the road ahead. The only way out is through every single feeling.
A handful of friends check in every now and again, and for that I am grateful. But I can hear in some of their voices a need, not to actually know how I am, but to fill the void, to be connected to something. Anything.
A few friends want to save me. Conversations are peppered with invitations to visit their homes, hours away from my own. I live a New Yorker’s life, and I do not have a car. I am appreciative of their efforts, but the prospect of sitting on a bus, windows closed, for two hours, in the middle of a global pandemic, is enough to keep me under the covers—alone—for a very long time.
I will always choose home. This is the most basic truth of who I am.
The pandemic demanded I spend time with myself. It has stripped everything in my life down to the basics. Without work, dinners with friends, travel to faraway places, and all the other ways I have normally distracted myself, I had to learn how to be myself on my couch. In my kitchen. Scrubbing the bathtub. Watching the news.
Too much news.
How do you describe this year? The one where nothing happens, but everything happens, all at once?
I have begun this section more times than I care to admit. I keep censoring myself. Someone may be offended. We’re at a time in our history, at least in America, when someone will be offended by everything a person can say.
As hard as it is, I’m learning not to care.
It’s been wild to watch intelligent, sane, reasonable people fall on the edge of their sanity. To bear witness to people suddenly deem themselves infectious disease experts, with a degree from Facebook. To see them post debunked materials over and over again, as if the more they post, the truer they become.
I watch people I know rail against and yell at politicians on social media. It’s a peculiar thing to see people scream at the ones who are doing their best to keep their populations safe and alive. (And curiously, be silent about the ones who simply don’t care.) I want to tell these people they are probably yelling at a 22-year-old intern who is just trying to do the best job they can.
Ultimately, I don’t blame the politicians, the ones trying to keep their citizens alive, however imperfectly. At least they are trying. I blame us. The collective us who have decided we don’t care enough to keep each other safe.
I will never understand this.
The people who have decided their personal liberty is more important than communal safety don’t seem to understand they are the ones prolonging this. If they stopped flouting the guidelines for just a few weeks, the collective would benefit. Restrictions would lift sooner. But maybe living in New York City, having heard the urgent (and seemingly endless) sound of sirens echoing in the quiet of the city last spring and felt the terror permeate the achingly silent streets, has given me a different perspective from the rest of the country.
Still. It’s crazy that keeping each other safe has become a political firestorm. But, here we are.
In the more daunting moments, when the aloneness has overtaken everything, I go for a walk. This used to be my cure for everything. But now—in between the trees that heal me, the sun that warms me—being around people feels stressful. The noses resting on top of masks. The masks worn as chin guards. The maskless who look in your eyes defiantly, daring you to say something.
My city is a walking city, a place where taking public transportation is easier than driving yourself. We don’t hide in our cars. Sharing space is a way of life. This has been one reason why I love living here. Humanity is always right outside your doorstep.
But these times are not normal. So, we adjust our behavior accordingly.
I have spent time alone, in the depths of grief.
The grief has surprised me, my one constant companion for these last nine months. It is deep and wide and ever present, and even when it’s hiding in the shadows, I know it’s still there. It is so significant I have a hard time talking about it, putting words to it.
It has been easier to just feel my way through the days.
While I know people who have fallen ill, I am fortunate to not have lost anyone. So (but)(and) the depth of what I’m mourning has stunned me.
No one prepares you for grieving your country. But I am. I have never had illusions about its historic complexity and dark underbelly, but I’ve always believed in the idea of the goodness of America. I have been surprised—gutted—by the lack of humanity that has seeped into the far reaches of my country. By the brief solidarity that turned to disdain for people who took to the streets to fight for the right of black people to live, and by the courteous consideration for those irate because they can’t hang out at the bar. And how masks have bred fury.
Honestly—please just wear a mask.
I grieve the absence of the country I have always known us to be—the one where we band together in times of need to help one another.
We’ve had no national day, week, or month of mourning. We haven’t mourned as a country. In New York City, where I live, we publicly and privately mourn the almost 3,000 souls lost on September 11, 2001 every single year. Today we are now at a point where we are losing that many people every day. Every. Single. Day. And yet, we do not collectively mourn. We go on about our days in denial, as if everything is normal. As if it’s no big deal.
But I mourn. I mourn both the incalculable losses, and I mourn our national apathy about them. I mourn the suffering of people on food lines and those who have been treated with contempt because they didn’t have enough savings to get through a pandemic.
I mourn that it didn’t have to be this way. There are days when it feels too much too bear.
I am grieving the loss of my own job and, with it, the amazing team of coworkers who were more supportive than almost anyone I have ever worked with. I miss the ability to say, “I’m not okay today” and know that someone on the other side of our virtual galaxy would have empathy for that before we moved on with our work.
Mostly, I grieve for the carefree way we used to live our lives.
In the space of being alone, in the middle of a global pandemic, I have learned to be tender with myself.
I’ve discovered a softness in me I don’t often acknowledge. It is the empathetic part of me, the deepest space that aches for people in pain, that understands the nonsensical questioners are often simply terrified of what is happening around them, that wants to fix the broken things.
That part of me needs caretaking, too, and I have tended to it as best as I could.
Movement saved me. All those emotions, thoughts, and feelings get stuck in the crevices of our bodies, and they need to be acknowledged and excavated. (Have you heard of The Class by Taryn Toomey? The digital classes have changed my life. It is my therapy, my religion, my mental stability. There is no easy way to describe it—sort of like spiritual calisthenics—but I always feel better for having done it.)
Our bodies are wise; we should listen to them.
Early on, I would shut off my computer at the end of the work day, and my body would power down, too. It let me know a nap was not negotiable. The reclamation of a deep rest that has eluded me for the last decade, if not more, was sweet. And necessary.
I have been the opposite of whatever productive is.
We are living in traumatic, entirely remarkable times. Busyness has no place in that. My tenderest decision was to be realistic about what I could handle. There would be no languages learned, no books written, no apartment DIY renovations done this year. And I am okay with that.
In fact, I’m forever changed by it. I’m no longer interested in a life I need a vacation from. I want to live deliberately, with a shorter workday and more time for meaningful conversations. I want to leave small talk far behind. I want to savor the meals I’ve cooked, feel the tickle of a cocktail or sparkling water on my tongue. I want to walk outside and look up at the sky, make note of how today’s clouds are different from yesterdays. How the blue of above has shifted its hue.
I want to pay attention.
Mary Oliver said, “attention is the beginning of devotion.” Yes. That’s what I want. A life of devotion.
I am deeply spiritual, and I have turned to that for comfort. But I do not spiritualize my way out of situations. If you were a person who threw “love and light” mantras at me when I was talking about my sadness, or told me to raise my frequency or elevate my vibration, I have ignored you.
I believe every feeling is valid, the sadness and the anguish, the pleasures and the delights. If it means the only person to acknowledge them is me, then so be it.
We must be the people tending to our deepest needs.
In one moment of sudden and startling clarity, I realized almond milk has no place in my coffee. Half and half now has its rightful place in my refrigerator. This was perhaps my most satisfying revelation of the year.
As much as I want to give it one, this post does not have a Pollyanna-like ending. The story continues, and what happens next is still unknown.
As the year begins to draw to a close, I recognize the need to get quiet. I need to tune out everyone’s opinions and rage and fury, and I need to figure out what is next. My journey continues, and at the moment what’s ahead is a great mystery. I need to begin dreaming again, to envision the ideal future in my head.
And so I will.
And you? How will you close out this unconventional year?
I’m thinking about what I want for us. All the ways we can emerge from this time better, stronger, unified.
May we know joy. May we allow it to permeate our every cell. And may we embody it on our travels near and far.
May we rediscover our common humanity and fully root ourselves in it.
May we rise up to be the community members needed at this time in our history.
May we not cling to the ideas of what was and open ourselves to the newness of the world trying to be born.
May we dream up a new world where everyone matters.
May we treat ourselves—and each other, please—with tenderness, especially when times are hard.
Sending you love, good health, and safety, and wishing you all beautiful things for the year ahead.
xo, with goodness and grace.