I had decided to start 2021 like any other normal day, undeserving of special mention for how I slept in, had breakfast, did nothing because I was tired, got hooked on chess and played it in bed…But then I was scrolling through Instagram’s waterfall of people’s goodbye2020hello2021 posts and realised … oh, wait, 2020 is actually over, as though it was not the most obvious fact in the world. I thought about my year, and if I were to say something about it the Instagram caption is not going to fit it, so here we are again. Probably not a lot of people care deeply about how my year went, but I emerged from this year so deeply changed I am afraid if I don’t write it down I will forget who I was prior and just how much I have learnt from this year.
Despite the shitshow that is COVID, I don’t think this year is a it-shall-not-be-mentioned-again kind of bad. Instead, when I think of a short summary of this year I think of the quote from Gatsby (hence the title). There are some things that I have lost this year that used to still qualify me as a child (Innocence? Ignorance? Like Gatsby’s green light something fascinating has dimmed and I could feel that my eyes have gotten duller and unseeing) My brother had given me this paper rifle he made for my birthday. It touched me because that gesture reminded me of a child who gives a card to a veteran and looks upon someone who had lost the right to be looked upon so honestly. I’m being dramatic but you get the point.
My mother kept this 2020 journal about me, writing monthly entries based on the few days she sees me back home and what I tell her about. I read it carefully and realised that the first few months were observations about how I babbled excitedly about the new experiences, the enthusiasm and resolve in meeting challenges, how I did not say anything that made her worry. As the pages turned and months pass, I grew up the way she sees me growing up. No longer do I share that excitement (I have even forgotten those small incidents myself) but more and more I made her worry – the writing became centered on her advice for me, how everything will come to pass, how to not regret a decision, how to take responsibility for the sacrifices we chose to make. I told her more about the people and my troubles. She kept reiterating that she will always have my back. She tells me she loves me. I’m being so dramatic. It seems this year made my disposition more melancholic.
And part of growing up is also realising that losing this innocence is not necessarily a bad thing. I have gained something in return – a new understanding of our society and the world at large, like achieving new stats after unlocking a new challenge stage. I cannot understate how eye-opening it is to see the diverse realities of people from different ages and backgrounds. Even though the count of enchanted objects decreased, I have found so many other things to look at, like finding out that there’s more than just primary colours after deciding that my favourite colour was blue. I can decide for myself if there’s new experiences and people I like. It all sounds fluffy and pointless if I have to rely so heavily on simile to describe what I have gained, but that’s the best I can do with the old vocabular I had to describe this new world I am seeing.
Speaking of people, I’m not the type to find representative pictures with the most important people – I’m too lazy for that. That’s probably not fair to them and they deserve more because there are so many people I literally thanked my karma and luck for bringing us into one another’s lives. 2021 please be as good in letting me meet good people. I promise I will protect all insects (except mosquitoes) and earn karma points. I am grateful to have laughed so much that people complained about me being too loud (I think laughing a lot is basically happiness overflowing like the top of a fizzy drink). I had met people who took care of me and really looked out for me even though they did not have to. I had met people who inspired me (I hate using such a cliché vague word) in a sense that they showed me there is something still worth seeing and believing in when I grow older. People who make me forget about my fear of growing into some mediocre and mean adult.
Never in my life was I forced to meet so many new groups of people in short spans of time (the irony is that all this is happening with COVID and quarantine in the backdrop) and get along with them. As such, I am so ill-equipped to handle the sense of loss when they get cruelly ripped apart from me and forced to walk our separate paths and inevitably drift again. Like, no, we could be much better friends, don’t go!! BMT feels so far away that the relationships I had built and did not maintain feels like a dream and I get insecure about overestimating our closeness. Perhaps that is why meeting so many new people also made me treasure my old friendships even more. No matter how long we do not talk, we always connect with so much ease. The simplicity of our friendships preserved a moment in time that is worth being nostalgic about. I feel like I always sigh in relief when I feel for this uncomplicated common memory and find it still there. As our paths diverge even further, we probably cannot understand one another’s experiences as easily, but I can count on them to give me a good reminder to stay true to myself and preserve a bit of one another in our memory.
Never in my life had I ever wanted to befriend myself, but this year is different – had I been a stranger and met myself I can say that at least I would like who I had been. I feel like I have grown a lot. Mellowed out, if you would allow me to use this word. Gotten more interesting too. It’s so nice to like who I had been, despite remembering all the cringey mistakes, and not be so hard on myself anymore. One year has done a lot for me. 2020 is not just all about COVID, there’s so many realisations and people who impacted me more drastically than social-distancing and mask wearing did. I hope that everyone’s 2021 will be meaningful, that I will not lose my way or more enchanted objects (and it does not hurt to hope that we will no longer need to wear masks :P).
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