Ages ago, I read an article which mentioned that donating personal journals to historical archives can be really helpful to historians of the future, because it gives them a sense of what daily life was like for average people during a given timeframe. I thought about that almost every time I put pen to paper this year, because 2020 will certainly be written about in history books (to the extent that history books are still a thing in the future!).
Here are 6 entries I pulled from my journals this year. Hopefully next year we’ll have many more cheerful things to write about!
Jan. 31
Matt asked me recently to what degree I want to be surprised with a proposal. I said, “I don’t want to know exactly when it’s going to happen, but I do want to know when we are entering a period of life in which a proposal might occur.” They said, “So you want to know when I have a ring,” and I said yes. I love that we have, and have always had, these meta-conversations about important relationship milestones – it’s so different from the traditional Cosmopolitan model of relationships where you never talk about anything and always have to guess what your partner is thinking and feeling.
March 3rd
Everything is really scary right now because a pandemic called the coronavirus is spreading globally and there’s no vaccine for it yet. That sounds so dramatic and crazy but that is what’s happening. People are stockpiling flu meds and face masks and hand sanitizer, and some affected people are self-quarantining for weeks at a time. My immune system sucks so I feel like I will probably get it, but who knows. Currently I am coping by leaving the house as little as possible, washing my hands a lot, distracting myself with podcasts and movies, and drinking homemade martinis.
March 15
Existing in a pandemic reminds me of a feeling I get in the days and weeks following a really brutal breakup. You walk through the world in this daze, unable yet to process that your entire reality has shifted on its axis. Periodically you find minutes or hours of respite in the form of distraction, or perspective, or positive social connection, or just a random feeling of unusual optimism and shrugging resignation – but always, at some point, your mind skids squeakily like a record being scratched as the remembrance of your true situation hits you afresh. Being alive through COVID-19 is like that, except everyone is going through it now, all the time.
It’s fucking surreal how fast everything has changed. No aspect of life can be the same now. Nine days ago I saw fit to go to a crowded karaoke bar. Today I wouldn’t dream of such a thing. We are staying home and moving all our appointments online, or canceling them. We are afraid even to walk around the block or pick up groceries. We don’t know how long it’ll be until we can safely gather in crowds again.
May 13
I’m having a lot of episodes of… feeling triggered/having a trauma response/having an extreme nervous system response/not sure what else to call it… lately. Mostly triggered by stressful things in my relationship (we worked some things out yesterday so it’s okay now) but sometimes basically random. I’ve noticed that I often go into a shut-down dissociative mode when I feel like I’ve disappointed or upset someone I care about – the world slows down like I’ve done a lot of drugs, and the inside of my mind and body feel helplessly, scarily sluggish – and I think this must be related to all the many times my dad yelled at me until I cried, for both justifiable and unjustifiable reasons, when I was a kid/teen/young adult. I remember feeling so frustrated and sad that I could never seem to articulate myself well enough to provide a decent rebuttal to whatever he was bellowing at me – but of course I couldn’t; my nervous system was under attack and I was essentially paralyzed, with nothing to do but stand there and take it. Often I wouldn’t even be allowed to go to my room and cry in private to feel safe and calm again, because that would be perceived by him as “sulking” and he hated that. I think he mostly just hated the guilt of knowing he had upset me that much, after his obvious glee in hurting me had faded.
I asked Matt why they think all these trauma feelings and emotional flashbacks have been coming up so much for me lately – mostly ex-boyfriend stuff and dad stuff, I think – and they said it’s likely due to the stress of living through a global pandemic. Which, yes, that is true. I reached out to several therapists who specialize in trauma/PTSD as well as non-monogamy, because that is really what I’ve needed for years, I just haven’t been able to afford it. But now I finally can, and I want to work on myself and my dumb brain.
May 29th
Increasingly I feel like human civilization as I know it will end within my lifetime. Increasingly I find that tuning out the news and the world for periods of time is the only way I can even function. Increasingly I worry that dismantling capitalism is both the only solution to our major problems as a species and one of the only things we will never do.
July 17th
Matt went back home a couple days ago after living with me for 4 months of coronavirus lockdown. It was really hard for both of us. I cried a lot and they told me that my deep emotionality is a catch-22 because it makes the hard things extra hard but it also makes the good things extra good.
My days now are much more quiet, still, and unstructured without them here. I guess this is what quarantining alone would have been like. I’m not sure it’s all that great for my mental health but it’s also an opportunity to pursue any projects I feel like, read a lot of books, and play a lot of video games. I miss Matt but I like being alone, too. And I’m very very privileged and lucky to be able to do so safely, in such a hellish year.