Here’s To 2021

I’ve been thinking a lot about this year, as almost everyone has been as 2020 comes to a close. There have been a few times over the past couple of months that I’ve wished to go back to the first few months of social distancing—the summer, specifically.

That’s super weird, right? This summer was one of the hardest times of my life, why would I want to go back?

The other night at work I was thinking about what comes next. What happens after the hardest year of your life? Will 2021 be better? Worse? How much worse?

With that in mind, I think it makes sense to want to go back a few months. I know what happened over the summer, I know what happened in the months following the summer. I obviously have no idea what is going to happen this year.

When you have anxiety, unknowns are terrifying.

I would rather live through the worst of the “knowns” than anticipate even the best “unknowns”. I was feeling really anxious on New Year’s Eve, not even wanting to imagine what could come next.

I want to be cautiously optimistic about next year, but the logical voice in my head—making a pretty rare appearance compared to the illogical one I hear the most—reminds me that our problems won’t disappear at midnight on the 1st (I’m actually coming to you from a few days later, and I can confirm that our problems have not gone away yet), but again, cautiously.

In the meantime, I do think we have a lot to be proud of. I know 2020 was hard for all of us, but we all made it.

I’m so proud of all of you for making it through. We did it, ya’ll.

—Abbie