d bag of poison and your favorite things. Here’s my wrap-up

        

         

 2020 started out for me with hopes of getting ahead in life, and making this year better than last. Last year I faced hardships of barely hanging on financially, and I thought, since I was ready to works smarter than harder, I would be all set. Then the pandemic hit. The pandemic felt, and continues to feel like a wall. Like America smashed right into a giant wall, from which chaos and hardship ensued, and we continue to scramble from one tragedy to the next, barely able to breathe or even grasp how bad the last tragedy was, before heading into the next, blindsided by the horrors. 

Just on Christmas Day, a terrorist committed suicide by exploding his RV, with him inside. America shrugged it off, like our exhaustion from all the hardships left us with empathy exhaustion. And we are all exhausted. Twitter feeds full of family losses, news media telling us how many are sick and dying, the president more interested in golf, the senate unwilling to help the needy. It feels like we were catapulted into 2020, and it’s a bed of glass, thorns , snakes, and vials of poison. Every inch to the end is just filled with bitter, and a drop of sweet, enough to make us keep crawling. 

For myself, I stopped working in March. The governor shut the state down, and my job flatlined, suddenly after years and years of work I was sitting still, waiting for the worst to pass, and yet more worse kept coming. By March I had enough of an emotionally empty, draining, and exhaustive relationship. My plan was to make it to 2021 and leave, prepared to be on my own. The pandemic turned my plans on their head. 

What I didn’t know was my ex had been talking to women, not just chatting, but talking with intent. He was more worried about stroking his own ego, and telling me how great, awesome, and fabulous he was than being a companion. Something I had grown weary of. He was so fabulous, while sitting at home, while I worked to provide food, pay bills, and take care of shopping, and the car. He couldn’t drive, wouldn’t try, he wasn’t working, spent all his time on music, and Instagram. He crated a fake world for himself where he was the hero, and I was the woman who ignored all his fabulousness, because I was too busy being exhausted from actual work. I came home to make my own food, wash dishes, wash my laundry, pay bills, grocery shop, and clean the car. How dare I overlook how amazing he was, my eyes rolled time and again as he told me about how he talked to this and that person, how he was gonna make millions. 

I was so tired of everything, I finally told him, I’m making enough money I don’t need you. I didn’t, and I didn’t want him. We did nothing together. Nothing. When someone tries their least, while you struggle, and they see you’re suffering, and they accept that as if it’s inconsequential it is draining, but so is propping up what can’t even be called a relationship. 

By April, almost May I was getting unemployment, I got enough that I paid him back for everything he covered while I waited. I even paid him to do the brakes on the car. We weren’t really in a relationship anymore, after all, he tried to grab my phone from me, like it was me doing what he was doing, and everything was messed up and broken. Maybe I should have left that day, who knows, I went through him trying to get me back, and me really not wanting to stay. I loved his kids, I love his kids. They were and are such special, albeit troubled girls. But the exhaustion grows doesn’t it. Meanwhile the country around me was in turmoil. People dying, infections rising, hardship growing. It has been such a tragic year. 

I knew my Heath was t great, so I turned it around and began changing my eating habits, I was one of the people who would be very vulnerable to COVID, and I was trying to hide away. I didn’t even see my family. I had been sick in March from something, and I don’t know what it was, but it felt scary and wrong. Maybe I had COVID, but I didn’t want to take that chance, not again. 

By August I couldn’t be there anymore. My ex tried to get me thrown out in July, then I fixed that, by august he had bought a gun, was ranting about who I was supposedly trying to see, being jealous of my chatting with friends, and would stalk my room, keep me up at night, make stupid accusations. I had to leave, my family came and helped me. After a man puts his hands on you, he can’t be trusted, and especially with a gun. I couldn’t stay, because sure he was threatening an imaginary person, but 14,000 women die each year by the hands of someone they know. I wasn’t taking those chances. 

Clearly guilt is a heavy burden, one that I don’t bare, nor will I carry. I stuffed all my things I didn’t immediately need into storage, and headed home with my family. And America itself got even worse. Since then we have lost hundreds of thousands of more lives, millions have been sick, poverty is rising, and the senate has done nothing but 600 dollars worth of unhelpful aid. 

Now here we are at the end of 2020, waiting for Biden to take office as more Americans die, icu’s are filled to capacity, people ignore good advice, and Trump lies about the election. 2 more days to go, and now I have to find a new job, try and get a home, and make something better of 2021. It’s mentally exhausting. My dreams at night are filled with anger about my ex, the hell I lived through with him, and there were good times mind you, he put in just enough effort at times to make me think he cared, but not enough to really keep convincing myself. He would rub my back and tell me how he wanted to spend time with me, but holidays, and events like that were always him in his room smoking, and listening to music. Did he want to take walks with me, no, not till the end when he assumed I was trying to go see someone. But gauging by the pictures in his phone, after I was gone and he gave it back, he was the one with someone to see. I couldn’t even go see my family without him trying to send his daughter. My family had been in their bubble, and I in mine, so we thought we would chance it. It was risky, but they were the only ones I was going to see in months. 

Anyway, I’m angry, I’m angry at the people who don’t care about others, I’m angry at my ex, I’m angry at the government not helping people like they should. 2020 is a year that I will not forget. I’m sure you too have your 2020 story, and the pain that goes with it. I’m hoping to rebuild a better life in 2021, I hope you do as well. We all need to decompress, and let go, but how can we with such overwhelmed senses, and backlogs of feelings, and hardships. We are living in 1920’s depression era, sadness, and pandemic plague, and hardships around every turn. Still, reader, I want you to know you’re not alone. That I know it’s been hard, and awful, and it’s okay to feel let down, angry, sad, confused. 

We need each other in a society, we need kindness, and security, and comforting care, you should know that if you feel alone, I know that feeling, and you are not. My heart is right there with you, and aching for you. It’s through my own hardships that my empathy for others grows. That life cannot be dismissed offhand without consequences. We are indeed, in this together,mine way or another. I hope you and I both can make peace with what this year was, so we can move forward together, with the dawn of better days.