When I scroll back in my blog and see the hopes I had for 2020, I feel a sense of dramatic irony now that we have all lived through this year. 2020 was supposed to be the glorious year of graduating college and gap year traveling. But all it took was a virus to expose how feeble our best-laid plans are.
As someone who loves hosting gatherings, enjoying restaurants, and getting lost at crowded concerts, this year felt like a sacrifice of who I am. Yet in a lot of ways, 2020 was a follow-through of a trajectory my life was already tracing. In my social life I am naturally open and trusting, but in recent years I have been prioritizing a tighter circle of friends — pledging loyalty to my ride-or-dies and denying the riff-raff. 2020 took that to an extreme as socializing became perilous and online interaction exhausting. When I wasn’t living at my parents house, I also became more independent, which has been a trend for the past four years, too. I worked daily for a clinical research job from home, cooked for myself, paid bills, maintained our little home with friends from college. I complain that this pandemic took a lot away from me, but in truth my life has blessfully remained quite stable.
Continue reading