At the start of this year, I truly felt that 2020 would be a turning point. My year, the year that I could leave behind all the trials and tribulations of the decade prior.
Let’s all laugh together, shall we?
The sunshine has ceased and the rainy days I usually yearn for have become suffocating, enveloping the house in a constant downpour and putting a swift stop to the l a z y, sunny afternoons stretched out on the grass. Gone is the pretence that this is all an impromptu holiday.
The empty hours and blurred future have suddenly become increasingly daunting and I’ve been dragged back to reality kicking and screaming. The contentment found in new pasttimes has been replaced with a hummingbird heartbeat, anxiety pounding in my chest like a caged bird.
It’s taken longer than I anticipated it would, but it’s happened. I’ve hit a wall.
There’s no real answers for how best to cope, how to get through the days where hope feels slim and the world as it is right now feels dark and overwhelming. (I’ve had a lot of those days this week.)
I’ve been romanticising the past a little too much, if I’m honest. There’s practically a dent on the bridge of my nose from the rose-tinted glasses I’ve been wearing, looking back with deluded fondness at my daily commute. If you ever hear me singing the praises of London Northwestern, please very firmly tell me that I have, in no uncertain terms, lost my fucking mind.
Another thing I’ve realised – I’ve been seeing a lot of people finding comfort in nostalgia. Digging out old consoles and games, watching childhood cartoons and films, circulating social media challenges to post throwback photos, reaching out to old friends… and honestly, it makes sense.
With the future so uncertain and the present so chaotic, why wouldn’t we seek solace in the past? Why wouldn’t we be craving the simplicity and innocence of childhood, the blissful ignorance and feeling of safety that we forwent as we transitioned into adulthood?
Is it really any wonder that we want that back? That we’re passing our days as children? The colouring, the easy baking? The losing ourselves in books and stories and building forts and cutting up clothes and reaching new personal bests because ‘look! look what I can do! look what I did!!’
I know that we ‘shouldn’t look back, because we’re not going that way.’
I know that we shouldn’t whitewash the past and pretend everything was perfect, that we shouldn’t wish to go back, that we shouldn’t spend too much time thinking of days gone by because of the precious time in the present that we’d let slip right by us.
There’s a lot to be said for rediscovering everything our inner children so desperately crave, though. And you know what else? While we’re dipping into the past, there’s also a lot to be said for remembering everything we’ve already overcome.
Remember the impossibilities of Maths homework, of hating PE lessons? (HOCKEY. IS. HELL.) Remember not getting that toy you desperately wanted for Christmas? (never did get a Baby Born, thanks mum).
Remember your teenage crush not liking you back? Remember screaming at your parents that they didn’t understand you and playing ‘I’m Just A Kid’ by Simple Plan on repeat in your bedroom to make a point?
Remember that hairstyle that you thought was a good idea at the time? I once cut my own fringe with kitchen scissors… jagged isn’t even the WORD. It was my passport photo for years. Never again.
Remember dial-up internet? Remember every time you were denied a McDonalds because ‘we’ve got food at home’?
Picture your worst date. Think back to your worst heartbreak. Remember swearing you’d never, ever get over it? Remember acknowledging that crushing, agonising feeling of getting your heart broken and just knowing at the time that this would be it, the worst pain that you’d never get over?
Remember your student accomodation? Remember having to accept that slugs were living in your kitchen and that was just part and parcel of university life?
That hangover that nearly killed you. Food poisoning from shit food. Looking in the mirror and genuinely hating the reflection. Loneliness. Not getting the job. Grief. Mental illness. Sending a text or an email to the wrong person and immediately wanting to bury yourself alive. Falling over in front of people and craving the sweet release of death.
My point is, that so far, each of us has a 100% track record of surviving our worst days, whatever they were at the time. Each of us has had that feeling of pure embarassment, of rejection, of failure, of deep, desperate upset.
Every single one of us has felt that we’ve reached an impasse. That this was it, this would be the thing that stopped us. That we’d never get through it, never get over it.
And you know what? We did.
If you, like me, have hit a wall – try to remember that it’s not a wall. It’s a hurdle.
None of us have lived through a pandemic before, but at one point we’ve all faced something for the first time, and we beat it. We did it. We survived.
And in the meantime, while you’re looking back at the past and all of the bad days you’ve already triumphed over, don’t forget to bring something to the present that your inner child will love.
I’m partial to a Disney singalong myself, but… you do you.
