For a long time I was afraid of it. I confused it with loneliness, something I was also afraid of and somewhat related to the topic. It signified insignificance. That my life wasn’t worth external company, care, etc.
But here I am, 31st December 2020, listening to Neil Young’s ‘Old Man’, having declined multiple invitations to NYE events/occasions, now sitting on my balcony alone and sipping a concoction of beer, arrack and isotonic water, as the sky weeps.
It’s been a fuck all year for the world but I’m sure people had it worse during the World War epochs so I’m not complaining. At least I have most of the things I need to live comfortably. This decade has been a struggle to get it altogether but some perseverance and phenomenal support later, it’s real. Coincidentally, Velvet Revolver’s ‘Fall to Pieces’ just started playing.
Started the day by messing up a therapist appoint I desperately needed to go through but I guess much work, and the tests this year has presented later, I’m able to puff away the disappointment of that way.
I wonder if the events of 2020 have increased our thresholds of what tough luck or calamity or a disappointment are. These are all drunk musings and just as I say that Sinatra’s ‘That’s Life’ plays. Apple Music is on a role this dark evening.
2020 taught me the value of solitude and how people outside us can’t and won’t touch our deeper parts until we’ve sanitised them. Shared trauma and all this is a foolish delusion. We have to be okay with ourselves. Sure, happiness is hard to come by sometimes but doesn’t mean we can’t figure out how to be okay first and go from there.
It’s easy to succumb to terminal irony and the cynicism that stems from trauma, hardship and all those other earthly unpleasantries, but then, fuck it, start by enduring. Aim for bearable first: my biggest lesson this year.
Here’s to a bearable 2021.
Libertad 