Books, Writing & Life

With great anticipation, we all counted down to at 11:59 pm to welcome a new decade. Cheers to new beginnings, new adventures, new everything just like every New Year’s Eve. Ironically, just after the new year began, word started spreading of this novel corona virus and if you were like me, you watched the news coverage of what was happening at the time in China and thought: Wow, I wonder if that could EVER happen here?

Fast forward to year end which is December 1, the date of this writing and there has been so much loss, tragedy, hurt, pain, etc.

I am so damn tired.

I sometimes say I am an introverted extrovert. I can do both. I spent the first 10 years as an only child, so yeah, I can take people or leave them. However, this year has caused me to reevaluate/reexamine a lot of things. This year I realized no matter how much I love my family and our new home, I am sick of being with my family in this house. Not being rude or mean but I strongly believe they feel the same way some days.

This year has brought out the best and worst of this country and I’m so fed up. I feel so helpless. I feel lonely. I feel angry. I have had enough of:

• BS from anti-maskers
• People asking if I’ve personally known someone who had the virus
• Standing 6 feet behind people in small spaces
• Ordering ALL meals as take out
• Going to buy groceries EVERY week if not TWICE weekly because we’re eating every freaking meal at home
• Getting out of the car and walking to the door of a building only to realize I’m not wearing a mask. (It’s still NOT second nature to me.)
• Attending all events virtually

As the title suggests, this is the year of the Upside Down. I say it so much in my house, my daughter has asked me to stop saying it. I can’t and I won’t. The Upside Down is a reference from the Netflix show, Stranger Things. The Upside Down can best be described as an alternate universe. It looks the same but there’s something unusually different about it. The only thing that’s missing is a spaceship or weird cloud hovering over the entire world to let us know something other worldly is happening.

How can it be December 2020 and nothing good has come out of the year? (I don’t mean that literally.) I was keeping a list of all the crazy stuff that’s happened this year but it got depressing so I stopped. One day, hopefully, in the very near future we will be able to look back on 2020 and give it a big middle finger. I can’t say we can look back on it with fond memories because there’s nothing happy about this year at all.

WORST.

YEAR.

EVER.

Until now, 1995 had been the worst year of my life due to a tragic loss. The feeling of despair this year far exceeds that.

Who would have OR could have imagined so much tragedy and loss in such a short period of time? (Of course I or we all could point some fingers but…)

How are you doing?
Just rambling today but I mean every word.
Stay safe.
Wear a mask.

This year is almost over. Surely there’s a new day on the horizon. Hit me back in the comments.

Daphine (rhymes with caffeine!)