2020 was the year we didn’t know we needed, the year we weren’t expecting and the year we never wanted. All at the same time and yet so distinctly, we can feel all these things. We can see the silver linings and the lights at the end of the tunnel when we look back with, oh how ironic, 20-20 vision.

But, at the same time, we can’t hide from the shadows that hover above the memories of clapping on Thursday and baking banana bread. We can’t ignore the goosebumps, the tear tracks, the scars that came with the requirement to be still.

The arithmetic scared us too. The financial sums we just couldn’t balance as well as the maths we had to teach but didn’t understand. The dark shadows that hovered above the sunny days. The questions, the unknown, the change, the absolutely totality of what was happening…it all felt, well, just too damn much.

We cried more. One minute we’d be washing the dishes. The next, we were paralysed with ‘what the fuck’ fear. The anxiety was real. No one had ever been here before and no one seemed to know where this was going to take us. Or who it was going to take.

And so we clapped and zoomed and worked out with Joe Wicks. We drank more. Too much probably. We began to embrace the quiet, the slowness, the stillness of our new lives. The traffic disappeared, the planes were silenced and for a while, we could all pretend that this was a chance to reset, to reconnect, to learn to reject the terrible habits we’d fallen into.

We talked about things never being the same again in a positive way. We talked about the lessons we’d learned. How we didn’t need all the piano lessons, and playdates, and extra curricular commitments. How our diaries had been straining under the weight of busy-ness. We acted shocked at how stressed we’d been and promised ourselves and anyone else we could talk to from a distance of 6ft, that we’d never go back to that. That we’d learned our lesson.

That things would be different.

As the year limped on, there were moments when we forgot. We forgot what life had been like before. We forgot to remind ourselves that this wasn’t the norm. Or even the new norm. This was temporary. This was a crisis measure. That we were all operating in a crisis. But for some, they could never forget. Their guards couldn’t be dropped, or given up. They were fighting every day to save lives or they were fighting to grieve lives. Either way, they fought valiantly on while the lucky ones amongst us got the chance to forget…even if just for a moment.

And a year on? The lights at the end of the tunnel are brighter than ever, the silver linings more plentiful but still we are trapped. Our expectations have changed. Our boundaries have changed. There will be some that we must hold on to for the protection of ourselves and others. But there are some boundaries that we have slipped into. There are some boundaries that we are perhaps too comfortable in. Those boundaries will push our buttons and trigger all sorts of emotions that we have to sit with in discomfort.

Because I believe the time is coming for us to emerge. I hope we’ve learned lessons. I hope we’ve learned to be compassionate. I hope we’ve learned to pick up litter, to wash our hands, to look out for our community. I hope we’ve learned to love the lives we have and the people we have in them. I hope we’ve learned to pick up the phone more, make more of an effort to see people, to spend less time running and more time saving ourselves and the hours we are given each day.

But more than anything, I hope we can sit comfortably in freedom when the time comes. I know it’s scary. It feels almost impossible to imagine that we will one day soon be able to wander freely. Our homes have become our base, safe from the ‘tag’ that makes you ‘it’. Our homes have allowed us to opt out of the race all together and we’ve done it for all the right reasons, but it’s time to get back in the game. Perhaps we don’t need to jump back into a race, but a leisurely fun run would be a great place to start.

There’s before, there’s during and there’s somewhere after where our new lives will have to grow. More change is coming. Our world will evolve once more and it’ll be ok. I know it’s scary, but it’ll be ok.