Reflecting on 2020

2020. Ugh. This is going to be a year to remember, huh? I’ve seen some memes about how in the future, social studies teachers like me are going to have to spend a whole year on the history of 2020 because there’s so much to unpack! It makes me chuckle...but it’s also a little too true and a little too soon to really think too hard about that right now.

2020 has been an interesting year. A year of many lessons for most people, more than usual years. As a society, we were forced to take a “time-out” this spring. Most of us spent more time at home than ever before, we learned how to sacrifice for our neighbors and loved ones, and maybe even picked up a new hobby or two. Especially this spring, I feel like there was a lot of “the grass is always greener on the other side” thinking. Some people spent more family time together than usual and wished for quiet time. Single people like me spent months at a time alone and wished for social interaction. Regardless of your situation, I think this spring was definitely a learning experience for everyone, in one way or another.

During this period of time between Christmas and the New Year, I get really reflective. Two years ago, this time period was when I started this blog. Last year, I did a reflection piece about 2019 and ended with a HOPEful, optimistic paragraph about looking forward to 2020. If only I knew...if only any of us knew...right?!

Anyway, this is a period of time that I usually struggle with. I start looking back on the year and feeling like a failure. I start getting really hard on myself and feeling like I didn’t accomplish anything. You would think I would learn, but I do it to myself each year. So for this post, I’m going to try and NOT do that. I’m going to focus on the things that I learned, not the things that I wish I would have accomplished. Let’s see how it goes…

Here are the lessons that I’ve learned during this crazy, “unprecedented” year:

1. I am my own island.

I am my own island. I learned this way of thinking from Glennon Doyle’s book, Untamed. Basically, I get to decide who is in my life and to what extent. I don’t have to let anyone (or their opinions about my life) onto my “island” that I don’t want to be there. As a people-pleaser, this has been a hard lesson to learn. I don’t like making people mad or sad with me, and in the past, I would rather stay uncomfortable myself than have an uncomfortable conversation or make someone else uncomfortable. But guess what? That was making me miserable.

Quarantine taught me that I can invite the people that I truly want to be in my life, in, and the rest of the people can stay on the other side of the ocean away from my island at a safe distance. As isolating quarantine was, it also helped me to be intentional with who I was seeing and communicating with, who I was letting into my island, and truly letting myself surround myself with people that were good for me and made an effort to genuinely "see" me instead of feeling pressure to interact with people that for whatever reasons, aren’t good for me.

I realize that life cannot be like quarantine, I have to be around and interact with all kinds of people on a daily basis. However, that quarantine time helped me to set good boundaries that I had been struggling with, and helped me to realize that others don’t get to choose who gets to enter my island, I do. Now that quarantine is over, I’ve been able to keep that lesson and the boundaries I set with my time and relationships at the forefront of my mind.

2. Just because someone loves you, it doesn’t mean that it’s enough.

Gosh, I think this is one of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn. I actually think I’ve been in the course of learning it for several years, but it really came to the surface this year.

It’s this:

• Just because someone loves you, doesn’t mean that they have permission to treat you badly.

• Just because someone loves you, doesn't mean that they are "the right one."

• Just because someone did something great for you in the past, doesn’t mean that they have an automatic pass onto your island now.

• Just because someone has your best interests at heart, doesn’t mean that whatever they want for you is truly in your best interests.

I used to think that love was enough. I would let people by with pretty heinous things, because I told myself “but they love me” or “they’ve done so much for me” or “they have my best interests at heart.” But I’m realizing that love isn’t always enough. Does it mean something? Of course. However, just because someone loves you doesn’t give them a free pass to say or do or treat you however they want to.

I’ve seen the end of a couple really important, impactful relationships this year. Some were my choice, some weren’t. Regardless, the grief is very real. But they all go back to this lesson. Sometimes love just isn’t enough.

3. I can do life without people, but I don’t want to.

I used to say that I hated people. That I would rather just be by myself. Then, I went to treatment the first time in Arizona and was surrounded by people literally 24/7 for 52 days and it changed my tune. I realized that I did like people, and do love to be surrounded by people, at least most of the time. I’d been saying that I hated people because it was just easier to say that instead of being vulnerable and asking the people that I was closest to for their time.

Then, quarantine happened. I started telling myself that story again. “It’s ok, I don't like people anyway. I like being alone. This is fine…” Well, there were a few weeks that it was ok. As an introvert, I needed to rest and recharge and after a Spring Break trip to Arizona, I was actually happy for some extra time alone with Rocky at home. Until...I wasn’t.

My anxiety and OCD ran rampant during that time. I started to feel like I was going insane. The days blurred together, I was sleeping way too much, and realizing that being alone wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. Did I survive? Yes. But I was pretty miserable most of that time. One of my favorite writers, Jamie Tworkowski always says, “People need other people,” and after quarantine, I can agree to that on a whole other level. Shout out to Karen for all our walks on the bike trail...you were often the only human being I saw on those days and were truly my saving grace during that time!

4. I can trust myself.

Trusting myself (or NOT trusting myself) has been an ongoing theme in my life. The word, “TRUST” was on my bracelet that my therapist gave me when I left treatment the first time, was my One Word goal for 2018, and has been an ongoing therapy goal with my therapists for the past couple of years. For whatever reason, whether it is my anxiety or OCD or not being validated enough, or whatever it may be, I struggle to trust myself. After reading Untamed, Glennon talks about meditating and sinking into her “knowing.” Basically, sinking into that deepest part of yourself, your intuition, and listening to what it has to say. I’m not good at that yet, but I think I did make some strides in the right direction this year.

“I can do hard things” has been my little mantra in my head throughout this year (again, thanks Glennon!) and I’ve been trying to remind myself that I’m competent and able and fully capable to make decisions and do things on my own, even if they are scary or hard. Other than surviving all the isolation this year, another big thing that comes to mind is my solo trip to Arizona this past March. This was a BIG STEP for me. I’ve traveled a lot, in fact, I’ve traveled alone quite a bit. But I’m usually traveling to meet someone, not doing the trip all on my own. Although I did meet up with a couple of my favorite people when I was there, I spent the majority of the trip on my own. I flew in late at night, picked up my own rental car for the first time, drove hours all over the desert, successfully navigated to all the places I wanted to go, checked into hotels on my own, and did lots of solo hikes in Sedona. That trip is one of my favorite memories of this year, and also one of the things that I’m most proud of. I’m grateful that I got that trip in right before the pandemic, not knowing that it would be my only major trip of the whole year.

Now, when I’m doubting myself, I think about that amazing vacation and remind myself that I, in fact, can do hard things and I CAN trust myself and my abilities, intuition, and skills.

5. My “normal” routine is not good for me, something needs to change.

I think the other blessing of that quarantine time was how it slowed everything down, at least for me. I was at home more than I’d ever been since I’ve bought this house and been an adult. I had free time, something that I was most definitely not used to. My One Word for last year was STILL, and I thought I had kind of figured out what that looked like, but quarantine brought on a whole other level of STILLness that was hard, especially at first, for me to cope with.

I realized that the rat race that had become my life, leaving the house some days at 7:30 am and not getting home until after 10:00 pm because of work and appointments in Des Moines, all the sleep deprivation and no time to just sit and “be” had been eating me alive and slowly crushing my spirit. Once life slowed down, I realized that I didn’t want things to go back to “normal.” I actually blogged about it HERE. All the busyness was just another way to numb emotions, and I realized that my life in the snow globe with all the snow swirling around had been disguising and hiding things that needed to be brought to the forefront of my life and dealt with. I promised that I wouldn’t go back to “normal,” that I would find a new normal that was more healthy for my physical and mental health.

I’ll honestly say that I haven’t quite figured that out yet. I kind of did go back to “normal” and the past few weeks, it has become apparent to me, yet again, that this just DOES NOT WORK. I don’t really know exactly what I’m going to do about it, but it’s something that I’ve been reflecting on and want to get better at.

6. If I can stick with my recovery from my eating disorder through this year, I can stick with it through anything.

This one is pretty straightforward. If I can stick with my recovery during a global pandemic, isolating quarantine, new school year with drastically different teaching expectations, the chaos and unknowns, disappointments of canceled trips, and everything in between….I can stick with my recovery through anything, right?

At the beginning of the pandemic, and throughout quarantine, it was a hard time to be someone living with an eating disorder. There were just so many triggers. There was all of the talk of the “quarantine 15” online and other memes and jokes making fun of all the eating and sedentariness that quarantine brought. Food scarcity issues, especially at first, when people were panicked that there wouldn’t be enough food. And all the isolation. So many things that were super triggering and scary in the world and online, especially for someone with extreme anxiety and an eating disorder.

Were there missteps here and there? Yes. Did I accidentally see my weight at the doctor’s office and have a breakdown this past spring? Yep. But I leaned on my team and pushed through the discomfort, stayed the course, trusted the process (and all those other little catch phrases) and came out the other end. Are things perfect now? Nope. But am I still on the right track after an extraordinarily hard, chaotic, scary year? YES.

---

This has been a hard year. I have not accomplished as many things as I would hoped. I still feel pretty “stuck” most of the time. There’s no specific goal that I feel like I can wholeheartedly “check off.” I went on less adventures, saw less of the people that I love, and feel like there was a lot of “wasted” time. When I dwell on those things, I start getting really sad and disappointed by this year. I start feeling like I “wasted a whole year” and start to feel behind and very much like a failure.

But as I go back through and reread (and reread and reread) everything I just wrote, there were bright spots to this year. Maybe not in the same way bright spots have presented in previous years, but this year was most definitely not a waste. There were many good lessons learned, as painful and scary and not-so-fun as they may have been.

Overall, I survived this year. Was it pretty? Or fun? Or exciting? Not really. But at this point, maybe survival, especially in this year, is something to be proud of. My recovery survived. My important relationships survived. I survived. And you know what? Maybe it’s ok if survival was all this year was about.

So, here, at the end of 2020, I’m going to try and look forward toward 2021 with HOPE that the sun will shine a little brighter, that we will get to hug and be held by the people that love us at distances closer than 6 feet, that things will go back to “normal” in only the BEST ways, and that we will always remember the hard, but important lessons that 2020 taught us.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Morgan Harper Nichols that gave me hope about this past year and everything that has felt lost:

"You are still growing. Even when your mind is anxious and you feel lost indoors, trying to make sense of a place you have never been before, I hope you can trust that the sun is still rising, even if you don’t watch it rise. You have not missed out on what was meant for you, even when it seems that way." MHN