From The Confessional: The Things We Can't Wait To Have Back Once This Pandemic Is Over

Some day we will look back on this hellacious year and feel pride in all that we overcame. All the missed birthday parties and graduations and canceled weddings. All the isolation and quarantine and learning to be alone in order to protect others. All the fear of being exposed and what that means for our family. And all the unknowns and anxiety of what the next week or month might bring.

Some day.

Today, however, we’re still trudging through, now facing the holidays which will undoubtedly involve missing some traditions and having to adapt to all that 2020 has thrown our way. We might not see the relatives we usually see or enjoy the giant family dinners we usually enjoy. That’s just our reality until we come out on the other side of this disastrous pandemic.

So yes, in many ways, 2020 has been the “missing year.” The year we missed outdoor concerts and 4th of July BBQs and neighborhood block parties. The year our kids missed going on field trips and performing in the school play and doing group projects with friends after school. The year we missed seeing Grandma on her birthday and Halloween was a quiet movie night in the basement.

We’ve missed a lot this year, but it won’t be forever. For now, hang on to those online connections and try to appreciate the family time (allllll the precious family time) and keep the faith that someday the missing will end and we can all hug it out, soak up the sun together at the town carnival, and have a big old feast and toast that we all made it through.

One thing lots of people are missing is a relationship that ended or has been put on pause because of COVID. We’re missing the connections, missing the hand-holding, missing the hugs, and frankly, missing that hot, sweaty sex.

We’ve watched our kids miss out on event after event and it’s breaking our hearts, especially when other families make unsafe choices and still attend. And it fucking sucks to make sacrifices and hold our sad, crying kids while little Stephanie down the street has a birthday party with a bounce-house, face-painting, and an ice cream truck during a pandemic.

And on top of living through COVID, we’ve had to endure having a monster as our president. So we also miss pre-Trump America and our pre-Trump lives.

We miss our old lives, even the simple things like going to the mall or the library, or being able to see someone’s mouth when they were speaking.

We miss people. Even mean people. Just the simple act of being out in the world around other humans is something we took for granted, and we can’t wait to get that luxury back.

And we miss being alone, but then when we get time alone, we don’t know what to do what ourselves because we haven’t had it in so long.

So yeah, 2020 really fucked us up. It took away all the connections we relied on, all the simple human interactions that filled our cup like coffee dates and girls’ night out and trips to the library. It made us forget how to be alone because we never are anymore, but also forget that feeling of being out in a bustling crowd because it seems like a million years since we’ve been able to. So we’re sort of stuck in an in-between—a COVID purgatory—where we barely know basic functioning skills anymore.

And it’s all because we’ve just missed so damn much.

Hopefully a new president will usher in a much-needed change in how we handle the pandemic, giving us an actual chance at defeating it, and then maybe we can look forward to hosting a big neighborhood block party and letting our kids finally be the ones with the bounce house and ice cream truck at their birthday party.