2020 Did Not Exist – Read this before saying “Actually…”

I just started genuinely having a panic attack about the fact that the past year basically just didn’t happen. I mean, don’t get me wrong, a LOT happened. So much on a daily basis, in fact, that you could probably convincingly spread one week of news out though an entire year of a political drama and it wouldn’t be any worse than House of Cards. And I’m already hearing the LA Yogis saying “Oh, but so much happened. So much growth and reflection not as just a country but as individuals.” Shut the fuck up that’s not what I’m talking about. We can address that when the next time I eat an edible I fall off the happy side of this existential fence.

Temporally speaking (that’s in terms of time. Get on my fucking level), we measure our lives by events. Definitely by the big ones like college or breakups or deaths. But also ones that signify yearly routines. When I think about Christmas in terms of passage of time, for example, I think “The company holiday party and seeing my family.” And the last time either of those happened was fucking 2019 and now it’s 2021.

HOLY SHIT.

Now, it has to be pointed out that when people go on “wow wanna feel old?” tangents, I have been known to go into a fiery rage about how everyone is stupid and can’t grasp the simple concept of the passage of time and of course you’re older now. Wouldn’t it be fucking weird if you weren’t?

So now, here I am, being amazed by the strange nature of the passage of time.

But you know what honestly still fuck those people because you have a birthday every year but you have a pandemic like every 100 years so no it still doesn’t make me feel old that Macaulay Culkin is 40. It would be FUCKING INSANE if he were still 10. Who wants to live in a world where they wake up at 30 and the kid you saw in the movie when you were 8 is STILL A CHILD.

Basically what I’m saying is, holy fucking shit this is insane. And let it be insane. You do not have to make sense of something for it to be okay.

In fact, similar to how it would be fucking weird if Will Smith were still a teenager, it would be bizarre if you didn’t feel strange about the passage of time after a world altering event occurred.

I remember that after I left grad school, I stopped being able to remember precisely what year something happened because I lost the externally imposed year markers. I mean, sure, years have numbers but that has nothing to do with us personally. 2009 isn’t called “Arielle tries weed for the first time and freaks out and who knew 11 years later she’d be writing an impassioned post about how it feels like it’s only 10 years later” year. I mean, “Junior Year” isn’t that intricate either, but it has to do with you personally.

So I’ve decided we should retroactively assign personal meaning labels to every single month since the pandemic started. Actually, since a few months before the pandemic started for the sake of continuity. Let’s call them thing like “Sprongles” instead of months. That’s just one, example, of course. If you made it to a 100th therapy session, for example, you’d have had a “Flungle.” I would say years instead of months, but it hasn’t been enough years yet to implement that kind of schedule and god willing we won’t need to switch to years but I’ll take it up with the panel in a couple Mlambles.

So, loves, cling to your Sprongles and Flungles and Mlambles and be kind to yourselves.

And stop sending me “wanna feel old” content.