Dear beloved readers,

As I am writing this on the last day of the year, I can’t help but feel a wave of relief and sadness at the same time. This year was not what any of us expected it to be, it was brutal and harder than anything we’ve ever seen, it brought the world together for such a chaotic reason and at times, I just begged for everything to stop. It was too much, it felt too wrong, but until it came to that, it certainly had a beginning.

I guess it’s strange now to think that this year had a beginning in which the world “coronavirus” was unknown to us all, there was a time that the talks were about a third World War and masks weren’t in fashion at all. If I had to assume any year would go this bad, I would’ve bet on 2018, as for the first time since I was 6, I woke up having wet the bed – it was an accident, obviously, but for it to have happened at almost bloody 19 and at the first day of the year, it felt alarming to say the least. But not this year, 2020 started slow and calm, the kind of calmness you always appreciate after a chaotic semester, it was college break, the last one before everything got really real, and I wanted to enjoy every second of it, every second of being able to just be for a while, before things started to get scary again.

I had a new someone by my side, someone who kept me sane throughout this crazy turn of events this year was, someone who means more to me than I will be able to put into words. My person. My person kept me going through everything, before and after the pandemic started. It was and felt refreshing, I was determined not to fuck this up and if this year was meant for anything, it was to prove that good things do come for those who wait, and that the whole “it happens when you are least expecting it to” really applies sometimes.

Going back to my apartment after the two months I spent at my parent’s was wanted but not avidly expected, it felt natural and it just made sense. I was about to enter the final chapter of my college adventure and everything felt very right. There were expectations, as I’ve learned in 2019, there is just no point of believing and trusting in a year without any expectations, they are impossible to stay away from. And with some expectations, but overall just excited to see whatever was in store for me, the beginning of my last year of college was welcomed warmly, with obviously a very waited coffee date with my Tony and planning the most posh and extra attire for the event of the first day of class. And with a headband in my head and The Smith’s blasting through my head phones, I felt ready.

There was this one thing that wouldn’t leave my mind however, that was the big final thesis, something I had prepared for a semester before, and I had everything already planned and on the way. My brilliant idea was to combine my favorite things, that are pop culture references and New York City, and in this blog’s true brand, I was determined to turn the Girl On The Go into a book, sharing what’s best and most relatable about the New York dream, and I planned on writing the most amazing literally journalistic work this world has seen since  miss Lillian Ross herself. I had a date set, interviews scheduled and a fire under my butt to make everything perfect.

But this year, was all about putting into perspective every lack of control we have over the universe and our demands from it. The curious thing about life is that bad things don’t always come with a warning, they don’t always appear on a cloudy day, with thunder and the skies crying in warning that bad things are coming or as in a movie, with a typical thrilling soundtrack playing in the background that makes you shiver in pure anticipation. And then, on a cloudy or sunny day and with no soundtrack at all, the pandemic arrived.

It all felt very sudden. One day I was talking with my boyfriend about what this whole thing would mean for our year, and the very next day, as discussing this with my thesis guide, we realized it was something to worry about. Not a day later, when going grocery shopping, I saw the shelves more empty than they usually were, hours later my college cancelled classes for two weeks and the uncertainties became real and palpable. There was room for so much wonder that I couldn’t pinpoint what it was that I needed to do, but I was certain that I couldn’t do it all by myself. So not even two months after saying goodbye to my mom, I was knocking on her door right away. And soon, what we thought would last only two mere weeks, turned into a real big deal.

For two weeks all I did was watch the news, it felt like the right thing to do as a worried person and a soon to be journalist. I needed to be informed, to know what would happen and I also, very stupidly, hoped that at any given minute they would give us good news, they would give us an expiration date for this whole madness that was unfolding before my eyes, before everyone’s eyes. I always wanted to live through historic events, but this was too much. The good news, they never came, and what came instead was perhaps the saddest, most tragic years of our lives.

I can’t help but shed tears while writing this, because we lost so many people, we are grieving for millions and thousands and it will take at least years for us to recover from this tragedy. There was not silver lightning, there was no hope for a better tomorrow. At times, I felt like I was in a hopeful denial, wishing one day I would wake up and it would be March 14th again, that all of this would’ve been just a sick joke my brain played on me and I’d be walking to my college, a starbies in my hand and meeting my friends for some random class. But that didn’t happen, much like the good news, it never came either. What came instead was endless days and they all felt like Sundays, where every blog post had the same title, a time, in the beginning, when I couldn’t even change from my pajamas and my room was a reflection of how I felt inside: An absolute mess. Conversations with my boyfriend that felt like the same, me wondering out loud about the million “what ifs” that were haunting me and he, always so calm and collected, the perfect balance, trying to tell me that we wouldn’t have answers any time soon, and as the wisest person I know, I wish I had listened sooner, accepted it sooner, understood it sooner.

It took me so long to get it. To understand that staying home would be all there was in store for this year. That the things I planned on conquering this year would have to come in a different way, that my last year of college was going to be different from what I planned, that my brilliant thesis idea would have to change, that there would be no traveling, no hugs, no coffee dates, nothing. At times, I felt childish and I allowed myself to feel it, I threw tantrums, I yelled and cried and I asked the universe, God, whatever you want to call it, why this was happening, what did we do to deserve it, what did I do to deserve this.

It felt unfair. They were taking away my year that was already going to be full of lasts. It would be my last year in my beloved apartment, my last year with my best friends, my last year living in the city I used to live in, the last year of college, something I waited for so long because I knew it would be simply the best. And I felt robbed. Like this rushed the process completely and all of my lasts? They happened when I didn’t know they were going to be the last. And it still stings.

It hit me at one point, that as much as I am allowed to feel all this frustration, as much as I am allowed to be upset about all the plans that got shuttered, I am still so fucking lucky that I was able to stay inside to protect myself. I haven’t lost anyone in my family to this unforgiving virus and that in itself is already such a conquer to have in 2020, the year we all hoped it would be the best and ended up going completely backwards from what we expected. I feel lucky, right now as I am writing this, because I know how much this grief is affecting millions of families, all over the world, and I feel sorry, so sorry.

When it hit me, that this was going to be it, that there was nothing else to do but to the right thing, that seeing the world from my window was going to be this years reality, and that was the least I could do to help, I felt okay. There were a lot of frustrations, comic reliefs disguised as Memes, haircuts that went wrong, a wave of aspiring Property Brothers, TikToks and what seemed like a million livestreams on Instagram, until all of this became a kind of adaptation that then became a habit. A habit that is not pleasant, maybe even worse than cutting carbohydrates and having to get used to a sad low carb reality, a habit that comes every other day with a “what now?” feeling that has awakened in many people the inability to concentrate, which counts with a lot of anxiety, which aches but doesn’t hurt and is still very frustrated, but a habit nonetheless.

Staying at home was undoubtedly a big challenge, but it was the right thing to do. Doing this not only for our own health: the virus has no preference for age, but for others, for those who could not stay at home, for those who had no choice but to stay at home, for the essential workers who depended on our cooperation, for doctors and nurses who were, every day trying, at all costs, to save lives, and there were so many to save.

The plans changed, so did the priorities. There was a very clear period in this quarantine that I used to reevaluate life and my priorities, that I adapted – and how sad does that sounds –, that I accepted change, kinda against my will but I did so. I put in practice all the maturity I had, I figured it out, I did not back down, and I did everything in my power for my goals, the ones that still felt somewhat possible, to be achieved. And that’s what got me through. Planning the future, for most people, me included, felt impossible, but I had to stick with what I believed, and I had to do the most with this, otherwise I would go insane.

I decided then, to write my thesis about this. This chaotic event that changed our lives on a global scale. I wrote and wrote and wrote some more, I interviewed people, I collected every material possible and I did the most with what I had in store, and I wrote perhaps the best article of my life. This was the true goal for this year, to be able to conclude this phase with golden stars and excellency, to be able to write something I was proud of and would forever be remembered with joy and pride. I don’t often get to feel proud of myself, but as I wrote the last paragraph, after everything that went down, I looked at myself and I knew I had chosen the right career, I felt big and powerful and invincible, there was no doubt in my mind that I was a journalist indeed.

Time, that for a moment seemed to stay still, now was passing by faster than ever. And it took every last straw of sanity I had not to have an emotional breakdown per minute. There was rehearsals and panic attacks, so many calls with Tony and what felt like a million cups of tea, until the day came. I woke up and I was washed off by this feeling never before felt. I looked in the mirror trying to figure out what was wrong and for the first time in my life, there was nothing. I felt ready, like Micheal Jordan must’ve felt when he scored his winning shot. And I too won the MVP. With the best compliments of my life and a sense of pride never before felt, I graduated with excellency, distinction and a nomination for publication. And not that I’ve ever doubted that I was meant for honorable great things, but this felt greater than anything I’ve ever dreamed of accomplishing.

The days came and went after this big event that I felt like it was what every second of this endless year led up to. It felt joyful and amazing, as much as the year did not go as anticipated, it was the happy ending I needed. We are still far away from seeing some sort of perspective on things getting back to what they were, that is if they ever go back. I have a hard time believing this will ever go back to normal, this year will be for a very long that something we carry as an open wound, one that we all share, but I hope that in the future, as visible as the scar will be, that it will be just that, a scar that doesn’t hurt anymore, not even when we put pressure on it.

It’s the last day of the year, a year so bad that they stopped saying it was rough times and instead are saying “COVID times”. And hours before this ends, I just want to let you know that it doesn’t matter if you are hopeful about 2021 or if you just think tomorrow will be another day, another among the many we had that didn’t feel or mean anything, remember the grey area? Yeah, this year surely felt grey. This year proved us that things are unpredictable and can be damn close to unbearable, surviving is hard when living is not really an option, and with not much to wish for the new year, all I have to say is that I hope it’s not as bad as this was. I don’t have that much faith, I definitely don’t have any resolutions, goals or expectations, I have wishes, and I wish for this next year to be better, not a whole lot of better as I am still very realistic about this whole thing, but better in any way, shape or form the universe wants to great us with. But for now, I will just wait until midnight, hold myself and wait for  a better tomorrow to come, as we know by now, they always do come.   

Until next year beloved readers, I know I wasn’t the most consistent with you guys this year but I know you understand. And I thank you, so much, for that. I am thinking of all of you around this time and as hard as it is to be alone, stuck at home today, I am here to tell you that we got this, we’ve been through worse before. It’s the last day of the year, a year that I think we all longed for the end, and I hope you guys are ready for whatever beginning we shall have. Stay safe, home and out of trouble, but if you don’t, well, you know what to do.

– Your Girl on the Go