Difficult Times...

Here we are at the beginning of February, a month which I love for no other reason than its blessed shortness. After the long, long weeks of January, February feels like a fast-forward, delivering me from the drudge winter months to the more hopeful spring ones. This year though, I feel in much less of a rush to dash forward. I am more inclined to pause a while and take the chance to look backwards.

This time two years ago I did not know what that particular month of March 2020 would bring with it. It has been a difficult time to exist through. I can only speak with authority for my own experience; for me it has been two years of confronting some uncomfortable realities of who I am, what kind of person I am, what I can and cannot bear. I have seen close up the sacrifices my values ask me to make and understood the pain of them. I am much clearer too on what kind of punishment might be meted out to me because of those beliefs and values. It is not so much an intellectual exercise in my life as this sort of navel-gazing once was. It has been an unedifying couple of years in terms of having it demonstrated beyond any doubt what others in my life are prepared to sacrifice too (in some cases, I am the sacrifice).

Still, I am one of the luckier ones, by a very long shot. Yet, the net outcome of the past two years feels, in certain areas at least, a negative one. I have lost something, probably just a naivety that deserved to be burned away at some point in my life – maybe it would have been removed by the mere act of my getting older day by day. Nevertheless, something of my carefreeness has been deleted. I wonder if I shall ever recover it?

I continue to hope for less oppressive times to come around. All things pass, after all. I hope this mainly for my children, but also for myself. I’m tired and worn and I would like more opportunities to laugh and smile, outside of what I do with the two people I live with (three, if you count the dog, which come to think of it, I certainly do).

Two years ago, I was penning one of these letters on the topic of human nature’s constant and casual hypocrisy - how some things in society were obsessed over whilst others were batted away with a ‘who cares’ attitude. I had picked a couple of examples; the number of people in the world who starve to death each year and also the number of American children who are killed by gunshot wounds as two examples of ways to die that our so-called civil societies tolerate without much of a murmur, day to day. Then March 2020 arrived and I chickened out of publishing it, thinking it would wait a month or so until ‘easier’ times were upon us. Two years later, I’m wondering what that says about who I really am and whether I am living up to who I hoped I would be when I decided to return to this material life on this spinning rock.

“Stay safe” is something I always used to say to my kids as I waved them off to school. It was only ever really meant to make myself feel better about letting them go. Then the whole world started chanting it, and I don’t like it so much anymore.

I think it might be better overall to wish them and myself to be brave and fierce instead.

Rachel x