the lost year. (Patreon)

I don’t know what to say.

It’s been a year since I got sick. And now half a million people are dead. With many more around the world. Most of us knew some of them. Some of us knew them all too well. But because of the pandemic, we had a year where half the country has spend their days locked inside or retreating to less populated corners, experiencing the depths of isolation and anhedonia and desperation and a level of sadness that goes so impossibly deep. Meanwhile, half the country acted like it’s some big joke or conspiracy or whatever the fuck else, and in turn, made it so much worse for all. But as everything retracted inwards, it also exploded in the most upheaval we’ve seen in a generation. But these upheavals weren’t over these new developments. They were the results of buckling pressure of injustices that were ignored for far too long. George Floyd and the violence against Black Americans. The police violence against demonstrations against that violence. The re-ignition of violence against Asian-Americans. And it culminated in a bunch of fascists who were the proponents of all those horrible things, mounting a literal insurrection and stormed congress - all part of the swan song of everything that embodies the hateful shitbag leader whose name I never want to say again except to spit on. The magnitude of all of this is so much. But these things happened. And their scars will remain - all haunting echoes of things that could last for generations.

I have no insight into them that someone else couldn’t do far more justice. All I can offer is the willingness to look at them clearly. And to look at them with you. To say what they are. And show how we want to fight them. And while in that space, we can also talk about how we feel.

… I feel like a husk.

I feel like i’ve discovered a level of auto-pilot I didn’t know a human could have. Of course, it’s a system so I’m also feeling everything more than I ever have, too. More frighted. More angry. More exhausted. More sick (my lungs are still completely fucked and after a lifetime of loving running, it makes cardio near impossible). And yet, at my core, more frustrated with myself and more haunted by guilt than ever, too. It’s hard to feel like there’s any kind of digestible size to all this, nor end to it. Probably because it’s almost impossible for me to think about the future at all. Because this entire lost year has existed in a time loop. At once instantaneous and endless. And we’re still fucking in it.

In moments of respite, it’s less moments of “good” and more moments where I feel thankful. Truly, deeply, earnestly thankful. For friends to watch movies with over zoom. For finding an impossibly real form of peace and love. For getting to experience an anxious little doggo who likes to hide between my feet as I farm in Stardew Valley. For getting to watch a new niece grow up, even if just on a screen. For family members finally getting their vaccinations, a thought that seemed impossible just five months ago. To be clear, it’s not quite like I’m feeling these things “more.” In fact, it’s often harder to emotionally connect with them thanks to sea of shit mentioned above. But they are something that feels more crystalized. More stark in their inherent goodness in a way that could never truly be appreciated without the staggering lack around them. So again, I am thankful.

And I am most thankful for you. That I can share these things. That we can just… talk. Honestly, this community is the most I’ve ever been able to get writing to feel like a conversation, one trying in earnest to push against the inherent parasocial bounds. But the honeycombing of online space is much of what we have to hold onto, especially now. And in a world without movie theaters - a space I love like few others - you’ve really been shaping what I get to discover this year. I still get an idiot grin when I think about watching Summer Wars for the first time and its climactic nosebleed. Our talks about Wandavision is the closest I’ve gotten to that roundtable bar conversation that makes me feel like all this art just isn’t happening in a vacuum. And I get to laugh that I wrote 16,000 words about Fincher’s old Hollywood ode and the best reaction was mostly “thanks for saying who all those old white people were!” These things are gifts. And I truly honor them as such.

In that spirit, the thing I most want when I think about this year? I just want hear below about your year (only if you’d like of course). Whether it’s sharing the hardest things you faced, or the things you’re thankful for. Anything really. But I admit I also want to hear about different experiences from around the world that far away from the myopic horror of everything in America. I dunno… I just want to feel the bigger world.

After all, it’s been a year.

<3HULK