The Year 2020
We stood front to back watching the fireworks shoot off into the sky behind the bay bridge.
Five. Four. Three. Two. One!
Happy New Year!!!!! We exchanged a kiss and entered the year 2020 without any fuckin expectations of what would occur. We danced all night, we spent our first night in my first apartment in SF. Life seemed easy, real. I waited, with youthful spirit, the obstacles I’d soon come to face. SF was unreal, it was a lonely place in the beginning.
“Acid for the Children” became my best friend. I explored coffee shops, and kava bars, I walked to school everyday and worked mornings. Then tame impala happened: I discovered the night life in SF—I was finally 21 but that day I found my independence. The listening show was, what I consider, to be MY first night in SF.
Tamia became a single unit. We walked down mission, my feet killing me, three new strangers who I have now become good friends with somehow. The make out room, how I miss it so, how I danced and kissed and drank so many nights away there.
I met Xxx months ago, where he lied about his daughter being his sister. The night of our meeting became a night of ER freak accidents and first dates, I can easily say that was one of the poorer decisions this year. Then came (xxx) and the romantic escapades, the drunken nights and infatuation was unlike any other. Firsts, they are harder than seconds and thirds because you are forced to feel every bittersweet emotion that follows the end of that first experience.
The listening show taught me about drinking. I had done the dance with alcohol before, we were good friends, had a relationship, but, we created a marriage —once the pandemic happened.
Life was unreal, it was perfect, it was new fresh, fun, exciting, it was all I could imagine life to be, and then it became not. It changed. Xxx came back into my life, hard. I created a new friendship with him, he became a sibling, a confidant, a partner in crime, Xxx and Ooo, the three muskateers.
I married alcohol, but it was an abusive relationship. It would try to talk to me, gave me warnings within that I knew I should have heeded. I ignored them. They became more prevalent, my mind began to wither, my heart began to rot, my liver began to give out, my body was exhausted. This poor tired vessel was treated like a sewer.
I met “the musicians”. Life changed again, I found a beautiful group of souls that have painted colorful pictures of imagination and creation. Minds that have gardens of colorful tulips blossoming from their ears. Faeries and Gypsies, hitchhikers and activists, lawyers and high priestesses, tax men and pianists. All of the traveling I’ve done throughout my lifetime can be completely disregarded when compared to the journey I’ve embarked upon after meeting these people.
George Floyd, Breona Taylor, I heard your names in my sleep, not dreams or night terrors, I do not wish credit where credit does not deserve to be. Because someone’s death should not be a dream, it should haunt us, their names are remembered.
The virus took over like a deadly disease, because that’s what it was. The elections happened and it was like the whole world heaved one big sigh. Whether of relief or preparation of the years to follow, but the four year era is over for Trump. The asshole.
No amount of convincing could have prepared me for the year 2020. A failed relationship later, a new one ensuing, a whole life ahead full of promise and uncertainty. Still I’m skeptical when I wake up every morning, as if this motivation will leave me, as though there will be some catch, as if my feet will slowly descend upon the cold floor for the first time in a year—but I am resilient. Old habits die hard, we’ve spent more of our years entwined within the hustle and bustle of life that it will be easy for most of the population to forget what this pace of living feels like. Never forget.
Highlights
One of the coolest nights of my life nights to document: a two joint rotation with Xxx and Ooo, sitting cross legged in a triangle atop my bed...speaking minimally, smoking maximally, listening to good music and riding the invisible wave”
Sitting under the full moon with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the city scape, sitting near the shore on a drift log singing along to redbone in the dark, looking over at xxx “peanut butter chocolate cake with koolaid” grin on our faces and good feelings
The night I was leaving xxx’s house, only slightly intoxicated, in love with the solitude of the night. The quiet, empty streets, feeling the feeling of appreciation for life.
