2020 Didn’t Make My Top 5 Bad Years List

Of all the unpopular opinions I should have kept to myself over the years, this one probably tops the list. On a global scale, 2020 was truly terrible and heartbreaking. On a personal scale? Not so much. Oh, I gained and lost a job and weight and friends. I ached for people I knew who contracted Covid-19 or had people in their lives who did, and was distressed by job losses, and food bank lines, and the panic of the unemployed. But, these worries were mainly birthed by the specific circumstances of the pandemic, and the state of worry, the state of being — the agitation and anxiety — felt like most other years.

I can’t be alone in that. For a large swath of the population things weren’t good before the pandemic.

I’m not writing this from a place of middle-class comfort. A lot of people like me are the subjects of articles and investigations, thought pieces and polemics. Journalists ask us to describe what things are like and reduce the answers to mere sentences and soundbites, as if 50 words can convey the difficulty of modern life.

2020 wasn’t the first time I lost a job. Luckily, my children are grown and able to take care of themselves, so past experiences as an unemployed single mother didn’t apply. I get that we’ve had massive unemployment on a scale not seen since the Great Depression. On a personal scale, losing a job in the construction industry near the end of 2008 was much more devastating. Much less individual help was available and my children weren’t fully grown. Why do so many companies lay people off right before Christmas? That’s a rhetorical question.

So many years were more financially, emotionally, and mentally devastating for me than 2020. There were the years my ex-husband spent our rent money on drugs and slapped me around. There were years of losing dear friends to cancer, standing in food bank lines for months on end, and the 5 years I had no social life at all and never went anywhere because I couldn’t afford child care. There were years of guilt over my latch-key kids. There were many years of expenses exceeding income despite my hard work and resourcefulness. There were years of serious health issues with no health insurance. Can you imagine living with dental abscesses for 6 months? There were years of childhood abuse, homelessness, and sexual harassment at work. Looking back is exhausting.

There have actually been a lot of really bright spots in my life, and gratitude is baked deep into my bones, but it hasn’t been an easy life. In comparison, 2020 was a breeze.

For people who lost loved ones, 2020 will likely be in their top 5 worst years list. The same for people who didn’t receive much or any unemployment help, went hungry, or couldn’t pay their rent or mortgages. 2020 was the worst year ever for a lot of people, and 2021 didn’t start out any better. I’m not trying to minimize their pain and struggle.

What I am trying to do is offer perspective for the people who didn’t have those specific struggles. You can’t build resilience without perspective and context. 2020 was a tough year for everyone, but like any tough time, some people had it worse, and that matters. Recognizing that can help you appreciate what you do have. It can help you appreciate that in the course of a lifetime, a couple of bad years are a blip, and you will come out of them stronger and more resilient, and better able to weather future blips.