PEOPLE.

" We were together. I forget the rest" - Walt Whitman.

I never thought that the concept of human beings would become a facet of my life that I would ever come to care for. Ever since I was little, people were not a stagnant concept and they never existed in my life in a capacity where they had an impact on it in a positive sense. Beginning with a birth giver and onward to more impactful chosen relationships like that of friends and acquaintances, I had gotten used to the idea that it most likely would not work out and so people were not something that I let myself consider a commodity. 2020 and quarantine for me personally, and I’m sure it holds true for a lot of other people as well was extraordinarily life-altering. Because it was such a globally shared phenomenon, it forced me to be stuck with myself and this change then caused a spiral of self-observation and reflection which in turn accelerated personal growth. The concept that all humans need human interaction to survive made a little bit more sense to me. I don’t think I had ever truly been left to myself and my thoughts before. Although I previously had a lot of time to myself before, because of my pretty full days, I had never had the time to think and evaluate. And now that I had some semblance of available time, confronting these thoughts proved to be slightly challenging.

For one, I had to accept that I liked having people around. This was challenging because I had spent my entire life convincing myself of the deficits of people and made it easier for me to spend as little energy and emotion on losing people. You call it a defensive mechanism, I call it a successful trauma strategy. So, as this enlightenment took me through six stages of grief, I mourned some of my unsuccessful attempts at denying the basic concept of human existence. As easy as it wasn’t, I acknowledged the fact that I liked the company. Once this was accepted, I had to put reasonable effort into making it happen. As someone who lives with depression, with happy highs and rock bottom lows, socializing usually costs me a lot of energy. And for the very first time, I was willing to spend it no matter the consequence. And so I did. 

Previous to this revealing moment, I had always felt like I was eternally a loner and essentially did not have a support system. Pre-quarantine I would continue to feel this way and do nothing about it. But over the course of the pandemic, the realization that I did in fact have a life and a group of people that mean and would come to embody important positions in my life, hit. And thus began the process of living the shit out of the present and being grateful for the people that chose to absorb themselves into me and my life. A want of being a notable feature in their lives became something of importance to me as well. This want of serving an affirmative purpose in the lives of people I cared for the most, in a way caused some healing of issues I hadn’t even noticed had taken root in my life and personality. 

So, hard as this year has been physically and mentally for a lot of us, it has also been the year where I allowed myself to experience the most personal and emotional growth. I am so beyond grateful for the wonderful people I have met and have contacted the past few months to help keep my sanity. They taught me that it is okay to let yourself appreciate the good in your life and indulge in whatever it is you want to do to make yourself happy. Without it seeming like too much of a love letter to those that know who they are, I love all of you and it has been such happiness getting to let myself lean on you. Thank you for becoming my people.