I once read that remembered suffering never feels as bad as present suffering. The writer, an Irish lady in her late 20s, summarised an anecdote with a sentence that has stayed with me: remembering is weaker than experiencing. I had struggled with that sentence particularly because there are things for which remembering still feels as devastating as experiencing and there are things for which to remember is to be humbled by how limited our knowledge and understanding of life is.
I ended 2020 with Covid-19. At a time when I was already in thoughts about the fragility of life, I found myself with an illness that was killing people. Around me, people were in celebratory moods: at parties, or hosting dinners, December charged with that usual air of glory and glamour, reclaiming its coveted spot as the most wonderful time of the year. Most nights as I lay in bed sick and in a pool of my own sweat, shivering as if abandoned to the frostbite of winter, I thought that it would end me. The pain around my face felt obnoxious and permanent as if it would always be there, carrying with it no possibility of extinction. My throat was dry, my tongue white like chalk, and as I swallowed my vitamins and chewed fruits diced in neat halves, it felt like everything in the world had grown a new taste as I slept.
Months later, I would test positive again, and then less than four months after, too. On both encounters, I remember thinking of how unaware I was of the unlikeliness of life – you think you know that life is random until you are presented with a situation for which your only response is to reiterate its randomness. We are always humbled by our limited knowledge.
In 2021, I grieve the loss of two cousins. It is unexpected, which makes acceptance even more difficult. I am stubborn with my grief and so I carry it every day to work, concealed – leaving it inside my car only to find it after 5 pm on my drive home. The thing about grief is not only that it is confusing but that it is never finished. It feels incomplete, at times like a slow, melting realisation that almost never arrives at an ending. It owns its pace and bullies without mercy, always in motion. I carried it on my back and inside my chest, and as I answered to rudimentary tasks throughout the days, I knew it was still somewhere deep, racketing with my bones and blood, waiting for me to sit with it.
For the most part, 2021 has been a year of finding balance; staying true to myself and accommodating the differences that exist in the world. I have read fewer novels than I have in my life. Yet, in thinking about the many hiccups and miracles of the year, I am convinced that what we feel in a particular moment is what is real. Our feelings are the truest and purest existential currency. About life, every other thing is made up – no one knows anything no matter how powerful they present, we are fragile and clueless. Pain is the great revelation. In the very moment you think a pain will end you, it will not. Eventually, time will do its tricks and you realise that you can only summarise three or five months of heartbreak into a few seconds of narration; you realise that grief doesn’t end –no matter how we break our voice in screams and wails; we cannot run it out of our bodies. We are always humbled by our limited knowledge.
Time moves in one direction only and things happen to us more than once. When I think of what I am most thankful for, my response – albeit precious, somewhat cliché – is everything. Every experience is a compass to understand ourselves. And for me, knowing that the world is still unsafe to marginalised communities and the economically underprivileged, knowing the various brands of soft drinks that are produced every day in plastic bottles and all the pre-packaged lunch deals and confectionery in sealed bags and store-bared pastries, knowing the culmination of labour – including the illegal trafficking of women and children, and the back-breaking work on coffee farms and sugar plantations and the digital influencers who illuminate the mundane with hashtags and filters, knowing all the burning of fossil fuels that puts the earth in danger; it is remarkable that I’m still here, experiencing the many little hiccups and miracles of existing in a big, frightening universe; still thankfully loved by the ones without whom life is a passing fable.
