This year has been quite an bizarre one. I cannot explain whether it was short or long. When I look at it in the context of wow, it’s the very last day of 2021 I am in awe. I mean, damn! didn’t we usher in “the new year” just the other day?
However, when I look at it in regards to the numerous events that have happened to me, the people I know, our country, and the entire world, it has been quite a long year. I mean it has really dragged it’s feet!
Before I started writing this piece, I felt that this year was totally bad to me. But now that I think about it, it hasn’t been all bad. For starters, this year my mother received treatment in the clearest of God’s paths and after 8 hours of surgery, several months of recovery and another minor surgery, for the first time in a while, I can say she is great😃 Now you can imagine that this “hospital period” and that of her sickness was tough so you can understand why my 2021 comes off as awful as the first feel.
Now I could write so much about 2021 but maybe I should just focus on the highlights.
Of course I have to start with this website, my safe haven. For years I thought about creating it, but never executed it. I love writing, and so for me to have a space where I can do what I love by expressing myself and being the voice of “The Contemporary Woman” is such a great win for me. It is also a dream come true, as small as it may be, and I can’t wait to explore this path and see myself, and this lounge grow.
So I guess, apart from being alive, happy, healthy, and safe, together with my family (these are very underrated “obvious” blessings that we really should stop over looking) my two main positive highlights of 2021 are my website, and my mother’s recovery😊
Now getting through the year has been quite hard. My job faced the highest deep this year which meant I was broke for the most part of the year. This is normal, I know, it happens but it was the hardest because dome of the people in my circle had their best financial years. Now I seemed to really focus on my problem which only made it that much bigger. But hey, I learnt that I am a good person, because I was able to celebrate my friends wins, when I seemed to be doing nothing but lose. And you know what else I learnt? It gets better, because some of those friends who were celebrating wins have been through really hard times in the previous years, so now it was their time to win!
This year, I experienced new levels of pain. First there was the pain of seeing my mother sick, which came with the agony of seeing her as a “person” Before, she was my mother, but being sick, I saw her from a different light. I saw her as an individual who was vulnerable, and one who could get so sick that they needed me.
Just last month, I experienced pain I can never describe. The pain of seeing a young couple mourn their child, whom they had so much hope in. Now that was tough, very tough. You know, being in a group of people whose hearts are so heartbroken that you feel it so much that your mind formulates a visual depiction of how their hearts might look; and just how much pain they might be in. Never before have I ever seen a mother so broken that I wished there was a way I could feel at least some of the pain for them. Neither had I ever seen a father so broken, but still trying to be strong for his wife, and family, that you know he is using every ounce of strength he has. A time when you were numb from seeing so many people broken that you cannot cry, that you feel guilty and like you are a bad person because you are not crying.
But through it all, they survived, we survived!
Indeed 2021 has been quite a year! And as tough as it was, it shaped and prepared us for 2022. And we can only hope the new year will be a great one! Either way, “The Contemporary Woman” —you and me— we will deal with it as it comes.
Take the bull by the horns😊
❤❤❤❤
Nyambura Macharia