February went by quickly, but it feels like I was last here (writing this newsletter) much longer than a month ago. Since the last time I was here, I’ve been bowled over by exhaustion so relentless that doing the simplest tasks takes all the energy out of me. I guess it makes sense given that March 2021 is already at our door with no regard for the fact that we’re still trying to make sense of March 2020.
This time last year I took myself on a date. I didn’t really have a destination in mind, but it was a relatively nice day in New York and after mass, in Washington Heights, I journeyed to Herald Square on the train and ended up at Friedman’s on 34th Street.
I sat at the booth of the restaurant by myself and ordered a plate of french toast with blueberries and strawberries piled on the doughy bread, and a sprinkle of powdered sugar for good measure. I ordered a fancy coffee-like drink and listened to the appropriately themed brunch music that blasted through the speakers.
Over the last year, I haven’t hidden the fact that I miss things like this, I don’t think anyone has. We all miss the freedom of talking over each other at brunch, sitting uncomfortably close to each other on the trains, hugging each other, and rubbing our sweaty bodies against each other in dark and musty rooms with music playing at dangerously loud levels. In the past, I have only said that cursorily. But now, as we mark a year since all of our lives changed, I’ve made peace with the fact that the tiredness I feel in my bones is grief for the things I’ve lost.
A few weeks (or even less) after the world shut down, I saw this interview with grief expert, David Kessler, all over my timeline. It’s titled, That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief. I didn’t read it because I felt grief was too strong a word to describe how I was feeling at the time. Last March, I was confused, yes, but I was resolute that we would overcome this mess in a few months and return to “normal” (HA!) I thought, grief annihilates you, it incapacitates you. You feel grief when you lose someone or something, but I’m not grieving because I can’t go to brunch. I’ll be fine. And thank goodness I have been fine and my family has, but over 2.5 million people across the world have not been. Businesses have shuttered, some permanently, students graduating from college are entering an economy so disrupted that many will never recover financially, people haven’t been able to hug their mothers, and kiss their fathers. Now, a year later, I am realizing that I have been grieving all along, and not just about brunch. But about how this pandemic has changed all of us, and this feeling has only intensified as we mark a year since it all started.
I guess I have nothing else to say other than, I’m tired. I really am. And I can no longer pretend I’m not. I can no longer muddle through work as if this year has not changed me irrevocably. As if I have not unraveled in ways I never thought I would. And yes, I have found moments of joy in this hellscape of a year, a good amount of it. But that doesn’t take away the sting of 2020.
Okay, I’ve said it. Now what?
David Kessler says that “[our] work is to feel [our] sadness and fear and anger whether or not someone else is feeling something. Fighting it doesn’t help because [our bodies are] producing the feeling. If we allow the feelings to happen, they’ll happen in an orderly way, and it empowers us.”
Well, I’m no longer fighting the feeling, that’s for sure. But I pray that as we come full circle into March 2021, we find a little closure and some hope to see us through the rest of this year and beyond.
Amen.
they (w)rote.
This beautiful story by Carmen Maria Machado in Lightspeed Magazine is all about grief and then some. It’s titled Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead “This is what they don’t tell you about the land of the dead: it looks and smells like some approximation of your entire life, but in muted colors and shifting scents—sunscreen, then smoke, then raspberry shaving cream.”
I’ve been reading a lot of obituaries and writing them is truly an art. This one of veteran Washington Post reporter, Maxine Cheshire, written by Matt Schudel is a testament to that. Boy, did she live a life.
I found this story by Namwali Serpell (as well as the Machado story) when Serpell replied to a tweet asking for stories about grief. Serpell wrote this for Buzzfeed, it’s titled Beauty Tips From My Dead Sister. “The words “shameful” and “shameless” look like opposites but they actually mean the same thing. When in doubt, always choose “shameless.””
I really enjoyed this piece by Alexandria Neason for the Columbia Journalism Review. It asks, what does racial reconciliation really mean for the media industry in America?
Celine Dion was such an integral part of my childhood growing up in Enugu. For Vice, Vincent Desmond does the lord’s work by explaining why Celine Dion means so much to so many Nigerians.
I love this piece by Brené Brown, she talks about how love is her fuel and what it feels like when the world is “suffering from traumatic levels of lovelessness” and how she tries to counter that in her own life.
This story by Nelson C.J for Time Magazine about what Clubhouse is really like for queer Nigerians is a must-read.
This is a beautiful story about meeting your soulmate in the most unexpected places. It’s by Kadine Christie for New York Times’ Modern Love column.
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How are you REALLY feeling? I really want to know. Write me via email, I write back.