It is September. It is 2020.

The air—as with us all—has been light with hope, thick with despair, rapturous and untamed with wind and thunder and lighting that seems to have set the world on fire.

And we are tired, we are frustrated, we are fed up.

But we are also so wonderfully resilient, and so beautifully newly aware that we don’t know what to do with ourselves.

We are so angry because we haven’t felt anger in so long, and there’s so much to be upset about. We are mourning what we thought was. We are mourning our expectations of what should be. We are mourning who we thought we were, but upon unraveling, have discovered we are not.

So many of us are wailing for things to “go back to normal.”

Normal. Where we can resume with our heads down, with our hearts draped in veils of perceived productivity, of teetering self-worth, of the illusion that “everything is okay.”

I think we’ve really unlocked something here though—something that will prevent us from accepting the deceptive peace of normalcy from seeping back into our pores.

In this year, I have felt hopeless, lonely, exhausted, vulnerable, heartbroken, and completely unsure of who I am or what I am supposed to be doing.

But in exposing the raw nerves of these feelings, I am also alive. I have never felt more living or in tune with myself. Sometimes I am not in tune at all, sometimes I just don’t know, and I realize that and have learned to be okay with it.

I would have never known this—the peace within the chaos within me—without this year. Without 2020. The dumpster fire, the sh*tshow, the reason for all of us to hide under the covers or cry or rage. I would never have looked up or even forward, forming opinions, unraveling beliefs and narratives that have become too small for me, tearing down the sheets of people that I represent myself as, and exposing only me—who I am in all of my complicated messy-light and dark-and-moody stubborn glory.

I don’t want to look back on the quiet moments, quiet days—regardless of how I feel—and think, “What a nice time that was.” I want those moments to continue; I want me to continue, my presence to continue, and I want acknowledgment and gratitude to continue beyond what we have deemed as the worst year ever.

We are tired, we are enraged, we are done. But we are beautifully here, we are resilient, and we are waking up. Let the hope be that we don’t fall back asleep.