Snapshots of 2020

A nano memoir looking back at what I forgot

With the news that the US Centre for Disease Control has officially decided to treat COVID like the flu, it feels particularly apt to turn back to the time when I first wanted them to do that - which was right at the begining of March 2020.

If you don’t want to return to memories of when the world turned upside down, you might want to skip this essay, which primarily consists of entries from my journal at three moments between March and June 2020.

I came across the already yellowed and creased pages (I don’t treat my notebooks well), ready to discard them in my ongoing mission to declutter. But after reading through them I decided I’d like to both save and share them. Not because they are a record of my past (I have easily discarded many of my early journals which cover important topics like what food I ate that day and which boy I liked), but because they tell a different story than the one I remember.

In general, I remember that time as traumatic, isolating, enraging and full of despair. While I know intellectually that good things happened in my life during those months, the emotional feelings I associate with it are painful.

The physiology of our brain means that painful experiences, both physical and emotional, are more firmly encoded in our memories, such that negative memories are more salient and accessible than pleasant ones. Moreover, there is something called mood-congruent memory that means, when we are in a depressed, angry or grieving state, we only recall an unpleasant past. That’s why my overall memory of that time is coloured with a darker shade, and why it makes sense that when I get angry or upset about a current headline or emotional trigger, I only remember the negatives of the past.

Reading my journal, there is a different account of how I felt. No question I had moments where those painful feelings dominated. But they weren’t always present. And keeping a record of this reminds me of the alternative reality to the one in my emotional memory.

One other reason I’m keeping this, is that it reminds me that when I’m afraid or angry I can’t communicate well. Reading what I wrote down calmly in my journal in the first two paragraphs of my March entry still holds true for me, and sounds eminently reasonable (to my ears). I recognize not everyone agrees, but I’m not afraid of that today. I was at the time though, and as a result my communication with those who didn’t agree was defensive and reactive.

I’m glad to share these memories with you below, and ask, is there anything you are forgetting? And how have you changed?

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March 30, 2020

We’re in a time unlike any I’ve been before, perhaps unlike any that Western civilization has had. We are behaving, as a society (almost every other country except perhaps Sweden) as if we are under a massive threat that could end civilization.

But my perspective (shared by not many, but my cousin and maybe my husband to a lesser degree) is that we are not under threat at all. That we have an unusually but not exceptionally higher number of deaths headed for us, due to the corona virus, and that our current approach to life, death and health meants that we can both expect higher than necessary deaths but also that we are unable to philosophically accept the fact that people died - that we all die - especially those who have poor health to begin with. And my perspective is also that the measures the world is taking to address this “threat” are themselves a potential threat to freedom, to society and to civilization.

I had many moments of anger and frustration when trips were cancelled, the schools were locked down, and gatherings of any sort were banned. But I broke through to the other side of what felt like despair, and am now in a state of general acceptance [ed note - ha! so much non acceptance to come later], punctuated by mini mental battles when new restrictions pop up (security guards at the grocery store, playgrounds closed) or comments by people I know or those on social media (the devil!) rile me.

I’m trying to focus on the present and the positive. The negatives right now are the inconvenience of not being able to use public facilities like libraries, enjoy gatherings with friends in restaurants or go to the movies. The other negatives are all the things that so far do not affect my daily life, and that may or may not affect me in the future depending on the severity of the repercussions.

My mind can come up with all sorts of turbulent and disastrous scenarios, but if I live in the moment and not the mind then I’m not touched by the negatives. The positives that I’m experiencing are in fact immense.

I am truly living in the present, because I go crazy if I try to live in the future. I’m still not enlightened of course, but I do feel I’m more relaxed, content and going with the flow. When the fight against reality is so obvious, it’s easy to give up the fight.

The other positives are my renewed appreciation for the outdoors and exercise, and for interactions with other people. I’m baking, cooking and reading much more, and I’m getting along well with my husband and kids.

But my favourite part by far is the dinners with all five of us, sitting and eating together, laughing and telling stories, and often playing games. And on a mercenary level, the government benefits due to the economic blow to the event industry and other economically precarious workers to which I belong (having been working freelance for a catering company) mean that I am likely to receive as much money for not working as I would have for working. And Paul gets paid just the same since he can do his job online.

I like home schooling, I love being home with my kids ( most of the time!), and the fact that everyone is housebound means huge (albeit most likely temporary) gains for the environment - dolphins in the canals in Venice [ed note - I fell for the fake dolphins story], smog free horizon in LA, fewer cars on the road.

So in many ways this is like a dream for me, even though I’m against this approach, I’m for those effects of it! It is a strange time, but also normal feeling - showing how adaptable we are to change (though it’s not that much of a change since many of us still have the comforts of home and the necessities and more of life).

***

April 14, 2020

Two weeks later - even more confined, since our temporary basement tenant tested positive for COVID (she went to the hospital for cancer treatment and they tested her there) which means our family has to go on two week house arrest. In some ways it’s been hard because no walks or runs, other times it’s easy to just go on holiday lazy mode.

Most notable positive aspects of this time (plenty of negative which I dwell on for too much time normally) is our family dinners. We have had a dance party, lots of family board games, a stand-up comedy night, mood chart night, and lots of talking and laughing.

My mood range is ridiculous. For a lot of today I was sad, tired, lethargic and wanting this all to be over, but after our dinner together I was in an ecstatic mood, truly relishing the prospect of having a family dinner together every single night.

It’s not just the fact that we sit down and eat together, it’s the pacing of it. We don’t rush off to do other things, we just stay and chat for an hour, longer if we play a game. I need to figure out how to continue this if/when things get back to normal.

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June 7, 2020

Wow, time has completely flown by. It crawled in March when everything was changing so fast, but then we settled into the new normal (ugh hate that term and all the connotations) and the daily routine just sped up.

Things that are good: we still have family dinner together every night (though have had take-out a couple of times, or let Tom leave the table early to watch a movie, or started without Paul with him working). We take walks multiple times a day. One new habit of the past four weeks has been doing a daily 7 am walk or run with my neighbour Amanda which has been so great for me. Getting up in the morning feels so good, and having the fresh air and social contact also sets me up for a better feeling first thing.

Things I don’t like in society - half the people wearing masks, both inside and out. The idea that things will not, maybe ever, go back to the way they were before - crowded restaurants and bars seem to be a thing of the past, same with school (more or all online), workplace and music concerts/sports.

I think different countries, provinces and states are starting to diverge - we were all on uniform lockdown before - in how they are functioning. That may help people to bust slightly out of group think and their perception of how necessary and how strict everything needs to be.

Stores now all have plexiglas keeping everyone apart from each other, which I don’t like and think is unnecessary, but even if I did believe it was necessary, it is inneffective. At the bank the associate I was meeting with kept coming around the plexiglas to get me to sign things instead of passing the paper through the slot.

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*****

Today, March 4, 2024

My journal entries end there - documenting those times was a temporary and sporadic project so I only have a record of those three days.

It would be easy for my ego to argue that the happy moments then were only the lull before things got worse with the vaccine mandates, travel bans, increased polarization of society. But I know that there were plenty of happy times later as well - I just didn’t record them and so I have to look harder for them in my memory. There was the wonderful feeling of being part of a secret undergound, filled with amazing people including communities I had previously ignored or misunderstood. There was the way I learned I could live through the worst rejections and emerge all the stronger. There was the amount of money we saved because we couldn’t go out and spend it, and the critical education my children received about how it feels to be treated as an outcast so they won’t do that themselves to others.

I am grateful to the Sarah that decided to write down both her positive feelings along with the negative, so that the Sarah I am today can remember there is always another side to all stories, even mine.

Postscript: I published this essay and was about to recycle the now transcribed paper document, but then I read the bullet points on the remainder of the final page (the rest of the journal pages had been torn out and recycled long ago, having been used for other purposes like lists and doodles). They were all to do with emergency preparedness - “prepping” - a stage I went through in summer 2021 in response to the turmoil I felt. One sentence stands out in the list - a quote from a survivalist called Selco who said “your perception of your ability to survive is worse than reality”. I love how that message returns to me time and time again.