2020 Killed Off the Optimist in Me, How Do I Find Her Again?

I was a pretty positive person. I always try to see the good in the world, the good in people because I know what it’s like to see and read all of the bad. I was a hopeful person, with big dreams to make change in the world.

2019, I was as loud and bold as I had ever been in my life, but 2020 has diminished the light in me. I tried, I tried really hard. I had hoped the beginning of the year was going to be great with settling into a new city, new friends and new studies. But as the pandemic hit, the optimism took a hit.

As the summer eased and hope was partially restored. I had things to look forward to, and I could start to reimagine some kind of a future.

Then autumn hit and the optimist in me began to die. The days were darker, life looked bleaker and I began to break. My mind took over my body, and I realised I have very little control on anything anymore.

November was the most difficult month I have lived through this year, and this year I had a dissertation to hand in and even that was easier than this. I began to lose control over my body. I was living in so much fear that it began to manifest in my body. My heart felt like it was going to explode out of my chest.

Every. Single. Day.

I barely slept. My mind was telling me the worst things about myself, about the world and about the people I care about. I was struggling to get through the days. It felt like I wasn’t living in my own body. I was just a ghost in a shell.

And I kept thinking to myself, how long is the world going to be like this? Because I don’t think my body can physically take this any longer.

As we move into December, things have calmed. I manage to sleep, but I still wake up every morning shaking. Work has helped immensely, providing a distraction and the comfort of people living through the same thing.

I still place an immense pressure to be in a place that isn’t possible for a twenty-two year old in a pandemic. But it’s the way society has conditioned us to be. The glamourisation of overworking and burnout culture, and I’m guilty as a participant of it.

The only way to get through living in a world like this, I have found is burning myself out.

But, how long can you keep burning out a flame before it is just ash?

Despite all of this, I still try to be hopeful and that’s the most painful thing. Trying to be hopeful in a world that is not giving us any hope. For every ounce of hope I have, it gets crushed and it’s hard to come back from that. I know Lana is problematic, but hope really is a dangerous thing.

Until the world can show me good, I can’t be the optimist I used to be.