Year 2 and Thank You

As my kids return to school after winter break I find myself in a familiar situation checking the rising COVID numbers in our county and refreshing the school district’s COVID dashboard webpage every hour knowing damn well that those numbers do not accurately reflect the number of active COVID cases and are just a fraction of the amount infected…

But after that run-on sentence I was reminded of something beautiful. Throughout these pandemic years I have felt anxious and fearful, but I have never felt alone and that’s mostly because of you. Of course I missed people but because of the magic of social media I still felt connected. Seeing your posts, even the stupid ones, was surprisingly comforting and through social media I was able to reconnect with old friends and I even made new ones. 

I feel lucky and grateful to you on the other side of this screen. There is strange comfort in knowing that we are all experiencing the same fears as we go into year 2 of this pandemic. As we move forward, I’m reminded of the first few months when most of us had no idea how devastating this would be. We suddenly had loads of unstructured time and we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. I spent many late nights scrolling through your posts and DMing you about our kids, our jobs, the state of the world. I’m grateful for your honesty and vulnerability. Thank you for being there, for showing up, for giving me space, for your patience, humor, and kindness. Thank you for being generous with your photos of your daily lives, and thank you for the memes. 

I realize this post makes it seem like I’m saying goodbye and I wonder if that’s because we’re not used to saying thank you to each other just because. I don’t plan on going anywhere. I’m just feeling particularly grateful for you today. 

Thank you for reading. I realize I’m not a fancy writer and I probably will never be. I use boring words like so and really and a lot. It’s something that used to bother me to the point where I wouldn’t write anything. Nothing ever seemed good enough…but I’ve stopped chasing perfection. Sure, I could use better adjectives but here I want my writing to sound as much like me as possible. When you read my posts I want you to feel like we are sitting on my living room couch with no makeup and our glasses on because that’s how some of the most meaningful conversations of my life were had. 

Today my writing is jagged and nonsequential, but I don’t plan on editing it. This is how my mind is today and I don’t really have a reason to post except for the fact that I miss you and I wanted to let you know that I’m grateful for how you show up in my life. 

I hope you step into the world today knowing you are deeply loved, and I hope knowing that will give you the courage to tell someone you love the same. Salamat po.