What The F*ck Was That?
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As I am sitting in my living room alone after getting off of work early for New Year’s Eve, it’s incredibly difficult not to reflect on the year. This year, and tonight as I am writing this is hard. Now, at the risk of a “Negative Nelly” accusation, some good things that I am grateful for did, in fact, happen this year. But I’m going to be really raw and honest here with you first…
2020 SUCKED
So terribly much happened in 2020 that made me cry, that pushed me down, that broke my spirit. And it seemed to drag on for forever at times. I honestly have no idea how we made it to December 31st now. March and April had approximately 97 days, the summer dragged on without much to do and when the fires hit the forests in Colorado, I WAS DONE.
Last year on this night, I was doing some inward reflection of my own in my journal - and while the actual entry itself is not that overly important, one phrase sticks out among anything else I wrote on that night:
2019 broke my heart
I still remember writing that on this night one year ago. Now, all that I can say is If 2019 broke my heart, 2020 tore me apart. Seriously. 2020 knocked me down more times that I seriously thought possible. 2020 made me so anxious and depressed. 2020 kept me at home… alone with my thoughts… 2020, I am not sad that you will soon be gone. Though, it is, at this point, incredibly hard for me to find much hope in the next year. I honestly would love to just tip-toe into it, but whether I want to or not, 2020 will end just as abruptly as it started and 2021 will take its place.
2020 was painful. I didn’t know it was possible for my eyes to be so red and puffy at times. I didn’t know it was possible to feel stabbed in the heart again… and again… and again… and still be living. I didn’t know that it was so hard to be alone. I didn’t know how much I depended on others. I didn’t know how much I loved hugs. I didn’t know just how healing the outdoors was for my soul. I didn’t know… and I didn’t know because I (we) have never had those things ripped away from us all at once and all so quickly. There are very, very few 2020 moments that pass through my mind that don’t feel tragic.
Way back in March, someone posted a graphic on Facebook. I don’t really remember what the picture was, but I remember the text that was over it. It read: “Yes, we may all be weathering the same storm, but we are all trying to navigate it in different boats.” This hit me like a boulder comes crashing down a mountain. We all have different resources. We all have different and varying support systems. For me, sure I was relatively well off. Much more than a fair amount of the population. I was furloughed from my job for a time in March, but it was really only for about three weeks. I had the support of my family for things I need finance-wise and even though I hate having to ask for things (me and my pride and fierce independence), I knew I had somewhere to lean to at least make my house and electric payments. My boat was covered in holes of loneliness, self-consciousness, self-doubt, depression, anxiety, grief, and, yes, I’ll admit it, at times there was some actual self-hatred.
Every time there seemed to be a bit of hope for me in 2020, something else happened to damage my spirit and soul. I did take a lot of beautiful pictures, saved quotes that said exactly what my soul was feeling and listened to songs over and over and over just to keep going. Below is a look at the year that tore me down. There was good in it but I believe there is strength to admitting and sharing the hard parts of the year. After writing this, I am hopeful that I will be able to leave it all in the past where it belongs… and never look back.
January brought some really cold weather and uncertainty started with COVID-19, our federal government seemed to care less. Everything felt so far away, but there was no way it wasn’t going to end up in our hemisphere.
February just brought worry as the virus crept in close and close. Watching our asshole in chief debate with health professionals and start turning a virus into a political debate. This is where the exhaustion of 2020 started for me. I am so glad that I got to spend time with awesome people at a Ramstrength fundraiser. None of us knew that was the last time we’d be together to celebrate the organization for a little while.
March had to be the longest month with the most devastating news one event after the other that continued to crush me. March was awful it was awful for a lot of people. As the virus arrived, our country shut down and our government representatives fought, everything was so unclear. For a month that started out with Puppy Yoga, it sure turned fast. We seemed to get news and changes to policies by the hour. March was… awful… it just was. Here’s the breakdown of March 2020 for me:
March 2nd: We are informed at work that my team will have a meeting on March 3rd.
March 3rd: I arrive at our other office for said meeting. We, as a team of about 15, are all sitting around a long table staring at each other. Our manager comes in and informs us that “we need a few more minutes.“ This was the point I knew this was not a normal meeting on team changes or anything else. Eventually, our manager comes back into the conference room and one of our CEOs follows him through the door. In his hands is a sheet of paper. They go over some changes and then the Co-CEO says that some of our directors have named some of us to be move to Marketing executive positions. He held up the list and started reading names. My name was third on that list. I was ushered away to marketing executive training that afternoon.
March 7th: Little did I know this would be the last time seeing members of my camp family or my college bestie in person.
March 9th: My mom has a fairly major operation just days after making it home from a trip to Costa Rica and probably hours before many hospitals and medical facilities move to a near emergency-only basis.
March 12th: We are all moved from working in-office to working at home
March 13th: I took a much-needed day off from training and a day to rest.
March 17th @ 12:30 p.m: I receive a notice that I am furloughed from my job from anywhere between 4 and 20 weeks. I was thrust into the land of unemployment and extreme worry. When I called my dad completely full of worry, I am fairly sure that is the only time I have ever heard him drop the f-bomb aloud. He was planning to come up and help me out with a few things anyway, so he did what he does best… brings up enough food for me for probably three years. Pasta, frozen meat, canned goods, you name it… it’s here… it’s still here.
March 25th: The decision is made that Sky High Hope Camp is canceled for June. We all knew it was coming, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept. I was devastated - mostly because I feel more at home and safe there than I do anywhere else in the world.
March 27th: I receive an email about an opening at my job (yet a different position), but they all thought I would be a good fit and my old boss brought up my name when some rearranging happened in the company.
Later that day, I accepted the position and was set to start again on April 1st.
April appeared to be getting a little better. I was settling into a work-from-home setting, Minette was getting used to me being at home practically every moment, and I was starting to work my way into some sort of a routine. The weather was warmer some days and over some weekends I could convince myself that it was a good idea to head out for a hike or even a walk outside (sometimes I would just wander for about 10 or 15 miles around the city). I was pretty exhausted from everything going on politically and after witnessing just how terribly people were treating each other. I really wished Trump would just shut up and disappear - eventually I felt this way about a good portion of the Republican party.
I. myself though, have to admit that I became somewhat of a “keyboard warrior,“ ready to argue with anyone in the online community who was being less than compassionate. If anything, this is what hurt me the most in April/May. It was in this month that I learned that the people I looked up to the most weren’t the people I thought they were. My mom also had to have the surgery they did in March again because of complications.
May was at least warmer. I had taken a liking to passing my time after work sitting out on my porch in the sun. Sitting in my house was starting to get really old. The days that it was cold were harder. I felt like I had been trapped inside for far longer than just a few months. Toward the end of May, I was trying to get outside as often as I could. I knew the warm weather wasn’t going to hang around as long as I wanted it to. Outside also seemed to be the only place I felt safe. Nature and sunshine also do wonders for the soul. May was an odd month for Minette as well. This was the month her human (me) decided it would be a good idea to leash-train her. Minette won that battle since she didn’t want to go beyond eating the grass right outside the door. Minette did spend a lot of time outside with me, but she definitely hated the leash.
June was the month of camp but not camp. I kept the same week off because after a couple of months of trying to navigate and help form a completely new department, I desperately needed a break. The start of that break was fine. I kept myself busy. I went on some hikes. I did some projects at home that I had been wanting to complete. It was such a sad time though. I remember sitting in a virtual session that Thursday with my therapist and I was completely in tears. I was really starting to hate everything. I was starting to hate people. I was starting to hate this stupid situation. I was starting to hate my life. I was even starting to hate myself. I also think it was around June when I looked at myself in the mirror every morning and just couldn’t stand to look at myself.
July kicked off with a 15-mile hike on the 4th on one of my favorite trails. It was definitely longer than I was used to and I hadn’t taken any long hikes, but it didn’t matter since my goal was to just be able to spend as much of the day as I could outside. That was all that I wanted. Little did I know that day was going to be the last day I would see our pristine Colorado blue sky for a few months. That was when the country seemed to set on fire. First, they were in California, then they were further west but we still had a lot of smoke. It had also warmed up a ton and I had lost a lot of desire to do much. I spent most of my energy being anxious and extremely worried. It was at the end of this month that the Pine Gultch Fire near Grand Junction ignited. It eventually grew to 139,007 acres before being contained on September 23rd. It had taken the lead as Colorado’s Largest Wildfire.
August just brought more pain. I turned 26, and I tried to reflect a tad too much. It wasn’t much of a happy birthday. The day came. The day went. There was some wine and cheese involved, but my mental state in August was just not great. By this time I had grown exhausted by the world. If you’ve ever wanted to see me use nearly every swear word in the book, August was that time. We had a family vacation to Hawaii that was canceled back in June and man, did I want that escape. I wanted the f*cking beach. Cases were rising again and I was overly tired of people and politics. I was not a happy person in August. The Grizzly Creek Fire along I-70, near Hanging Lake, ignited on August 10th with the most recent update I could find from the Forest Service on October 23rd, 2020 marking the fire at 32,631 acres, but still labeling it as active.
I was set to take a week off from work and was planning on heading to Fraser, to stay at a condo my family owns and do some hiking and nature adventuring. On August 14th, the Williams Fork fire started not too far from the town and local officials advised against going in case evacuation became necessary. So, another 2020 plan foiled. This fire grew, but not as rapidly. It was 14,577 acres by the time it was contained on October 13th.
On August 13th, what is now the largest fire in Colorado ignited just west of Fort Collins. Many days after were filled with falling ash, air quality alerts and advisories to stay home, not necessarily because of the pandemic but because emergency crews closed down quite a bit northwest of town. There were good days and bad days in town. Most of the time it smelled like a campfire. Some days ash fell from the sky while the smoke seemed to blanket the town, preventing the sun from coming through. Some of these days were surprisingly cold. So, so many fires started given the dry conditions. August was one of those months where I didn’t get out of bed, but I wasn’t really sleeping… and I was struggling HARD to find anything that brought me joy.
At the end of August, a fire started in Rist Canyon just outside of town. The Lewstone Fire only grew to 165 acres, but it was worrisome, especially given that Buckhorn, where we have Sky High Hope Camp is in Rist Canyon.
September started off with one of the worst days for the Cameron Peak Fire. Between September 6th and September 8th, the fire grew from 23,022 acres to about 90,000 acres. And it just kept growing. It had several very significant runs in September. I was sweeping piles of ash from my porch and watching out my window at a mostly dark (sometimes black and red) sky. Part of me felt like the world was ending. By the end of September, this fire had grown to 125,006 acres with 30 percent containment.
Also at the beginning of September, another fire had started relatively far west of Fort Collins and directly north of Steamboat. This one had me concerned while it felt like my city was burning to the ground. September 7th at 12:43 p.m., I received a call from my dad who was out on a hunting trip for a Bighorn Sheep - a very rare, once-in-a-lifetime tag for Colorado hunters. He was asking if I was home and if I could look up if there was a fire out by where he was hunting. I told him that the Cameron Peak fire was getting really bad and I could not find ANYTHING on a fire near Steamboat but he kept telling me there had to be one. Then we got disconnected and I had found a sliver of information on the Middle Fork Fire. I sent my dad photos and texted him the information, but I couldn’t get him back on the phone. I frantically called my brother because my dad had left a map with him as to where he would be. My dad did have a SPOT-X in case he got into trouble and so he could check in nightly with my mom. My mom had the pair to it so we were trying to get a hold of her (she NEVER answers her phone). It came to the point where my brother was about to head the 45 minutes to Larkspur to get the SPOT-X to send a message to my dad himself. At about 4:30 p.m., my dad called me and said that they were packed up to head out. But they had a trek ahead of them. He and a friend he went with had parked their trucks as far as they could get past Buffalo Pass and then hiked in to set up camp about 5 miles (all being above treeline). Beyond that, they had to hike up to a ridge to figure out where the fire was and then they had to take time to pack up to evacuate. The worst part is that they had arrived just three days before. At about 7 p.m., they had made it out and my dad called me at 9 p.m. when they had gotten almost to Fraser, where they would stay the night at the condo. It is estimated that they were no more than 5 miles from where the fire had broken out the day before. They could see helicopters dumping water on the flames as they were heading down the pass. That fire grew to 20,517 acres and wasn’t declared “controlled“ until November 30th.
On September 17th, the Mullen FIre started in Northern Colorado/Southern Wyoming. There was a huge concern that it might merge with the Cameron Peak Fire - luckily it never did.
October, November and December are all a blur… they all basically contained the same shit. Me getting mad at people, me not wanting to deal with people and me having a general disinterest in much of anything. The East Troublesome FIre started near Grand Lake on October 14th and very quickly grew to 100,000 acres, forcing even more people from their homes, and during a pandemic nonetheless. Once the fire jumped the Continental Divide in Rocky Mountain National Park, there was concern that it could merge with the Cameron Peak fire. It did not, but it grew to 192,560 acres and was fully contained on December 1st. several other fires started in October as well - particularly near Boulder. The Cameron Peak Fire was declared 100 percent contained on December 2nd. It had raged on for 112 days and burned 208,913 acres, making it the largest fire in state history. Three of the largest fires in state history are from 2020. There were times when it seemed some would merge but the overwhelming grief off the loss of some of our most prized natural areas seemed so impossible to deal with.
We did have an election, which revealed just how immature and childlike some of our voters and government representatives are. And really since then, there have been arguments over the results and retaliation on all sides of our government and civilization. I have never been more disappointed in Americans than I have been this year.
I stayed in Fort Collins for Thanksgiving because it felt like it was the right thing to do given where cases were in Colorado. Suffice to say these months happened. I sat here. In my house. Alone with my cat.
There was also a tad bit of a medical scare that came up when a routine blood test showed some elevated white blood cell counts. Note: all appears to be fine so far as the tests they have done so far haven’t come back with any abnormalities - they will continue to monitor this as I move into 2021 so fingers crossed that things continue to remain normal (and that they are able to figure out the cause of the elevated counts (mainly to just put my mind at ease)).
2020 just seemed full of one thing after another.. and another… and another… and I am exhausted. Every time I seemed to have a bit of joy, it was demolished, so I eventually stopped trying. I hope that 2021 holds more adventures. I hope that 2021 holds a happier me. I really hope I can restore my soul in 2021 - because right now it feels so damaged.
There was some magic that came through in 2020 though:
I was able to take refuge in Nature (until the end of July, anyway).
I was reminded of how great sunshine can feel.
I have never been more grateful for fresh Colorado air, blue skies and dirt trails.
I did get some fun hikes in (some with one other person when it was safe to do so).
I got to work from home and stay safe.
I was able to connect with different parts of my family that had not kept in touch with for a while.
I successfully refinanced the loan on my house. #adulting
The stories of people coming together to hold each other up were awe-inspiring.
The lengths many, many of our first-responders, medical professionals, and those we had declared “essential“ are some of the greatest I have seen - I truly believe the world continued to turn because of them.
And the biggest one of all is that I have some truly magical people in my life and I can’t thank them enough or shining their light on me throughout this year. They are the ones who helped me SURVIVE. So thanks to my tribe - I LOVE you all.
So I guess as I am here, practically dragging myself across the finish line of 2020 I am more exhausted than anything. The beginning of 2021 doesn’t look much different in my opinion, but there is a tad bit of light at the end of the tunnel. It’s time to leave 2020 as the flaming dumpster fire that it was and look to what can be salvaged and done in 2021. 2020 was full of anger, stress, tears, protest, hardship, grief and arguments. I can only hope that we will take the lessons from the year forward. I hope for 2021 to be a year of healing. It’s going to take a while to get there and I guess I’ll have to work up to a crawl and then walk and then run. I want 2021 to have more thriving than surviving. That being said, I am cautiously tip-toeing into the new year. Find some of the quotes that inspired me to just keep going through 2020.
Goodbye, 2020. You can see yourself OUT.