Off you go, 2020!

 

The year is over, almost over and I feel like I ought to say something, for I was audacious enough to crack a joke about an apocalypse in 2020. 

Well, well, well, look who is the joke now?

 

Speaking of apocalypses, I always wondered what it'd be like to live through one. But of course, when I imagined apocalypse, it was more adrenaline rush and less of a, well, no rush whatsoever. Besides, the rotting brains in my scenario were of the zombies, not myself stuck in quarantine.

 

Of course, I am just calling out on quarantine for the sake of it. My whole life has been more or less the same. Anyway, now that the year is finally on the close, I have but no words to express what it has been. Gradually getting worse by the day, what hopes does the new year offer?

 

After all, time is but an illusion.

 

I wish to crack a joke, I really do. I wish to end this tragedy of a year on a lighter note, but the truth is, nothing about the year was actually light.

 

Sure thing, it started off as a joke. At first, it was just China's problem, you know. Damn you China and your stupid bats. Who cared? I'll tell you who didn't, I didn't.

 

And then it started seeping in. Closer, and closer and closer.

 

As if death itself stood outside the door, ready for you to open it.

 

When it started inching in towards us, it felt like an alternate reality, sort of a hazy dream. But it didn't feel like a big deal even then. After all, when the pandemics hit before, humans were ancient. We are advanced, we have the technology, and we would magically be able to whip out a vaccine overnight.

 

So, when I stood with my friends, outside the cafe, bidding them farewell, because the institutes might close for 2 weeks and my friends asked jokingly for one last hug, I shrugged them off from a distance. 2 weeks. We've been apart longer than that.

 

When the screen started flashing numbers, it started putting a little weight on my heart. Like a brick, and soon, it was a stone and then a feather, and then before I knew, every time, the screen flashed a number, my eyes would just go out of focus.

 

Then death started knocking on doors, loud enough for everyone to hear. Families, friends, neighbors, it was everywhere.

 

The year is on the close. The virus has evolved to the worst it has yet been.

 

So even though I wish to somehow turn it into something hopeful, what am I ought to say at this moment?

 

Life sure is different now. Be it the pandemic or adulthood, whatever the cause is, the blissful days of childhood are long over.

 

Time is an illusion, and so is life.

 

I know the pandemic will settle, sooner or later. Life would be set to a new normal, no matter what it feels like at the moment.

 

Man was never invincible, and he never will be. No matter how much he evolves, no matter how advanced science may get.

 

Life will carry on, for as long as it is meant to go on. But the inevitable truth now reinforces itself in my mind. The truth that life is going to go ahead, leaving us behind. One by one.

 

So, when the year is on the close today, I stand here, far away from that frozen frame where we all stand together, one last time.