Thank You, 2021

Funnily enough, unlike Howard, I do not remember what happened exactly one year ago.

I try, I close my eyes, I rub my temples with fingers too cold for my liking, and I try to push myself back to the “ridges of northern China”, as Howard had put it.

Nothing.

Children play in the shallow pool outside, and if one listens closely, they would hear a smooth rustling of palm and coconut trees. The light in my room is too strong, and it chases away the calm darkness behind my eyelids. I cannot think, I cannot recall the cold of the winter snow and the heat of the hot springs.

My phone pings, and whatever I had hope of remembering vanishes, and those memories go adrift. I scroll through my messages, the children outside are gone now, and an angry parent has begun shouting. I give them a cursory glance, not taking in any of the view or people outside.

What was I doing again?

Mustn't have been important.

Ah, yes, my messages.

I quickly grow bored of them, whatever wire that connects my eyes and the processing center in my brain has been cut, for none of the words meant anything to me. They were bunches of letters with their definitions, but who cares? Their significance ends at that, the definitions fail to organize themselves into sentences, and they just… fall apart.

Perhaps I do understand what they mean, but that would be too scary.

That would mean that I don’t care. That I cannot bring myself to care, that I am not able to feel a thing.

The children are laughing again, you can hear the mirth in their voices echoing off the water, shimmering gold by a setting sun.

The world is so lovely, but why do I feel so cold? Why is my mind so blank, unable to remember? Why is there so little significance in what is unfolding in the present?

I remember now, someone told me last winter to live in the moment, to enjoy the stimuli the world hits us with every passing second.

I am in the moment now, but why am I not living?

Why is the stimuli hitting me, swatting my head round and round, making it turn this way and that, unable to register what it's seeing?

Why has every passing second so far simply fragmented the world I live in?

I should be so scared of what is happening, but for some reason, I just cannot bring myself to being scared.

Around an hour ago, I tried to recall how 2020 began. I have since wandered far from that topic, and I have come to realise that it is irrelevant, because that is behind me. What I stare into the face of, today, is something else entirely. No longer is my world fragmenting, no longer is stimuli striking me at every passing moment, and no longer is there a reason to be scared.

That is 2021.