At some point during March of 2020, I realized that my life was changing, as were thousands of others.
A lot of us played it cool, at least in the beginning. Some went into full-on conspiracy panic mode. The rest of us didn’t have time to feel anything except tired. Most of us didn’t stop the jobs we had always done. Instead, we worked harder. Those that are teachers, nurses, retail workers, and my beloved public servants had to go on. Whether we were at home or whether we were in a public space, we worked. Some of us in unemployment claims are still working tirelessly. Rewarded by the occasional thank you from someone you helped along the way.
A few months after that, I realized I needed a new pillow. My neck was stressed, as was my soul. I tried a new one, and for a while, we got along swimmingly. At some point, that indent that all pillows create began to cause the same issue with my neck. At that point, it was May of 2020, and I saw my world outside go into full angry mode. There were protests, a lot of people were hurt, businesses burned all over the country.
Many of our friends were growing tired, but we were still in shock because we never knew what they had been trying to tell a lot of us more privileged than the rest. Yet, it didn’t stop the rest of us who still had jobs to do; we went on regardless of the world outside our windows. To us, the rest of the world was like watching World War Z while we worked serving our public. You don’t have time to rest.
In my dreams at night, I began to dream of a place I had not seen in my dreams since I was a girl. A coffee shop sat at the top of a hill like something in a hobbit shire. It was a tall tudoresque building. Once inside, everything was mahogany wood, and from the service may seem stern or uninviting, but there was a fire going. And a tall barista named Henry, at least I think that is his name, would come over in his proper black and white attire and offer me a mocha of the day. Anything I wanted. I always accept, and in my dream, I rest. Beautifully I relax peacefully just sipping the world’s best coffee.
Then I wake, it is sometime around the summer. I take a break with my husband, and we go on our Anniversary adventure. Somewhere fun or weird. There they had pillows from the victorian ages. The bed in bed and breakfast looked so comfortable that I just knew that I would sleep so well. Only fast forward to a run-in with Bigfoot in the woods and a haunted house that I soon forgot the pillow and did not sleep a wink, although the breakfast and raspberry butter were memorable. The pad was not.
The year went on, more frustration, more anger in our world, and things never wavering this sickness that now has a name – fear. It, as I see, it was worse than the virus itself. It caused people to act in ways that they would never have before. It rendered most of us to have a subconscious PTSD from all of the happenings outside our window. A lot of us made better friends in the end. We learned from culture and history and what makes a human being a sentient being. What makes us care for others? I think if you strip away the politics of anything and see another for who we are. If you strip away all the ideas of hatred and just let us be free to love without someone telling us who we should love and hate. We are better for it. Our mother earth is better if we feed her love. It spreads faster than hate.
Fast forward to the holidays. I received a “My Pillow” from my mother. It has been very comfortable since I received it. Then I learned about all the scandals behind the creator of the My Pillow. Did it change my feelings about how it made me feel? No. Did I sleep for the first time in months without neck pain and wake up revived? Yes.
We will see how the rest of this new year goes, so far I have to say the weather is better. My hopes are higher. Maybe it is the placebo effect of a New Year not being 2020. Perhaps it will fade, and my pillow will grow that dent that all used pillows get. They do work the hardest. They put up with our fears, our nightmares, our worries, and our fights. They want us just to relax and put our bodies at ease and let them take care of us.
The last twelve months were a year of trying new things; this past year, I have more friends I worked with in person become some of my best friends on Skype than I ever had when we worked side by side. The loneliness of working home all day makes you covet human interaction in ways we had never expected. Even loners felt like they were missing something. If you were extroverted, you had to learn to enjoy being with yourself.
I have enriched friendships from across the ocean, and I feel closer to some of those people as if they were an extension of my very family. Some friendships ended, but with each ending, a fresh beginning. I hate the phrase that everything happens for a reason. Yet, what if it is lessons we need. Whether subconscious or not, we are asking to better ourselves. Hire beings have stopped being all the rage in these modern times. I have found that even the most skeptical human beings still crave something out there among the stars to give them hope. What are we if we do not have hope?
Thank you to everyone I know, came to know, and all the pillows I loved and lost. One thing is for sure 2020 was a Hell of a learning curve.
KB HURST & Her Menagerie 