a farewell to 2020 (this post might be long, you've been warned)

The end of 2020 is approaching and wow, how does a year felt so long yet so short? The many things that happened in 2020 made it feel so overwhelmingly long but because I have been staying home for the majority of the time this year, it felt somehow short. During that first wave of COVID, it somehow felt like time froze and we were doing the same constant things over and over again for months but all of us still manage to grow a lot during that time, and continue to grow once things slew down (and in case of Malaysia, skyrocket back).

2020 was supposed to be my normal year. 2018 was a year of pain, 2019 was my year of healing and 2020 was supposed to be the year of me actively doing regular things humans do that I usually didn't the previous years. Instead, I (by that I mean all of us) am presented with this weird year where everything happens but constantly felt like nothing happened. It is something new to all of us and this year brought all these new things to us too. I did things I'm not proud of but I also achieved some things I'm really proud of, learned a bunch of new things and only recently, I finally managed to adapt my usual normal life into this new life with pandemic going around.

things I'm not proud of

Excessive shopping. I'm pretty sure most of us did shop online for things we don't actually really need at some point, but I'm a student and all that money could've been saved for later and I spent them on... WHAT DID I EVEN BUY USING THAT MONEY?! The last few months of 2020 were okay, I managed to slow down my shopping (because the depletion of the money in my bank account, duh) but I really need to learn having a little bit more of self-control.

Idling a lot, procrastinating a lot, not moving around a lot. Especially for the first few months of quarantine when all of us didn't know what the heck was happening, I really was doing nothing. I mostly spent my time on Twitter (which was very very very bad for my mental health) and participate in the negativity going around whilst trying to stay positive (you see why I said it was bad for my mental health). I was too invested in what was happening, the then-current events that I neglected the things that were happening beside me at that time. This then made me uninstall Twitter from my phone since early December and I am doing much better now.

things I achieved!

Dean's List. Semester 2 was so hard, Masya Allah, I really thought I was going to do worse than I did the previous semester. With the new way of learning and the sudden additions of exams, quizzes and assignments, at one point, I was literally crying while doing my assignments. But in the end, Alhamdhulillaah, it was not a waste of tears and time.

Made a lot of new friends online. Right before I started writing this post, I was thinking why oh why it was so hard for me to talk to people online, even harder than to speak to people in real life and then I got it: I'M ACTUALLY MORE COMFORTABLE TALKING TO PEOPLE IN REAL LIFE THAN ONLINE BECAUSE I CAN'T READ THEM PROPERLY OMG THAT'S A BIG DISCOVERY FOR ME LOL. This explains why making online friends is a huge challenge for me, and the fact that I actually went out of my comfort zone and made some internet friends is a huge achievement for me. I did get some burnouts after a few online socializing but I always come back for more and for that, I'm proud of myself.

lessons I learned in 2020

Cancel culture should be cancelled. I'm a nobody on the internet, yet one of my fears is that someday I would wake up with tons of people sending hate to me over things I don't even realize is a mistake. I even had nightmares about this. Bottom line is, as long as we are humans, we're all prone to making mistakes and sinning. Maybe our mistakes are hidden away from the public's eyes and some other people's mistakes aren't. Which brings me to one other biggest lessons that I learned in 2020,

There's always a room for growth in every human. To assume that someone is perfect is an over-expectation but to assume that someone who has done a mistake is purely evil and have no chance to grow is outrageous. I see many people just posting their bad assumptions about some people who were exposed for their mistakes and those bad assumptions, people, as long as they're a mere assumption, will remain a slander. We shouldn't say things we don't have proof or witnessed ourselves, just by doing an online observation whilst not personally knowing the person we're talking about. And even if they actually made some mistakes, know that there is always a room for growth in them and there's a huge chance they're not the same person who made those mistakes anymore... which brings me to the next lesson,

The importance of forgiveness. As I said in my previous points, we're all humans that are prone to making mistakes but also have a huge room for growth. In Dr Basma Abdelgafar's words, God constructed humans as imperfect beings that can always be perfected. Forgiveness is not something very easy to give to someone else especially those who personally hurt us. And I'm not saying that we should force ourselves to forgive either but I'm also not saying that we shouldn't try. Having the intention to start forgiving is enough to kickstart the actual forgiving process. 

    For me personally, this year, I learned that forgiveness that I give is actually for myself. I'm a very unforgiving, resentful person and this year I noticed that those qualities are actually really bad for my mental health. Being unforgiving for me means that I'll relive the pain of those people hurting me and I was unable to sleep at night with peace because of that. I was unable to pay attention to anything and it just sucked, so I've been slowly trying to make peace with my resentments and I can actually feel it working.

Dear 2020,

You sucked. You ruined my plans. You were so weird and it sucked that I needed to get used to you. You ruined a lot of people's lives. I'm grateful that I get to learn a lot of new things because of you. I'm grateful that I got to learn a different kind of normal (more like created a new kind of normal) because of you. So I guess I'm gonna thank you, 2020, for those but you still sucked bad. 

And with that, I wish you all a happy new year! Negativity, illnesses, any bad things are not welcomed, shoo shoo. May 2021 be a better, more exciting year for all of us.