Suzanne Harrington: Let's resolve to give ourselves a break, and kudos for surviving 2020

Suzanne Harrington

You know when people go on about New Year, New You, so that we all feel a bit of January pressure to improve ourselves? Here’s a better idea - how about we don’t bother with doing that this year. How about we give ourselves a break.

Instead, let us big up what we already are, and the year that we have all navigated with such resilience and adaption. Big up to us. To every single one of us who muddled through a year that made 2016 little more than a Bowie-killing Brexit-voting Trump-electing fluffer for 2020, the year that trashed us like Godzilla trashed Tokyo. Crushed us underfoot like tin cans, yet here we still are.

Big up to the frontline nurses and medics dealing with something unknown that wants us all dead. To the care workers risking their lives for low pay. To the teachers who had to spin on a sixpence, rearranging the entire way they operate to balance the aliveness of small kids with the deadliness in the air. To all the educators trying to engage students on Zoom, and to all the students stuck in their rooms.

To all the alcoholics and addicts who relapsed during lockdown – guesstimated at around a third of us – which showed how isolation, disconnection and uncertainty are a powerful cocktail. Big up to everyone who made it back to sobriety, and even bigger up to those who are still trying. Don’t give up. Shout out to the women and children trapped in violent situations – may 2021 be the year that you safely get away, and find freedom.

Big up to the unsung heroes of 2020 - the delivery drivers, who beat repeated paths to our doorway, for minimal money. To the restaurant and bar workers who had to face the unknown every day, their own faces double glazed in plastic frontage as they smiled and welcomed us, hoping we wouldn’t infect them, as they led us to our tables and QR codes. To all the first dates stripped of romance by those bloody QR codes - well done if you made it to a second, or even a third. And to all those whose workplaces, jobs and businesses have been trashed, and face 2021 not knowing quite what will happen.

To all the grandparents who missed their grandchildren for long chunks of the year, and to all the parents who longed to miss their children for even an hour, when everyone was home together for weeks on end and there was no headspace. To everyone whose mental health went temporarily AWOL, driven mad by 2020.

But most of all, to the family of George Nkencho, the mentally-ill young man shot dead by Dublin officers. No amount of condolences in the world would be enough. Instead, here’s wishing for justice for George and solidarity in the year ahead.

And for the rest of us, let’s just stay sane and carry on. It will get better. It always does.