Dear 2020,
We need to talk.
(Whew, this is awkward.)
I’ve been trying for twelve months to find the right way to say this, the perfectly constructed arrangement of words to convey with both eloquence and nuance my feelings for you; something dignified and refined that would serve as a proper final severance between us. I wanted to let you down easy and deliver these sentiments with the greatest decorum possible.
I’m sorry, I can’t.
You need to GTFO.
Now.
Please forgive my inelegance, as I willingly admit this isn’t my best moment and usually not how I like to respond—but I’m rightly exhausted by you and I think I speak for seven and a half billion people when I say that you have been an unrelenting planetary nightmare and we simply cannot abide you a single day longer.
Take your things and leave.
Pack up your insidious virus,
your endless quarantines,
your beloved actor deaths,
your mad despot machinations,
your black men executions,
your swirling wildfires,
your pandemic deniers,
your angry Karen army,
your revered Supreme Court Justice passings,
your Q-cult nonsense,
your election fraud conspiracies,
your seditious politicians,
and whatever creative and novel hell you still have planned for the remainder of this calendar—and just go.
I so wish this would have ended differently.
I had such high hopes for us last January. Our courtship began so promisingly. You made a wonderful first impression in those early weeks, so optimistic and so filled with possibility. I welcomed you warmly because you seemed like a decent year, and I nearly needed one after the previous three disasters. It was difficult for me to trust a calendar again, but I did. I made twelve months of plans for us: we would go places and do things and make memories and be amazing together and it was going to be our year—and well, then you pretty much wet the bed. You made me sorry I ever met you. You even somehow made me miss 2019.
I know it’s customary in moments like these to say “it’s not you, it’s me”—but it is you, my dear year: unequivocally, completely, categorically. It is you in every imaginable way and every conceivable manner.
And please, don’t try to tell me you gave me a human president and vice president, and so all should be forgiven. You don’t get credit for that. 81 million beautiful human beings and I had to overcome sickness, shutdowns, gerrymandering, Postal Service sabotage, voter suppression, frivolous lawsuits, a treasonous party, and a 74 million-member death cult to arrive here: bruised, spent, and currently overflowing with expletives.
All this to say, 2020, is that this is where we say goodbye.
You will not be missed or remembered with fondness or spoken of kindly.
You will forever be twelve of the most injurious, taxing, cruel consecutive months in my lifetime, and I will rejoice at your departure and dance wildly in your absence.
They say, that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger—but I don’t feel stronger right now.
I feel sadness.
I feel damaged.
I feel exhausted.
I feel like I’ve aged a lifetime.
2020, you have been a terrible decade, and so to quote Groucho Marx: “Go, and never darken my towels again.”
Twelve months ago I would have been more gracious and summoned a more tactful farewell in a moment like this, but right now I just need a nap and I’m going to take one.
While I’m asleep, I’m going to dream about the possibilities again: to feel hope rise up and to make plans and to contemplate glorious, beautiful adventures ahead, to imagine a nation more unified and a world more at peace and a version of myself less prone to angry outbursts and reflexive profanity, and to do my best to fearlessly love a year again.
And when I wake up, I don’t want to find you here.
Your services are no longer required.
Please, 2020, if you have any mercy or kindness left in you—just GTFO.
