The year that was; or was it, really?

Before you assume differently, I know that I should finally open my eyes, and as they say, wake up and smell the coffee. Yes, I know that we are already a whole month into the new year of 2022, facing snowstorms and freezing temperatures. Yet I feel like I am in the middle of unending dreams or hallucinations, which keep me disoriented and sort of lost.

This is when my accountant, who after all these years of preparing my tax returns and also being aware of my occasional habit of procrastination, gently reminds me that although it is still too early to get panicky about taxes, maybe I should slowly and calmly prepare my documents for filing for the past year of 2021. This is when my delirium hits the roof and  I suddenly seem to have totally lost any memory of the year just passed by. “Did 2021 really happen?”, I ask myself, or was it simply a year that should not even have taken place to begin with.

Of course, I know very well that according to the Gregorian calendar, the year is defined as the amount of time it takes for the Earth to orbit the sun one time. I know all that, yet for some strange reason it seems to me that somehow the year 2021 had not been registered in my mind as  a period of time when we have actually lived normal lives. Was the year 2021 simply a phantom, an illusion or perhaps a lie?

What a year that was. I do totally understand why my subconscious mind  has made every effort to make sure that the year 2021 is erased and obliterated from my memory. But again, for simply practical reasons and most importantly to make my accountant happy, I have to face the past year with all its calamities and tribulations.

I guess I have some kind of real facts to prove to myself that the year 2021 did not happen because everything that took place in the days and months of the passing year was characterized as a big lie. Sure, the pandemic, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands was a lie, the election of a new president was a lie, the brutal attack on the Capitol was a lie and of course a white officer choking the life of a Black man was a lie, even though the entire event was recorded on a videotape, yes was a lie or simply over dramatized by the “evil” media. The year 2021 seemed so out of the ordinary that it could have been a blockbuster movie about extraterrestrials who might be living in a galaxy millions of light years away from us.

In other words, this couldn’t have happened in America! Yet it did. What a shame.

But again. Speaking of America is very much different from speaking about another country. Here, we have the incredible ability to be able to wake up from a harrowing and frightening dream and still have the courage to start a new day with the dreams and the hopes for a better future. And even though all the achievements that we have accomplished through decades still can be erased by a simple vote, still this is the only country in the world where hope will never die.

And amazingly, my optimism about our future actually is inspired by an event which took place last year. Yes, it happened in the year 2021, which I wholeheartedly despised and I was trying to forget ever happened.

It was at the inauguration of the newly elected President Biden when an only 22-year-old young African-American poet, Amanda Gorman, asked us to ask ourselves, “Where can we find light in this never-ending shade?” And her simple answer was:

“It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit,

it’s the past we step into

and how we repair it.”

And this gives me the courage to remember the past year of 2021 with a much more colorful and vibrant vision and gives me the courage to face the challenges of the years to come, with the words of the poet reminding me:

“We will not march back to what was…”

Varoujan Froundjian is a digital artist and writer. He can be reached at: varlink3050@gmail.com.