Fuck 2020

In four hours, the worst year of my life will finally come to an end.

I’m not trying to imply that I’m the only one who had a bad year, but this is my journal, blog, essay, or whatever the hell you want to call it. This year has been a horror show for the world in general and the United States in particular.

Let’s start with the obvious, COVID-19 19 or, as I think of it, the 2020 Plague. Millions of people around the world have died from the virus, while in America, we’re approaching three hundred and fifty thousand citizens dead. We have five percent of the world's population but twenty percent of the world's deaths. We are the richest and most advanced nation in the history of the human race, but we’re dropping like flies.

Why?

Well, that brings us to the second horrible thing about 2020. The current President of the United States, Donald J Trump, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel don’t give a flying  fuck if we live or die. From the two most powerful men in America, we’ve been left to die and rot where we fall. From claiming the plague was a Democrat hoax to refusing to lift a finger to help and support the citizens while bending over backward for the Billionaires and Corporations, America is a ship with no one at the helm or the rudder.

The only bright note is that Trump lost the election, but in doing so, he has ripped America in half. That’s a wound we may never recover from. Even now, the Republicans and our so-called President seek to perform a coup and seize an illegal win from the jaws of defeat.

I still fear a civil war in America.

And finally, we come to why 2020 has been the single worst year of my life.

I’ve talked about it in these essays before but just as a refresher. In April of 2020, my son killed himself. I don’t want to get into the horrible details of his life and how I failed as a father. I don’t want to talk about the police coming to my door. And I don’t want to talk about telling my wife our son was dead.

That was the most horrible thing I’ve ever had to do.

I had planned on covering a lot of topics in this year-end essay. I wanted to talk about my daughter getting COVID-19 and recovering. I wanted to talk about my Granddaughter and how she’s kept this family sane. I wanted to talk about my forty-fourth birthday and how flat it was. I wanted to talk about Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas under the shadow of the plague. I wanted to talk about the stories I’d written and published this year.

I wanted to talk about all of those things, but there’s no point.

The only thing that means anything to me this year is that my son is gone, and I’ll never see or hear him again. Stephen is dead, and I will never stop hurting. I will never stop missing him. And I will never stop thinking there was something I could have done to save him if I'd just been a better father.

- Josh (12/31/2020)