The Year of Unbeing
We're all familiar by now with the constant back-and-forth around what we should have done with our time being forcefully sequestered to our homes. It wasn't enough for us to mentally and emotionally navigate a global crisis for which almost none of us had context; we should also get an online degree, or start a business, or learn a skill, or start a TikTok. And, you know what, nuff respect for any of you who did one or all of those things. I tried some of those things, still trying to stick with a couple of them and, honestly? I'm hating every second of it.
Why? Well, I anticipate that trying to wrap my head around a constantly evolving international health crisis while living in a country that can't even streamline its one passport renewal system has a part to pay in it. But it's also not that big a part. It took me a few months, but I realized eventually that for me (and I imagine, possibly you as well), the virus took away a huge part of my life without me ever getting infected. It took away who I was.
To be more honest, it took away what I did. But for many of us, especially the thespians reading this, those two things might as well be the same. Until yesterday, Monday 11th October, theatres had largely been closed for us just like everywhere else was. Since March of last year, when the country started experimenting with gathering limits and venue lock downs, most performers have not known a rehearsal or production. Those things aren't easy to replicate in a work-from-home model. Not impossible (and kudos to all those who’ve done, or at least tried it), but certainly not easy, or as fulfilling frankly. The noise and energy of the crowd, the physicality of your dance troupe or scene partner…there aren't apps for that. No, not even Clubhouse.
When I came back to Trinidad in 2019, I had very clear ideas about not just what I'd be doing, but who I’d be. My Community Solutions Project was, naturally, a theatre project in the same vein as some of the forum theatre work I’d done in the past. It was that work that made me feel like a director, like a creative. I came back in December, spent January trying to feel at home again, started meeting and prepping with folks in February…and by March I was certain that I couldn’t be that person who'd be doing those things for a long time. I started doing online education work, which I enjoy. It wasn’t my plan, wasn't who I was trying to be, but I though it would just be a few months until I could be myself again. It's been now eighteen months. Eighteen months of me learning to be someone else, someone I didn't plan to be.
Not only that, but I still had this clear vision of who I wanted to be, and was watching that person face slowly like the sun at dusk. It's one thing to not have a plan, to just float along where life takes you. You might not be happy where you land, but at least you don't feel like you missed your stop. For some of us, though, this past year and change has been like being stuck on the bus, passing your stop, and having no idea where this ride will end up. It's not even something limited to those in creative professions. Some of you planned to visit family abroad, or try a new skill or sport… We all had plans, a stop we were planning to take. And we all watched in slow motion as we passed it by.
This is not at all an argument against the lock downs that have taken place here in Trinidad and Tobago, or anywhere else. We still would not have had the lives we planned for ourselves if the country was open these past year, because it would instead be interrupted by grief and chaos. It's simply an acknowledgment that we've all spend the last year not just not being our usual selves, but unbeing them. Some of us are trying to hold on to whatever remnants of normal remain in remote work, or are underemployed and in limbo, sleeping in an apartment you've lost the ability to pay rent for and waiting anxiously for that shoe to drop. For some of us, our routines have drastically changed, making the world and even our own bodies feel uncomfortably new. And some of us had things we were being - a new graduate at a foreign university, a young performer or athlete, a budding entrepreneur with their first storefront - only for that person to be pulled out of you.
If there's a clear resolution to this feeling, I haven't found it yet. I still struggle to feel like a poet, director, or even sometimes a writer even though the current pandemic hasn't changed my ability to do that. But I have taken some comfort in realizing that feeling, discovering something about my frustration and sadness during this time. It's a start, I guess, to put a finger on my word sense of loss, even if it will linger a while.
I'll still be trying to overcome that feeling by returning as best I can to creative work (perhaps I'll manage something I can talk about in a future blog post). But for now, I just thought I'd vent this out, and hopefully give some context to someone else's struggle with themselves this past year and a half. It's been an uncomfortable year, that's not just changed our lives as we know them, but our lives as we imagine them. I hope that, whatever you're being, unbeing or returning to, that you and your Loved ones also learn to take these changes with grace and patience, but also hope and curiosity. I am only recently discovering that curiosity around who I can still be after this, and keeping the hope around who I want to be. Will all that's happening around us, the least we can hold on to is that…
