Milena Moser on annual reviews: The year that was

class=”sc-cffd1e67-0 fmXrkB”>

I really love them, these “days between days” as my mother always called them. Days in which little happens, little is done and little is expected. Quiet days that finally make possible the contemplation that arose during the holidays but became impossible due to the general hectic pace. Time to rummage through drawers and boxes, dredge up memories, find things you thought were lost. It’s time to sort through the stack of unread books, look through last month’s Sunday newspapers, reheat leftovers from past feasts and eat at the kitchen table. In pajamas.

Time to stop thinking, watch how memories emerge from the depths of memory like bubbles.

But this is also a time of forced annual reviews. How was the year, was it good or bad? What were you like, what did you achieve, what did you experience, what are your brightest moments? I am bombarded with this from all sides and asked about it. My American friends, in particular, tend to send out summaries of their best work at the end of the year, thickly illustrated: mentions of trips, professional milestones, school successes of children and grandchildren.

Everything glitters, everything glitters. One would think that they had flown gracefully from success to success, from climax to adventure, for a whole year. They forget that we know each other, that I was there when the car broke down in the middle of the bridge, when the work was being rebuilt, when the son flew out of the apartment slamming the door, and when a new friend suddenly “explored other options” wanted. I know that she the year was as mixed as mine.

A friend turned the situation around and listed all her shortcomings: a dream vacation that became a victim of dental treatment, a vacation she spent alone. But this is also a sentence. I notice that I have less and less desire to participate. Something in me resists judging, sorting and evaluating the life I have lived in this way.

It also has to do with the state of the world. Each year seems to surpass the previous one in suffering and horror, bringing new disasters, wars and terrorist attacks. No matter how hard I try not to give too much space to fear and anger, and to counteract them with gratitude, sometimes my courage deserts me. Then I just want to put my head on the table. But what can a year do for this? The year was just a year.

Something inside me resists defining my moments, capturing them and securing them. This upsets me, just as the sight of pierced butterflies behind glass upsets me. Moments are fleeting, happy and painful. They shimmer in the light, change at a distance, in memory.

One of the most difficult moments definitely came on my birthday when Victor ended up back in the emergency room with life-threatening sepsis. When this happened, I cursed the fate that constantly attacks someone who has already suffered so much. I struggled with my inability to protect the man I loved so much. And I was scared.

At the same time, these were intimate days when I felt the closeness and support of my friends more than ever before. And only now, after all these months, I understand how much these days shaped and changed me. Every experience changes us. We are constantly moving. Like time, day, year. The year that was.

Source: Blick