A while back, they spoke on radio about how the creation of one’s identity depends on our engagement within a social context. We only become ourselves in relation to others. The negotiations to establish the boundaries of the self occur only in collision with the surrounding world. Not dissimilar to Martin Buber’s theory about the ‘I’ being a result of the interactions we have with others. I wouldn’t dare say that my identity would cease to exist without social interaction. However, the world has become very limited over the past ten months or so – and it’s making me fade.
Sometimes I look in the mirror just to make sure I’m still there.
2020 has proved to be very anxiogenic, and I think I’m not the only one who feels more time-ridden by this year than any other I can recall. There have been far more brutal days than I could’ve ever planned for. The remains of the excitement I felt going into this new decade blow around in my head like an expired parking ticket.
I’ve been knitting to keep all this angst at bay. Weighty thoughts that harp on the same string get untangled when my hands are working. If I didn’t knit, I would die a little. I’ve knitted into the wee hours, every spare moment, just to get a fresh start. I begin again by casting on a new project and finishing the first row. And time, it turns out, is a ball of wool. I knit to stay alive.
Before SARS-CoV-2, which feels like several lifetimes ago, we went to London to see Tim Walker’s exhibition Wonderful Things (I’ve written more about it here). Anyway, walking through the British galleries at the V&A Museum, you come across an installation of smashed brass instruments by Cornelia Parker. She calls it ‘Breathless’ because you can’t blow through the instruments anymore.
‘You might get out of breath if you tried!’
There was something tangibly relatable about it. Like those instruments visualised a feeling I often carry – a bit smashed and out of breath.
As I walk out of 2020 a bit more breathless than I entered it (maybe I should have steered clear of the instruments), I realise that this capricious year has taught me something. Never before have I truly understood how life-changing vaccines are. They’ve always been there to protect me, and I have taken them for granted. All I hope for 2021 is that the COVID-19 vaccine will give me antibodies.