2020: MY BEST YEAR EVER – Shaping Sheem
“I didn’t get a real Honeymoon, but in the end, I got sooo much more…”
I get it. 2020 was a horrible year. It all started four days before my birthday in January with the death of arguably the greatest basketball player the world had ever known in Kobe Bryant. Then, what seemed like a ripple in a pond, became a tidal wave in an ocean unlike anything we had ever seen. As of Dec 30th 2020, the Coronavirus had killed 1.8 million people globally and everything we deemed “Normal”, wasn’t. Kids were no longer allowed to go to schools and had to learn virtually from home. Millions lost their jobs as places we took for granted like movie theaters and restaurants were completely shut down. We couldn’t travel anywhere. Gatherings were extremely limited. American heroes like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Lewis were taken from us. Celebrity icons like Regis Philbin, Little Richard, Sean Connery, Alex Trebeck, Deebo, and Chadwick Boseman all lost their lives. That’s right, 2020 had killed Black Panther and so many more. Then there was the death of a man who no one knew before 2020 but will never forget after. The death of George Floyd sparked the biggest civil rights protest in the country, ever. Riots in the streets of the countries most major cities lasted for weeks. Manhattan, known as the center of the world, looked like a war zone. And in the midst of all this madness, 2020 was MY best year ever.
When the year started, we were planning a wedding for May 2nd. Everything seemed to be going just fine as the stars were aligning for us. In January, for my birthday, HP had taken me to a Duke basketball game at the Carrier Dome and I had a blast. Then a couple weeks after that, as the second part of my birthday present, I got to sit/stand front row at the concert of my all-time favorite rapper, Camron. For her birthday in February, we attended a baking class at her favorite store MilkBar in NYC. March came around and HP was able to have a beautiful Bridal Shower with all of her friends and family. Then the following week, the Coronavirus had shut everything down. We were told that things would be clear in a couple weeks and that we would still be able to have our wedding in May. That did not happen. Neither did our planned Honeymoon that month to New Orleans. Both things had to be postponed till August. As scary as it all was waiting and not knowing would we even be able to have a wedding, some good came out of being trapped in the house together with nothing open. We found our love of 90 Day Fiancé, and I got a new phone and discovered I was living with a model! Taking pics allowed us to just be outside and enjoy life without having to think about the world in complete disarray.
Eventually we were able to get married. Thankfully it was a week before the Covid restrictions of no dancing. It was as beautiful as you could imagine. A moment of peace in the middle of the chaos that was 2020. Travel was still banned so we had to cancel our Honeymoon. We did take a bunch of trips to the city and pretended to be tourist but with everything closed or limited, there wasn’t much to do besides relax. And during all of the pretend Honeymoons we took, HP managed to find a way to get herself pregnant. 2020 gave us the chance to be parents. When I found out, I was shocked. I was nervous. But in a way, I felt ready. With all the death 2020 had brought, it was only right that it gave life too. So I didn’t get a real Honeymoon, but in the end, I got sooo much more. HP and I have had so much fun, just the two of us, that we cannot wait to share our lives with someone else. So yeah, in a year that made people fight tooth and nail for toilet paper. That showed racism was alive and well. That forced families apart during the holidays. That denied daughters to dance with their fathers at weddings. I was one of the few, one of the lucky, and one of the blessed to look back on 2020 and smile as its given me so much more to look forward to in 2021.
Leave a Reply