It’s been a year akin to a half-price wax. After an invisible year holding my breath – literally and figuratively – for a pandemic to pass, I went into 2021 with hope and expectations, feeling justified in my optimism given the creation of vaccines. 2021, I believed, would be a reward of sorts, a return on the investment in misery I’d made the year before. A time to collect on the karma points for masking up and resisting travel.
Predictably, I’ve barely made it out. That’s not to say there weren’t signs, but waves of Covid, however numerous, did appear to temporarily abate. I clung to whatever positivity I could muster, convincing myself that the light at the end of the tunnel wasn’t visible because it was around a corner, not because it didn’t exist. I told myself it was all a matter of perspective.
My newfound positivity was admittedly fueled by desperation and social isolation. I chose to ignore that crucial fact and forged forwards; after all, don’t they say that a positive attitude changes everything? When an email arrived in my inbox for a discount Brazilian wax from the waxing salon I frequent, I saw it as an opportunity. A little high five, wink, wink, from a business to its regular patrons, a co-conspirator who understood the importance of self-care during terrible times.
I should have known: there is no such thing as altruism in a shitty economy. Like the emergence of niche Greek letters into everyday conversation to describe pandemic variants, there were hints that this waxing session wasn’t going to go well. Maybe it’ll get better, I told myself, as if that had worked in 2020, maybe she’ll figure it out. Neither miracle occurred. Optimism slowly sank into disappointment, then dread, then despair as I realized I’d paid someone to give me ingrown hairs in delicate areas. Later, the image of my 5,000 yen bill being fed through a shredder repeated like a gif in my head as I tweezed out stray pubic hairs that would have been visible from space.
I didn’t know it at the time, but this experience would repeat itself for the rest of the year. Hope, defeat, dismay. By September, I was less than enthused to be waking up every day to the same cloistered routine and I’d nearly given up hope of a year that could be salvaged. Yet, ever hopeful when faced with the opposite, even on the afternoon of the 31st, I imagined that something could turn this year around.
The odds of such a reversal are slim. Like the half-trained aesthetician who was shoved into a small room with my bikini line and a time limit, 2021 wasn’t set up to succeed. This year has been a cluster of time lost, deteriorating mental health, dudes who ghost, and persistent burn out. On the other hand, that aesthetician could have sent me to the emergency room and my labia did live to see another (full price, this time) Brazilian wax. That might not be much, but under the circumstances, I’ll take it.
2021, it hasn’t been fun, but thanks for the memories.