I’m ending the year unmarried, holed up in my flat as I work remotely, while making do with Lagos’ limited, boring food choices.

I can’t step out of my cocoon without wearing the darn face mask, can’t hug people and can’t drink a beer at the local pub to save my life. 

Like the rest of humanity, I have become insular, anti-social, bored, increasingly irritated, hooked to my gadget screens and broke. Yikes! This wasn’t how we thought the year was going to go, but here we are.

I remember breaking the news of Nigeria’s index COVID-19 case on Pulse Nigeria. It was just a little past midnight in Lagos. As we deliberated on how to report the unsavoury development, my colleague Steve and I knew the world we live in was going to change forever. 

Eleven months after, close to two million people have died from the novel coronavirus globally, with some 85 million infected. Even though there’s good news around vaccines to put us all out of our misery, scientists are not so sure when we’d attain herd immunity in the wider population. 

In the interim, we are losing friends and family by the hour, businesses are shutting shop, poverty rates are rising especially in low income countries; and more and more people are filing for unemployment benefits in the developed world--even as food banks are milling with more and more people. 

We all need a break from 2020 and all of its problems. We need to be able to socialise again, hold hands again, travel again, get the vaccination when it comes to our neck of the woods, wear the masks, wash those hands and continue keeping safe. 

Which is why I’m looking forward to 2021 with some cautious optimism. We all need to turn the corner. And if you survived this year, it really is some big deal. Congratulations are well in order.  

We’ll go again and give this marriage thing another try next year. Who knows?

May we all never experience a year quite like 2020 ever again. 

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*Pulse Editor's Opinion is the viewpoint of an Editor at Pulse. It does not represent the opinion of the Organisation Pulse.