The Year I Planned…

Nadine Merabi dress (c/o) (similar)
Chanel hairclip (similar)
Mejuri bracelet (c/o) (similar)
Linjer ring (c/o) (similar)
Keltie Leanne Designs ring (c/o) (similar)
Linjer earrings (c/o) (similar)
Location: Osborne Village – Winnipeg, Manitoba

2020 was always going to be a year of transition for us, a year of change. Last fall, Ian changed jobs – and then abruptly changed jobs again. Both changes were undeniably for the best, but also meant accepting significant change in the routine of our lives that we’d developed over the past decade.

I’ve moved past mourning the year that might have been, but I still want to acknowledge it. As we move into week six of social-distancing measures and much of the world remains closed, with no real end in sight, the plans we had for 2020 are little more than a memory. They will never be realised, not at the times or in the places we imagined. And that’s fine, because I’ve learned through experience that our imaginations have limitations. Every time life has deigned to take something from me, to dash one of my long-held dreams, it has ultimately given me something much better that I would never have dared to dream of myself.

…that doesn’t mean that I didn’t want to celebrate Ian’s birthday in Vancouver with our old friends, some of whom, because of job changes and moves, we haven’t seen in person for the better part of three years. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t want to spend the summer taking my daily runs through the parks in our neighbourhood, the ones to which access is now limited. Or that I didn’t want to be able to wear this dress to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary in early September. (We hadn’t worked out the specifics of how we planned to celebrate, but it’s most likely a moot point now.)

We wanted to go to Spain in September. Or to France in October – a beautiful wedding invitation arrived in my mailbox just this week, and it breaks my heart to know that the wedding itself might not happen at all, never mind the knowing that we won’t be able to be there if it does.

The year 2020 that might have been never really existed, of course, except in my head. But it might have, and now I know it never will. All the plans I imagined are now just that: figments of my imagination. So I wore this dress in my bedroom and took photos, because why not? When life as you knew it ends, there is nothing to do but enjoy the parts of life you still have left.

I don’t know what kind of year 2020 will be. In the absence of a crystal ball, no one does. But I know that no matter how much creativity it takes, I’m going to find a way to enjoy it.

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