Dear 2016,
Every year we try our best to go in with a positive attitude, thinking that the upcoming year will be better than the last. We make our resolutions and predictions in anticipation for the new year. It was fine for a while, but in a little under two weeks, you took David Bowie from us.
In that moment we should’ve known what kind of year this would be.
Four days later, we lost Alan Rickman. Harry Potter fans were destroyed. You taught us patience when we were blessed with ANTi, a new Rihanna album, one we waited four years for. Perhaps the year wouldn’t be too bad, or at least that’s what I thought until I was surrounded by people shouting “Damn Daniel” every four seconds. Then again, what’s a year without a viral video?
A viral movie, however, is what really made history. This was something the world has waited for since the beginning of Hollywood: Leonardo DiCaprio finally won an Oscar. Thank you for that, but did you really think that would make us look past the death of Nancy Reagan? I suppose we should have picked up on the trend going on, but nothing could have prepared us for what happened next.
We were still recovering from the loss of David Bowie when you decided it was necessary to take Prince. A legend. An icon. You really did it with this one. It hit us hard, but you showed us that music is the one thing that really lives forever. Besides, you know what they say, “When life hands you lemons…” Beyoncé surely got the memo when she dropped Lemonade, the visual album that would touch on social injustices with songs that surfed through genres and made everyone keep an eye out for “Becky with the good hair.”
While we never really figured out who Becky was, we became familiar with another messy b*tch who lives for drama, Joanne the Scammer. Thank you for her. We needed a little comedy. Honestly. Jokes are something this year knew a bit too well. Our world was overrun by memes. It wasn’t until the internet grieved the death of Harambe, a gorilla at a Cincinnati zoo, more than David Bowie and Prince that I realized something was wrong.
The year would go nowhere but downhill from there.
Naturally, we were looking forward to the summer, but little did we know what we were in for. Three days into June, we lost one of the most significant boxers of all time, Muhammad Ali. It really “stung like a bee.” Speaking of bees, why was the internet swarmed with Bee Movie memes?
Regardless, Ali’s death surprised us all. Nobody could have seen it coming, sort of like Demi Lovato and Wilmer Valderrama splitting up after dating for six years. As a big fan of Demi’s, I was saddened by this news, but not as much as when I found out that Christina Grimmie had been shot and killed.
Just two days later, 49 people were killed at Pulse. LGBTQ+ allies were needed more than ever. I was shocked and angry. I had never payed too much attention to gun control, but this event opened my eyes to the state of the matter. My Twitter feed was filled with users urging their followers to email congress about stricter gun control. Then I remembered what politics were like.
Our presidential candidates were Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. I wanted the latter two to #FeelTheBern until Sanders endorsed Hillary, which definitely puzzled me. I started to lose hope in our country and suddenly the Brexit vote made more sense. Our nation was tearing itself apart. We didn’t even know if we could trust police. We were becoming racially divided yet again. We had to get #BlackLivesMatter trending. You taught us to unite against adversity. Alton Sterling and Philando Castile represented a movement towards racial equality, one faced with criticism by insensitive individuals like Tomi Lahren and Donald Trump. You terrified me.
I’ll admit we might have blown some things out of proportion (poor Marina Joyce) but we definitely took life more seriously this year. It was hard to tell whether people were outside for protests or to play Pokemon Go. I was able to live my dream of becoming a Pokemon trainer. Not to mention you gave us one of the biggest celebrity feuds of the century, with Taylor Swift vs. Kimye, resulting in a #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty. As soon as clowns started appearing pretty much everywhere, I very much wanted to be “excluded from this narrative, one that I have never asked to be apart of” since the death of David Bowie.
The clown epidemic was something completely unique to this year, and I really hadn’t seen stranger things than that, except, of course, Stranger Things. Next, we lost Gene Wilder, the original Willy Wonka, and a piece of my childhood was broken. When Brangelina split up, you showed us that maybe love is a lie. When the first presidential debates came up, I resisted the urge to break my tv screen every time Trump opened his mouth. As soon as he was asked a serious question, he did the mannequin challenge until it was Hillary’s time to speak, which was when he rudely interrupted her with a rugged “WRONG.” You made us think things couldn’t get worse when The Cubs won the world series, but I sure was “WRONG”. Vine was shut down, then the impossible happened. Donald Trump was elected president.
I was devastated. I was utterly confused.
I didn’t understand how we could elect someone who stands against everything we worked so hard to achieve. To this day I am in disbelief. With one man coming to power, it only made sense for another to step down, and thus, Fidel Castro passed away.
The year was coming to an end and my birthday was coming up in December, so I hoped you would have some mercy. This last month was no exception to the trend we’ve observed. You took Alan Thicke. Then Zsa Zsa Gabor, Ricky Harris, George Michael, Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds. I didn’t think it was possible for so many iconic people to die in such a short span of time.
I really wanted to believe you would be different, and so did everyone else. Between the music, the trends, the hate, and the deaths, I really don’t know what to think about you. I don’t know what happened this year, but it was definitely something else. You were something that I never want to experience ever again.
Let me make this clear: we’re strong.
You tried your best to break us, but you’ve only made us stronger. Everything you put us through taught us that it’s possible to come together as human beings and you’ve exposed those who oppose our beliefs.
One thing is for sure, when the ball drops on New Year’s, we will rise as better people, united through love, against hate.
Goodbye and good riddance,
Everyone looking forward to 2017
