She’s Been Frozen Since 2020, Thawed for a Week, and Baked for 45 Minutes
There are some sentences that feel like instructions and confessions at the same time.
“She’s been frozen since 2020, thawed for a week, and baked for 45 minutes” is one of them.
At first glance, it sounds domestic and ordinary—something you’d read on the back of a box in a grocery store aisle. But the longer you sit with it, the more it feels like a story about time. About preservation. About what we did to survive the years that followed 2020, and what happens when we finally decide to bring something—or someone—back into the heat of the present.
This is not just a sentence about food.
It’s a sentence about us.
1. The Year Everything Went Into the Freezer
2020 was the year the world collectively reached for the freezer door.
Plans were suspended. Dreams were wrapped in plastic. Relationships were put on ice. Entire versions of ourselves were sealed away with the hope that someday—when it was safe, when it was normal, when it was over—we could take them back out again.
Freezing is an act of care. It’s not destruction; it’s preservation. You freeze something because you don’t want it to spoil. You freeze it because you believe there will be a future where it is needed again.
In that sense, freezing was the most hopeful thing many of us did in 2020.
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