Today has not been a good day 😦
The alarm clocked sounded this morning and upon opening my eyes, my head pounded. Migraine! I’m partly to blame for the headache, what with binge-watching series and movies to not have to think about how lockdown truly is impacting me, the people I love, and those I don’t even know. My head is still sore, my stomach is churning like a top-of-the-range cement mixer, and my heart is heavy.
In an attempt to get some work done, I closed all the blinds in The Cave. Darkness! A slight reprieve from the sandpaper that still scratches my eyeballs every time I blink. Thankfully I can type with my eyes closed. My ninth grade typing teacher would be so proud.
My mind is filled with a lot of stuff about letting go. It could be the result of the nesting bug that has taken hold and the purge of unused items and clothes or it could be my psyche getting to the final step of grieving: acceptance.
Acceptance that the relationship I so desperately hoped for, really isn’t going to happen. I spent eighteen months blissfully happy and hopeful, finally feeling that I’d found my person – the one with whom I could be my REAL, vulnerable self, only to be quickly replaced by his person. There was no formal relationship in place, but we were inseparable, and talking about building a future together. We were making memories – experiencing so many firsts together. I believed in us.
I’ve spent a further fourteen months, grieving; wishing I could turn back the clock and change things so that she didn’t waltz into his life, wrecking my heart in the process. He was the love of my life, the fire that burned my soul. The irony is I still love him – enough to want to meet her and wish them both well, and in so doing, finally forgive myself for once again not guarding my heart.
An old school friend, Jessica, has always been of the belief that if you’ve had a break-up, you should take at least the same amount of time that your relationship was, to recover. By her reasoning, I have four months to go. Hopefully the lockdown will be over by then. Would-be suitors can then bang down my door (as if anything like that has ever happened before), but hey, that was the old ‘normal’, we’re operating in a whole different world now, right?
This confinement also brings with it another form of acceptance – that life as we know it, will never be the same, and that how we are living now is the new ‘normal’.
Chatting to a friend yesterday, she said she doesn’t have the need to go to the shops as frequently as she always did, nor does she miss it. In her words, “it’s because now we are not braaiing with friends, and quickly need to stop in to get something to take along, or because we don’t need to get bread and milk every day.” For a long while to come, social engagements will be something many people will avoid, for fear that the unseen contagion that has brought the world to a standstill will prey on us as its next victim, or because the once lucrative pay cheque no longer stretches to include such luxuries. Things will recover eventually, but eventually, like never, is a long time.
Hard times lie ahead for every citizen of the planet. Many of us are asking the age-old unanswered question: WHY (us), (me), (now), (a virus) (insert your own words here)? We feel we deserve answers. More so, we feel we deserve them immediately. Why are we being ignored? Why are world leaders not doing more to curb the spread of the disease? Why? Why? Why?!
I know that there is truth to the adage everything happens for a reason, but it’s not always easy to simply accept it. It’s even more difficult to let go of the reins we so desperately cling to, especially when the saddle we’re in may very well be on the back of an apocalyptic horse.
Reflections of a Misfit 