[I started this post at the end of January, and it is now early May. So much has happened, and we now live in a new world alongside COVID-19. I intended to delete this post because it’s now so old and out of date, but it feels important to finish it.]
I’ve been thinking a great deal about how we get lost in our lives this last week. About how one thing happens, and then another, and then another but we just keep rolling along. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do, right? Adapt. Improvise. Overcome.
But what about when the overcoming has become the only thing you do? What about when days turn into weeks, and weeks turn into months, and you’ve been so busy just getting through that you wake up one day and find yourself lost in the middle of your own life?
That happened for me this week, two weeks into my time away from work. Without even realizing it, the cloak of “getting through” has fallen away, and I find myself completely lost.
It turns out that Getting Through had become my primary occupation. And I have to say, I am completely disoriented. It hasn’t been pretty. AH has been an absolute rock amidst days of tears, extreme lows, and high anxiety. I’ve been wandering around the house, not able to commit to anything. I see so many unfinished projects and tasks, but they all come from the land of Getting Through. All I’ve been able to do is wallow in this sea of confusion and disorientation and allow myself to be swallowed whole by my emotions.
Here, in this new land, this unfamiliar ground, I see the truth of myself and what our life has become while we’ve been living alongside three years of chronic migraine. I’ve become someone I no longer recognize. I’m tight, tense, irritable, fearful. I don’t particularly like this person. And I’m amazed that my incredible hubby still loves me; I’m a shadow of the person he married two years ago.
I don’t find myself applying judgment against this new me. Rather, in the quiet and stillness of this time, I’m able to see that she is whom I’ve had to become in order to survive. But I see clearly that it’s time for change, for renewal, and a new way forward. How do I do this?
It turns out that the answer is to just Be.
My weeks at home passed slowly and with great difficulty. I did yoga. My practice was deep, and quiet, and it was my mainstay during those long weeks in the deep of winter at home by myself. I meditated, and relished sitting in the quiet as I watched my thoughts and gently told them, “not now” and moved them along as I settled back into peace. I read my Bible, and found encouragement in the depths of the Old Testament. And I sat. I sat A LOT! But I sat without TV or music or a friend by my side.
When I look back to those weeks now, I am so thankful for them. I wish I had appreciated just how beautiful life was even during those dark, painful, quiet days at home. Even now, as I write, I reflect back to that time and I smile. I can see myself picking up the pieces of my spirit and assembling a new template to move forward in the world with. It’s an unfinished work in progress though, interrupted by my return to work, a new puppy, and COVID-19.
But as I have come back to my words from this another life this morning, I feel encouraged to return to myself and start again. I’m sorry I’ve been gone for so long. And I feel so blessed to have a chance to come back!
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