Mending a Broken Heart in a Pandemic.
2020 has not been a good year. I’ve heard the same sentence came out of my favourite podcast. I heard the same from every conversation I had with the girl friends, the work colleagues, the retailers on the shop as they start to sell their Christmas gifts ideas. It has been a quick year, a blink of an eye. Deep inside, your heads keep asking the same repeated question, is it really Christmas around the corner? Somehow it’s unreal to admit.
Even more surreal is the condition of where my head space is. I was more sure than everything that this year was going to be very-long-one. Having my heart broken into pieces at the start the year, I was almost sure I was not going to get out of this year alive. Shattered pieces, broken dreams, vanished vision of it-would-be-nice ideas. I found myself angry, annoyed, confused, how could things go so wrong in March. Exactly when the first pandemic hits home,the same time the stores started to close and news on TV breaking on lockdown restrictions. I wasn’t sure how to feel okay. I wasn’t sure how I was going to heal, I wasn’t sure how it all started, how it all began, how Covid started to camouflages my feelings, my messed emotions.
Three months after you realised things were not going to change, the virus was here to stay, the count was getting higher. Similarly, messages affirmed it wasn’t going either. No good news, a simple sorry and a wish that things would go back to normal. What is normal these days? Would things go back to normal?
I hit myself on a run, sending my girl friend now and then with messages that no, I’m not okay today, last night I had another dream…à The attachment was here, the loneliness was definitely not welcomed either. Until you hear the news one morning that, nope, there was no longer such thing as a ‘normal’ and there will be a new normal. Everyone has to adjust, accustoming to check-in codes, masks, social distance. On this side, too, the heart was starting to battle with the mind. The mind went back to where things went wrong, marked it, went on a solitude journey to heal, to make peace with grace, to tell the self that it’s okay, you didn’t screw up, it’s just how you are wired. Bite the bullet, carry on. You did all that you can, things are not meant to be. You deserve a better you, a better timing, better shot at future chances.
Six months on, it relapsed. Second cluster appeared and so did those dreams, seeing him again, making friendship work again, making things happened again. Waking up in the morning with sweats, hope, if only’s, a miss feeling like never before. There goes another wait, another patience in test, another overhaul of the heart, trying to love it than to regret it, trying to accept the virus as part of this everyday life.
Nine months on, the journey continues, choosing to accept than to reasoned. More affirmations that this too shall pass and future will be bright again. Just like we continue with the new rules, the new normal, you wake up putting the mask in your bag as one of today’s necessity, thinking when will this end. Just like this heart questioned the key question, will I ever be in love again?
Whatever ‘in’ love means… Prince Charles says.
