Resilience.

So once again I have commit the cardinal sin of not writing or posting consistently. Fair enough my life has been utter chaos of late. We got a new puppy recently which has compounded the newness of a new (old) home, a new job and renovations occurring at the same time. Previously I had always lauded myself for my resilience and for the way in which I believed I could easily adapt to any situation. I’m not so sure about that now. To say that I haven’t dealt well with all of the change would be an understatement and to be honest, I feel like I’m still adjusting.

It’s made me ponder on whether this shift in my inner feelings is a result of change in itself, and all at once, or maybe it’s just age and being at a different stage in my life. When I was younger I could pack up and go to another country at the drop of a hat. I was happy to live out of a suitcase and stay somewhere that had a bed, a bathroom and not much else. These days, I feel very differently about that concept. I travel less nomadically, I like my creature comforts and I expect my home to be my sanctuary. 

I wonder also if years of the instability that COVID has caused, and the fear it has generated has also had a hand in reducing my resilience and upping that feeling of vulnerability which can have me getting teary at any moment. I have always been emotional but it feels like lately, that has moved into another quadrant where any small shock will push me over the edge and I struggle to regulate my emotions and bring myself back to calmness. Reading, watching or listening to the news lately seems to be a never ending stream of war, protracted crisis, pandemics and adverse weather conditions. It feels like we are in a phase of perpetual disaster and finding the joy in things is increasingly difficult.

The last 3 years of the pandemic has also been responsible for massive shifts in the patterns of people’s lives. For my husband and I personally, we’ve made decisions based on the lack of ability to travel, because we couldn’t go on those adventures and live the lives we had planned over the past few years. We then decided to put down roots; probably quicker than we would have if COVID-19 hadn’t occurred. In the time since the pandemic began we have gotten engaged, gotten married, bought a house, changed jobs multiple times and gotten a puppy. If early 2019 Sabene had looked at my life now in late 2022, I’m not sure she would called the situation in terms of the level of domestication that has occurred.

All of this has forced me into a place of deep contemplation. I won’t lie, I’ve had moments where I’ve questioned if I have put too much pressure on myself to ‘adult’ too quickly in terms of buying a massive house in the burbs and taking on an incredibly stressful and responsibility packed job so soon in my career. The isolation of working at home 24/7 plus the inherent fear that we’ve had to consistently endure in the COVID era has made it very difficult to see past the hard times. It feels very permanent and unshiftable and therefore looking ahead into our futures seems to have been muddied with the same sense of mundaneness. It has left us feeling like we have few options outside of the isolated lives we’ve been living.

But I know deep down that this isn’t the case, it can’t be. I’ve had to force myself to think about the possibilities and what my life was like before the pandemic. In a time when we were more free, or maybe just more carefree. I’ve had to try and shift my mindset and remind myself that this world is big, lively and full of chances for fun and adventure. I’ve had to remind myself that nothing in life lasts forever and that I never lost my resilience. It’s buried somewhere deep inside and now is the time to dig it up.