lockdown and life

Eight months and perhaps more to go...the lockdown story is started to feel like a normal now. What we have lived through is history and I see it as an opportunity to connect back with our roots. I have seen a revival of many relationships, art forms, hobbies and most importantly self. Its been a span when we took  the time to feel what we should feel, look within to explore the lost self and bring that self to indulge in life that was once the ideal one.

Thirteen years into my marriage and adulthood made me the lost self- the free spirited, fearless, passionate self. The fourteenth year seems to have given me a window to revisit that self, this time with a more realistic lenses. 

The 20 something self of me had never thought of a life bound by social norms and pre-determined notions of a perfect life. For me there was no perfection in the world, there was only a suitable or a more suitable ways of looking at things. We finds things perfect when they are suitable for us. Suitability was very subjective and "to each his own". Come 30's, I became what I never had thought to be. I was in line with what everyone else thought was perfect. Even better...i tried to achieve that perfection. Now almost a step away from my 40's life has hit back again. I want to be free spirited and get whatever is suitable for me. So what has changed?

Well, the lockdown has just paused the run, that i began thirteen years back. Been enclosed with family within the house 24x7, facing the pressures and stresses to handle everything perfectly, threw my pretentious self out of the window. It was just within two months that I had realised...its time to rediscover my old self and put that before everyone. I wasn't PERFECT..neither I wanted to be. That I was an individual as well apart from the various relationships I had lived so far. 

While looking back may not make us very happy, but for me this is what helped me. I reconnected with my university friends, school friends and college friends. I starting attempting to write my thoughts, a long lost passion. I connected with my husband and daughter as an individual, and not just a wife or mother. Extended family is back in my radar of thoughts. Lifestyle changes for healthier eating and routine activities have been adopted. And most importantly, my discovery of parenthood which is something I cherish the most.

But then, everything again now feel like an unbearable experience. A look out to get back to past normal, meeting friends and family, taking short trips...I need everything back. All the wisdom and realisations are good, but life was what we live pre COVID.