This is Not Normal
“The world is violent and mercurial—it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love—love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.”
Some perfect forever ago holiday in France
On the whole - and take this with a pinch of salt - I have found the good in this new way of being. The architecture of my days has remained reliably calm and positive. I have sought the company that I can in the ways that we must, I have created and I have nurtured the neglected corners of my normal days. My balcony, with it’s now often open door, partners very favourably with the sunny weather. I do what I always do, I read and walk. You do not need to look very far to see a community that is coming together, despite it all. And then there are the obvious caveats. This is a virus that is hurting people. I have, over the last week, found myself rather lost and losing concentration. The newness has soured and what is emerging is a form of mild exhaustion stirred by frustration and fear. I work in the hotel industry, the writing on the wall is alarming and meant to sting.
There are also warming daily rituals that have silently crept in and populated my days. At times I have felt the familiar hues of a holiday, as though this new life is really a sojourn in France and I am currently walking barefoot into an early morning on a terrace. Often this myth will bloom in my imagination and for a few minutes I allow this falsehood to be true. And when that is happening I am content - I allow the sun to fall on me, I will pause and feel grateful for the slow pace of life right now. I roll out the apparatus that makes these long ago holidays so wonderful - filter coffee, fruit at breakfast, books on their hinges, music for company and the promise of an evening opening to the sound of ice against glass. And then there are the days when I feel as though it is Sunday evening and I have school tomorrow. The nausea raises and the anxiety feels sticky and tenacious. I live in the land of disquiet and breakfast.
At my lowest I find myself forming a hierarchy of my own suffering. Boredom is at the top. Boredom can often be my way of saying that I am struggling and need some relief. This is not the ordinary boredom of an open afternoon that you’re wasting; rather it is more similar to the boredom of anxiety repeated until all you feel is despair. Second on the list is the fear of becoming ill. Between first and second is the fear of a loved one becoming ill. The reason that this isn’t first is because I do not allow my brain to go there.
And then there are the projects. The online communities. The banana bread in the fridge. The good simple things that align with the extraordinary goodness being shown right now. These are the things that I will pack when normal life becomes the holiday that I am yearning for.
