I have to write my third (and hopefully final) paper for my thesis. So, extreme motivation hit to clean my house, brush my dog and update my blog! You know what I mean... So, here it is:
It has been a year+ since my last trip to any place outside SLC. I feel like I am just starting to feel the isolation and loneliness that people have been struggling with since the beginning of the pandemic. I like making friends and being social, but equally enjoy my space and feel secure in it. As a result, the pandemic isolation loneliness hit me later than others (I assume). Another fun part for me was the validation of my germophobia that has made me seem like a crazy person most of my life. It was amusing to see people rushing to stores and fighting for sanitizers, wipes, cleaning supplies, etc. I have always been a hoarder of these and now I was watching others who criticized me for my extremely weird anxiety about touching surfaces (before it was cool !). Ah, the sweet sweet validation.
Losing a sense of belonging to my tribe since the labs closed at the university hit me the most, especially on weekends when my favorite thing to do was to get together at a bar and grab a few drinks, make new friends, etc. Moving to (almost) a different city out of SLC, I had hopes of getting to know neighbors and make new friends. Alas, how wrong I was! People with families and extreme religious beliefs are very difficult to convince that you pose no threat :P
Although it was a stroke of luck that I found Nick after a few months of being in lockdown. Of course, he changed my life and helped me through a lot of stuff.
It has been 3 years since I went home. I miss India very much! It is exciting and stressful to even think about going back. So much has changed in the last 3 years. I am a different person. At home, they know the version of me that was like season 1 of a series that was underfunded, low-budget, and had a crappy crew and writer. This season of me is exciting, all-improved, and very interesting. The problem is the disappointment of season 1 puts people off and they don’t really want to give the show another chance. I am guilty of doing that too.
The “me” time, being in my head, learning more and more about mental health, has made me a more empathetic person. I developed an ability to handle people who reject the whole show because of the crappy season 1 :) It also made me realize I suck at asking for favors. Even simple things like watching my plants while I “plan” to go to India or coming over when I am having a family induced panic-attack. It leads to disappointment. And I have never been good at handling that. Friends disappoint, colleagues disappoint, neighbors disappoint. I am told expectation leads to disappointment. The season 1 nihilistic me is confused. Should I continue to believe that everyone is selfish by nature or should I keep trying to get them to do something for me. I can say that I deserve a right to bitch about and be all uptight about this is because I have NEVER EVER turned down anyone who has ever asked me for help. (Well, except when homeless people have asked me for money!). Life experiences have made me hyper-aware of my ability to be so self-sufficient that it takes as much courage for me to ask for help as it did to approach a cute guy at a bar (back in my days!).
The rant here is about the different shades of people, situations, and philosophies I have become extremely sensitive to since the covid hit. And this, friends, is what I call my covid conundrum.