We marked 1 year of this pandemic recently. The past week or so has been a lot of 1-year markers for many of us. 1 year since people went to their office. 1 year since they went to a gym. 1 year since they’ve socialized with friends and family. 1 year since things seemed “normal”.
I’ve had a lot of those thoughts recently. I remember the last normal feeling day. I just wrote about the last time I went to Orangetheory in the studio. The last musical that I went to was just over a year ago. The last big social event I went to was over a year ago and I remember us all talking about COVID and being grateful that it wasn’t affecting us too much. If only we knew what was coming for us.
And I remember when everything shut down. I was terrified about what was happening and I didn’t know what to do. There was so much fear in those first few weeks of the pandemic. And while I wasn’t trying to hoard supplies or anything like that, I know that I did a little bit of panic buying. But I also was hoping to find a way to only need to get groceries every 2 weeks. That didn’t last too long for other reasons and now I’m doing grocery delivery about once a week and then going to Trader Joe’s maybe once or twice a month for other things I can’t get delivered.
Even though things are a bit calmer with grocery shopping, I do still have some anxiety from over a year ago. When I’m running low on something that was harder to get a year ago, I start to worry. I am buying refills for things sooner than I used to because I want to allow time in case I can’t get what I need. Going to the grocery store still makes me anxious. I’m grateful that at least there aren’t big lines at the stores anymore, so I can do my errands a bit quicker. But it’s still an errand that I am not always happy to do because of the anxiety.
So many of my friends have been sharing recently about how a year ago their work life was so different. This is one thing that doesn’t feel too different for me. I did lose one job and get another one, but I’ve been working from home for a long time now so it doesn’t seem like a huge change. I have had more changes recently with work because of some new responsibilities and other things connected to my work, but these are also things that I was hoping would happen so it feels much more like I’m finally getting closer to where I want to be with work.
So much has changed in my life when I look back at a year ago, but I think the biggest change has been the feeling of isolation. I still struggle so much with feeling like I’m on my own little planet and that there’s nobody out there doing what I’m doing. I know that isn’t true, but the isolation makes me feel that way. And I have been working on being a little less isolated. I still am not really going out or seeing that many people, but I have allowed myself to see friends who I know are taking the same precautions that I am. I’m less than 3 weeks away before I can feel safer seeing friends one on one, even if they aren’t vaccinated. And I can’t wait for that time. A year ago, I never really knew how lonely I could feel. I was fine having alone time, but loneliness is so different and something that I wasn’t mentally or physically prepared for.
I know we are getting closer and closer to the end of this pandemic. More people are being vaccinated every day. Case numbers are going down and hospitalizations have been going down even faster. I know there is a goal to have an almost normal 4th of July this year, and that would be amazing.
A year ago, I know that we were told that we were going to be isolating for 2 weeks to make things safe. I had a feeling it wouldn’t just be 2 weeks. But if someone told me a year ago that we’d still be doing this a year later, I wouldn’t have believed it. I also don’t know if I could have handled it knowing I had a year of loneliness ahead of me. But I have made it through this past year, and I’m very lucky to be able to say that. And I will make it through whatever time left we have to do this.
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