I don't know when I expected things to start returning to normal, but it was a bit jarring to come back from vacation and suddenly see no one at HEB wearing a mask.
Like you, I lived over a year in quarantine, and during that season, time bent and stretched and thinned and grew, until quarantine was over and it felt like I'd lived in it for a decade. And I must not have been paying attention during that decade, because I left it feeling like an unrecognizable version of myself by the end of it.
Welcome to the first of many personal reckonings about who I became between March 2020 and the present.
The quarantine blackhole started at a park in Pflugerville. I'd just gotten laid off from my job after weeks of whispers about this strange virus in China. Almost overnight, an apocalyptic tension started growing in my office. The staff whittled down to just a few people, and suddenly, it was mid-March and I was sitting in the office by myself, until even I chose to stay home.
You know, I never considered myself a die hard introvert, but the thought of being at home for a while didn't scare me. I woke up each day and took a long walk because my gym was now closed. I circled the nearby neighborhood for an hour while the sun rose, listening to my favourite podcast and enjoying the breeze. And I'd come home and spend the day alone. With Phil gone to work, I'd jump on zoom calls, write emails, and pace my apartment kitchen endlessly at lunch.
Every now and again, if the mood was just right, I'd even call my mom in the middle of the day.
I was busy, and so dang grateful for that busyness. It kept my eyes off the news and on my computer screen. I could feel my friends sounding a bit more worried and my apartment started to feel a bit darker no matter how many lights I switched on. So I stayed as busy as I could. I worked any job I could find, saved every penny I had, and set my sights on buying a home in some strange attempt to feel settled and safe despite the chaos.
Things felt okay for a while—so okay in fact, that I didn't really notice when I stopped showering daily or doing my hair. Exercise slowed to a crawl then to a full stop. I didn't call my mom as much—maybe I was nervous that one day she wouldn't pick up and I'd hear news that the New York dangers had crept up and invaded her home. I didn't notice that I was baking a lot more to help calm my nerves. That my heart broke daily for my old job and coworkers and that the searing pain blinded me from the gift of a new job.
I didn't notice that I felt a little bit different every day. And the walls of my apartment felt both like a home and a prison.
And just like that, after months of sitting at home while a pandemic ravaged communities just outside my home, nothing felt right. And neither did I.
I honestly hate that some changes in life can feel so gradual. One moment, you feel perfectly fine and you're thriving. The next minute, you're fundamentally different as a person, but can't quite figure out how. And that's the thing, no one really notices being in quicksand if they're just staring at a laptop screen all day and only moving to open the fridge door one more time.
I know I'll discover more ways I've changed because of covid-19 as the years roll on. But it wasn't the act of going to HEB and seeing mask-less faces that prompted reflection. It was going home. While there, I slowed down the way that most Americans were forced to during the pandemic. It was my first time for over a year that I wasn't busy doing something all the time. That month in Grenada stripped away all the busyness and frantic energy I had and it helped me see what really mattered to me. Just as quarantine did for many people, it showed me the friends and activities that filled me up and those that drained me.
I returned from that trip energized, but uninterested in engaging with life like I once did. I feel fundamentally changed, unrecognizable in some ways. After almost 3 decades of looking for more and different ways to achieve new feats, I feel flat and bored with life.
After a month in Grenada after over a year living and working from home, I now know that running errands with my father is a part of my life I don't want to give up. That plants bring me joy and sometimes it's okay to eat greasy food if it fills both your belly and your soul. The sheets I lay in at night matter because my sleep matters because I matter. Seeing my family flourish is a sweet thing I shouldn't take for granted. Everyone needs someone they can trust in, and it's important for me to be that person as much as I can. My job title is arbitrary.
Overworking myself is no longer attractive to me, no matter the cheque attached. I desperately need time in my days to reflect and rest so I can bring my most creative self to the table. I'm not interested in pursuing friends who've exited my life with acts of emotional violence. And I'm not interested in engaging with settings that make me anxious.
I just don't have the energy for those things any more. But those were the activities that made up so much of my pre-covid life.
I feel fundamentally different and I'm not sure I want to return to my pre-covid self. But paving a new way forward is much more difficult than I expected. Who do you become when the main things that drove you now drain you? What now motivates you?
My therapist challenged me to look to Christ's purpose in my life to motivate me and find joy in. But I'm not good at that yet. I don't know how to reconcile my love and pursuit of Jesus with lazy days where I feel drained and empty. Where the things I used to do all the time now fall off my radar with some scary level of permanence.
I haven't quite figured this out yet and that's okay. I'm not in a rush.
While I figure out who post-covid Davina is, it's nice to know that some things haven't changed. Those constants honestly ground me more than the unknowns unhinge me. I look around at the fact that I can still sit with Jesus moment by moment, and I feel so secure. I look at my husband and how loving he is, even when I'm a brat, and I'm so humbled. My friends are committed to me as I am to them—I'm grateful. My family members are alive and I can reach them at any time—what more can I ask for.
And they're all with me, patient and loving, as I step into this next season of personhood and unknowns.
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