Hello Darkness My Old Friend

Note (not part of the word count):

I want to take the time to recognize all the front line workers… everyone from healthcare professionals, delivery folks, and even merchants and their workers who stay open to keep this us moving. I know I don’t have it as hard as them and I don’t want to pretend I understand their struggle. Their sacrifices should not be unnoticed; it helped me write this post about a trivial struggle because I can stay at home. They are sacrificing their health and economic standing on our behalf. Thank you. For anyone reading, support them how you can.

Fellow Canadians, https://www.canadahelps.org/en/donate-to-coronavirus-outbreak-response/ you can donate here to the cause closest to your heart

Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash

Social distancing is the new norm.

I’m grateful in a situation where not much of my life has changed, I work at an incredibly empathetic place where we are mission oriented to support our customers in a trying time. In addition, I’m helping a few scientists out to do my part in the pandemic while still juggling personal projects.

But I’m struggling.

I took for granted how I externalized my growth and development away from home. Home represented a type of comfort that seduced me to complacency so I “ran away”. As social distancing makes me get reacquainted with these walls, I’m reminded of a dark time.

The last time I reduced contact with peers was during a depressive episode; I cut associations because isolation simply made more sense at the time.

I was wrong. I had to relearn how to live and I am afraid to be him again, a person without purpose and drive. The external environment saved me (e.g. a new job, coffee shops, libraries, lakes) because I viewed home as a place to rest so I can be somewhere else.

Like many of us, I’m working from home. I find now that when I take breaks today and not follow my to do list, I am incredibly angry at myself. I’m too comfortable.

Now my challenge is to build self-compassion and patience in the very place that destroyed me years past. I don’t know where to start but maybe I should clean up my desk first.

Word count: 249
Twitter: @bhavprajapati

52 | 250 (fifty two | two fifty), a collection of random, recurring, ruminations written with patience for depth and brevity. Each post is written over the course of a week in 250 words or less as a personal exercise of freedom and focus in a time of placid tumult and despair.