The Pandemic moods – Peaks and valleys

When the pandemic first started, I couldn’t take it very seriously because it was happening somewhere far and not here. All I was thinking was, yayy! My husband will stay home – Naively. It seemed to end in a month or two, but as the time passed by the seriousness got into me.

Let’s face it – The peaks and valleys of our emotions.

Some days we get up feeling extremely motivated, but some other days it seems pointless to get out of bed. It is hard to even keep track of the date and day. In spite of our best efforts, it is extremely difficult to stay positive all the time with so much negativity around us. And it’s okay to not be okay once in a while. Acknowledging how we feel and knowing that it’s okay to feel that way is the first step of healing.

Despite being very careful and cautious, our inner-pessimist keeps whispering, we are gonna catch the virus someday – if not today.

We also become extremely paranoid about our family who are far away, “Mom you can’t touch the vegetables bought the same day, Dad you can’t touch the newspaper” and so many more. Being aware of the number of deaths, lack of bed and ventilator scenarios in the hospitals, drops our spirit low. Yet, there are also many, who recovered, holding our spirits high.

Every day we are swarmed with innumerous WhatsApp forwards, remedies – eat this, drink that, so many, that we start to think, nothing works anyway. We keep shuffling news channels hoping to hear something positive. The increase in numbers and unfortunate incidents makes it appear like it’s a dead-end. Yet, a bulletin about a vaccine getting ready, tells us to hang-on.

Whenever we watch movies or videos with great locations, our inner-child says, This is where our next holiday is going to be.

But then, we instantly realise it won’t happen anytime soon. Adding to our blues, are the gloomy rainy days. The small walks we took to get some relief have also lost their opportunities. Yet, one bright sunny day is enough to soothe our soul.

We know people have bigger problems and fear or anxiety is just a small one. That thought might make us braver for a moment but our own problem seems bigger to each of us, however small it is. We are scared, frustrated, restless, depressed between the four walls. Yet, we are at the comfort of receiving services from doctors, policemen, shop owners, delivery boys and many others. They must be pretty scared too but they are still doing their duty so that the rest of us can stay put.

Sometimes, I wish a director would say cut and this scene is over and everything is back to normal. I have never appreciated Normal so much.

All we want now, is everything to get back to normal.

Be it ordinary, mundane or boring, we just want things to be normal again. We just want to walk around without fear, breath in fresh air without a mask. We just want to catch up and hug our friends and family. We just want to eat popcorn while watching a suspense thriller in the theatre, shop for a dress in an end of season sale and eat chicken manchurian at a Chinese corner like we did before. Gosh, normal was so great – we never missed it so much.

However, on the upside, all our next generations will look up to our bravery in fighting such a pandemic. Who knows? maybe when it all ends we will end up missing staying at home or we will laugh it out thinking about these freaky days.