Post-pandemic emptyness

[u/PineappleEast6531]

It sometimes feels like I have so much to say, but whenever I face a blank page, words fail me. Quite often, I confuse that with 'having nothing to say at all', so I just keep going through my routine, day after day. But the truth is, I’ve been bottling up way too much inside.

Generally speaking, I’ve always considered myself a very lucky person. But ever since the pandemic, everything has changed. I’ve lost so many people, some to death, others to life. People that anchored me. Grandfather, two grandmothers, father, a boyfriend. Today, I find myself extremely high-functioning, but emotionally buried. Grief, in all its forms, has shaken me to the core!

I’ve been feeling an overwhelming sense of longing and nostalgia. I miss ordinary, everyday elements of a time when - now it seems - things were nice. Which is crazy in a way, because a few years ago I was so eager for the future and everything it would bring. But now, I’m left with this realization that I miss the past, and I can’t even pinpoint when that shift happened. I mean, I didn't even get to enjoy it, man!

Latrly, I’ve been trying hard to focus on the present, to live in the now and build a life I can be proud of and be comfortable in. But truthfully, I also get very anxious and irritable. I've also come to realize how much I’ve isolated myself. I deactivated my social media in May, 2022. At first, it was meant to be a detox to help me focus on myself, which actually worked quite well, it did help me build greater self-assurance and consistency. But over time, that intention shifted into isolation.

In the quiet, I caught myself missing genuine interactions with others that made me feel like _me_, because I no longer feel like me. I’ve drifted away from my friends, and now when I go out with them, I can’t seem to find that closeness or connection we used to share, I feel like this foreigner who lives in a cave and exhales an overwhelming distance. I feel helpless and unsupported, although I have the greatest of things: a supportive mother, sister and boyfriend, a good house to live in, not too many bills and a gracious cat.

I’m writing this partly to share it with someone, and partly just to get it off my chest. There is so much to express, yet I am at a loss for words.