PopcornJackTerry

Among everything else that scrambles my eggs, I had this subconscious expectation that when things finally get back to normal, they would be, you know, normal. Granted, living in Florida means we already exist at some inane level of abnormal on a normal basis, and we never got as unnormal as the rest of the country did. Case in point, last fall I was messaging with a friend in Los Angeles who was telling me the restrictions were so strict he couldn’t even play soccer, while I was sitting in a bar. But the upshot is I thought things would just pick up where they left off.

I kind of imagined it as if Earth was one of the universe’s favorite shows and they just hit pause on us for a bit while they made some popcorn, refreshed their drink, and went to the bathroom. Obviously not only was this not the case, it was never going to be. A core truth to life is that it is always in flux, there is always change happening, even if we go through stretches of weeks or months where it doesn’t feel that way. Last summer I spent most of my free time at Chris and Marilyn’s house, we were our only little isolated quarantine group, and we spent the time either in the pool or playing various card games. (I think I still owe Marilyn $3 from our rummy games.) Although there was such a trapped in time feeling, each day being so similar to the previous or the next that it got hard to remember what day it was, change was still going on around us and in us.

The problem I had was not recognizing this and not wanting to recognize it. In a world that is chaos, I think most people want to have a sense of stability and normalcy they can anchor to. You may find your job mundane and repetitive, but it is a grounding point. Everything else in your week may be topsy-turvy, but you won’t skip your workouts or your book club or your…whatever. Over a span of several months, most if not all of our social circle here in Gulfport met every Tuesday at the Tap House. (Had we known it was open mic night, we probably would have chosen a different night.) It is having a routine that allows us to have perspective on the rest of our life.

Having anxiety makes routine that much more important. It becomes a security blanket and brings comfort, it gives me the illusion at least that there is something in my life I can expect and somewhat control in the face of everything else. It is the reason I am more likely to watch an old show or movie again than I am to search out something new and unknown. And it is the reason I wanted and hoped and expected things to pick up where they left off in March of 2020. They clearly didn’t, both in the world at large in general as well as specifically in my industry. This has left me unsettled in a very uncomfortable way.

I have spent the last several months feeling this great sense of detachment from the world around me, as if nothing was real, or that I wasn’t actively part of it. I remember thinking/feeling right before my vacation that I wasn’t sure I was actually going. Not in the “OMG I can’t believe I’m going to Martha’s Vineyard, I’ve never been there” way, but in the sense of “Is this really happening?” In short, I felt lost in the universe, and I wasn’t sure how to remedy that. So I decided to treat the universe like a patch of black ice on the road, and I’m turning into the skid.

Everything has changed, including me, and I accept that. I am not the same person I was 15 months ago, that I was evolving and growing during that time while steadfastly refusing to acknowledge that. I think that’s the biggest component of my feeling disconnected. I can’t accept the changes to the world around me even I haven’t first resolved the changes within me. Doing so is both terrifying and exciting, and I am trying to embrace it with a positive approach. I have always struggled with the dichotomy of wanting to fit in and wanting to be myself, and I find myself finally breaching through that, partially because I can use that detached eye to better see the life I’m living, the life I want to be living, and where that life fits into the world around me.

So I allow myself to be free from expectation, and I let go of the constant barrage in my head of how I’m doing things well enough or right enough or even just plainly enough. The old ways worked until they didn’t, even if I kept trying to make them. Now it is time to find new ways, to open myself up to new opportunities and possibilities and accept that some may work better for me than others. I have built an untenable life by trying to create a static existence, a ploy for immortality almost, where if nothing changes nothing ends, while simultaneously always wanting to grow, to learn, to further myself. Something always has to give, and I feel like something finally has.

Let’s see where this goes…