A-Z anxiety

For her, the hardest part of the pandemic began after it “ended”.  As time has taken her further away from that year and the edges of memory are softened, she is left with a nostalgia for that daily peace and calm.  Life was simpler. The full extent of her world was what happened in her periphery and the small routines they fostered. It wasn’t just that there was no longer any pressure to perform, to show up, it simply wasn’t even allowed and by extension there was no missing out. Before the pandemic, as each day began so too did the stress to be at A, B, or C chatting to D, E and F about G, H and I, before jumping in the car to meet J, K and R who would tell her she should go see S, T and U. But crap look at the time she had to get home to fix V, W and X. But Y, when all she wanted to do was Zzzzzz!   

The return to this post-pandemic “functioning” society has been a lot more fraught than her deep thankful sigh into forced isolation. Everything it seems is trying to return to life as it was and for all the shoulds and woulds she is scrambling to do it might seem like it has. But something is different. It all looks the same on the surface but it doesn’t feel it. There is a darkness now. Anxiety openly rumbles along side everything she does, skipping beside her feelings of contentment and happiness. How can the two exist in the same space? How does a deep crushing love for a curve in the road lay next to a crippling fear? What is this shit show of anxiety that has taken up residence at the back of her throat? Is it a reaction to the world around her, the feeling that society is falling into a post-apocalyptic madness? A realization that we have changed but the systems we have built haven’t, can’t, won't and now we are trapped, eyes wide the fuck open? She wonders if she should quit it all, retreat from the world and become a librarian. But then what if someone asks her for help finding a book!?