Join me in some quarantine- fueled musings, will you?
I, like almost everyone else on the planet right now, find myself with more free time than I've had since adolescence. However, when I used to say "I just need to sleep for, like, three weeks" this is not what I had in mind. Instead, my time off has been sabotaged by a subtle yet unyielding sense of anxiety that demands a piece of any potential relaxation. As I rack my brain trying to find the source of said anxiety, I keep coming back to the fact that I have a tendency to glorify the past.
I keep wondering, am I the only one with this tendency? No matter what my present situation may be, I always find a way to dilute its potential joy by remembering a time in my life that I deem as more pleasant. Examples:
"My body was so much better in high school."
"I had so much more free time before I chose to have kids."
Not so long ago I broke down in tears telling my husband and God, "I just need a break."
If my request and prayer has been answered, then why do I feel compelled to reminisce on times when my schedule was packed with work and weekend plans? At first glance when I look back at the time before quarantine I remember routine, financial stability, socialization, physical fitness and presentation, and general happiness.
What I have come to realize is that isolation, financial uncertainty, and lack of necessary routine will make a busy lifestyle seem so much more appealing- even if at the time I felt almost painfully overwhelmed and exhausted.
Not only do I find myself craving the hustle and bustle of my not-so- distant past, but when I was living in the (aforementioned) past I found myself wishing I could return to the year before, when I was on maternity leave. I remember last month when I was working for the 6th day in a row at the salon, not being able to put my son to bed for the 6th night in a row and thinking "Why was I so miserable when I was a stay at home mom those first couple of months? I had it made. I took it for granted."
Flash forward to this month: chronic dissatisfaction as a result of glorifying my past.
The more I dissect this nasty habit and the role it's played in my life the more I recognize it as a familiar friend, a wolf in sheep's clothing. It's a voice that has the power to make me feel the need to change the present to the past, creating an unusual type of nostalgia for a version of myself that I worked very hard to change. Why do I continue to feed into this bullshit notion that I was happier before? Why don't I work harder to be joyful in the present moment instead?
This doesn't mean that I can magically forget the current worries and stressors that I'm facing and only feel joy. What I'm learning in this season is that every seemingly pleasant chapter of life that I've been through has the opposite of a silver lining- a dull lining, if you will.
My body may have been "better" in high school, but I was a young and insecure girl who ran 8 miles a day and had never created another human being.
I might have had more free time before having Dean, but I felt empty and constantly envied the mothers that I was around. I felt derived of my purpose. I spent my free time partying and working to fill that void.
There is always bad in the good, and there is always good in the bad. Realizing my tendency to feed the glorification monster has been like hitting myself across the face with a text book that says "WAKE THE F*** UP AND ENJOY THE MOMENT BECAUSE YOU'RE GOING TO GLORIFY IT ONE DAY ANYWAY."
Someday, life will go back to normal. Someday, I'm going to look back at this time and think "Why was so depressed and anxious? Why didn't I enjoy it?" I'll be damned if I think those thoughts and my answer is "Because I wished I was working and socializing instead of relaxing and soaking up every precious second with my 18 month old that most people would kill to have to opportunity to go back and do with their child."
My prayer is that when I look back at the quarantine I think this:
"I was worried, anxious, and depressed at first because I was focusing on how everything was going to work out globally and financially. Thank God I realized my tendency to glorify my past, because it taught me how to be present. Yes, I was stressed, but I acknowledged that everything would be okay. We recovered. I was given time to refresh, slow down, organize, create, and spend time with my son that I NEVER would have had otherwise. That time to myself was a gift from God."
Thoughts?
xx
Tanner
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