I haven’t written in awhile. I don’t know why, I guess I just didn’t feel like it.

But now, I do.

I’ve been writing almost every day, chronicling my life during a pandemic. A pandemic that came up so suddenly that it just all fell apart. And by “it” I mean everyone’s life. And by “everyone” I mean everyone.

My life. The world. You name it.

It’s gone.

The old one anyway.

My journal started very post-apocalyptic. It took several weeks for me to get used to pandemic life, quarantine life, and suddenly being alone, not able to go anywhere, and jobless.

I lost one of my jobs permanently. The other just recently started back up.

The world is starting to slowly open back up. And with that comes the question that I tend to quote at the end of big important events in my life.

“How do you pick up the threads of an old life?” – Frodo Baggins, Return of the King film. 

It’s true though. The quarantine and sudden loss of the ability to see people and go places took much longer to get used to, I feel like, than the slowly opening back up and people walking around wearing masks. Which weirdly feels almost normal now, and it’s only been a couple weeks.

But I still question: Life isn’t the same. And it never will be. The world went through a major re-birth. Whether it will be a re-birth for good or ill, that remains to be seen. Currently, the unrest in our country seems to be leaning more towards the ill side of things, which is unfortunate. But who knows? Maybe some good will come of that, too. I dearly hope so.

We have the ability to start over. I have the ability to start over. I realized that. The job I was working was not the job that I wanted to end up in forever. It was a job I needed, and I am grateful for it and the people that I met. But now, I have the chance to start over. To focus on what I want to do.

And yet, I still find myself questioning: How do I pick up the threads of my old life? The job searching feels the same almost, but the world around me does not. I am slowly getting into the groove of working part time again, but still the world around me is acting like a scared rabbit, slowly poking it’s head out wondering if things will go back to “normal” or will just all fall apart again with a “second wave”.

I don’t believe we will ever go back to the “old normal”. The old normal doesn’t exist anymore. Why? Because we are like a butterfly. We went into this strange ordeal and have started to come out again. But just like a caterpillar to a butterfly, everyone, no matter what circumstance they went through, has changed. We may not have all been in the same boat, but we were all in the same storm. Everyone felt something from this. Whether you didn’t have to worry about money or you did. Whether you were very sick or you weren’t. Everyone was affected.

And because of that, we can’t go back. None of us can. We have turned into butterflies.

We may be able to pick up some threads of our old life, but just like Frodo felt after coming home from his long journey, it won’t be the same. Ever.

History has done this for centuries. Whether it was a hard war that changed things for people or the previous epidemics and pandemics that changed things. And yet, we have found a new normal every single time. We have grown. We have evolved. And we have become stronger for it.

That is what I am holding onto. I may be doing some of the same things now that I did before the pandemic, job searching on the internet, working a part time retail job, hopefully going to see friends again soon…but it looks different.

And that’s ok. I have the chance now to figure out what I actually want in life. I thought I had that chance before, but now, with everything going on, I actually have the chance to stop and think. What is it that I want to turn into? What butterfly do I want to be, emerging from this pandemic stronger than before?

I can’t pick up the threads from my old life. But I can weave some of the threads into a new life. A new person.

And maybe, just maybe, this change will be for the better. Perhaps this butterfly will change for good and not ill. We shall see.