There is a string of urgency I got to begin writing here again. For over a year now, I felt as though the privacy and safety that this place held was shattered. My fears of exposure took over completely. What was once my space, my home, a platform where my thoughts could live, seemed like it was taken from me. So this is me taking it back.

I think most, if not all of us can admit that our lives in this current moment of time do not look the way we ever imagined for them to. Speaking for myself, having faced the death of a friend and a family member, the loss of a relationship, leaving my place of work, getting ready to leave my own apartment in a city where I built this life for myself – I don’t feel as if I have gained anything in this process. Loss after loss left my cup emptied out, and each day, it became more and more difficult to find a reason to keep going. What for? If everything that I have created for myself has been lost, then what is the point? What is the point of any of this? Why continue if it can all just shatter in an instant?

These questions have rolled around and haunted me for quite some time now. The truth is, I still don’t know the answers to what the point is. I don’t know if I am in a place where I can attach a meaning to this domino effect that has trickled its way through my life. I don’t know if it’s appropriate to formulate my thoughts around finding a positive “purpose” for the state this world is in. To attach a larger meaning to something that has created too much suffering and loss on a collective level seems wrong and frankly, disrespectful. So, unfortunately, I don’t have that for you here today. What I do have, however, is insight into how I am managing my own personal traumas and experiences, and how I will continue to.

I think at the end of the day, what I have always had is my creativity and more specifically, my writing. It’s not the first time my life has been pulled out from under the rug. It isn’t the first time I feel lost, uncertain, and worried about what comes next. It isn’t the first time I’ve had to find a detour, shift all of these plans I had set in place for myself. Though I have never experienced a pandemic up until now, I have lived with these emotions and fears all my life. Although nothing else is familiar and the territory I am entering into remains both fragile and uncertain, these feelings and sensations are what I know and have always known. They are states I have worked extremely hard to manage and so help me, I will not let that work go to waste.

Right now, what exactly is keeping me going? Well, I suppose my writing and the idea that space is being created for me to enter into. What that is, how it looks, what it all means, I’m not sure – but it’s different. This morning I awoke with a very specific question in mind: When was the last time you felt true joy? Fulfilment? Happiness? I’m almost embarrassed to admit that it was a difficult question to answer and involved a lot reflection. It’s been quite a few years, maybe 3 or 4? So what am I doing? Where have my priorities shifted since that moment and when did I stop putting myself first? How and when did I get so off track?

I don’t think it’s necessary for me to go into details, but I do feel now that having lost nearly everything I built, it also created space for these thoughts to enter in. Maybe it’s a forced analysis of the path I’m on and whether it’s been one that has actually been serving me. Maybe it’s time to ask myself who I am without all this? I don’t know the answer to that, because I think for most of my life, I’ve attached my identity to my work, my relationships, my productivity, my independence. I don’t know who I am beneath that, so I suppose it’s time to find out.

For someone who has always had a Plan B and Plans C, D, and E, incase that didn’t work, this moment feels akin to jumping off a cliff. I don’t have a plan at all, I just have an instinct and a level of curiosity that is 1% greater than all of these overwhelming fears. Strangely, that seems to be enough, and what comes next, I’ll only know with time.