The discomfort you are feeling right now is a collective anticipatory grief, said the author of the Harvard Business Review article, on describing what we are all feeling during this pandemic. And if we are to be more precise, this is a bit more profound right now because its not something that we are usually used to experiencing together.

True. Usually grief is something more… personal. Unless we are talking about the atrocities of experiencing war together, unless you have gone through it yourself in the form of a personal loss, it is hard to relate to because it gets shelved as something that needs to be experienced in small doses, only when triggered by certain experiences, in our own personal times when no one is looking, or in the company of experienced health professionals, or amongst trusted family and friends. And this is the case usually in small doses, to not overwhelm our mental health. But there’s quite nothing like a good old-fashioned lockdown to ensure that now have to experience this while cooped up without fresh air, with or without our quarantine families or significant others. This was definitely not written in the handbook of the silver linings playbook of life.

I can only speak for myself. On the exterior side, I personally went through eating every few hours (this stopped after 2 weeks thank goodness), working out consistently for the first 2 weeks (unfortunately for this one), Netflix bingeing, sleeping all hours of the day without a schedule, catching up on my reading from books that had collected dust, cleaning up my storage room of props, smothering my cat with kisses till she started hiding from me, doing laundry at all hours of the night, baking vegan banana bread and other ingredients I had never opened the bottles of previously, restarting my pitiful cat-vomiting inducing self-taught violin lessons, archiving part of the backlog of files that hadn’t seen the the time of day…. it makes me sound productive but the reality is not really. None of these have been consistent. A lot remain unfinished. A lot I got bored of and stopped halfway. Some I didn’t even start such as the e-course on social media, something that I still struggle with still now.

But on a deeper level, I bonded with newer and old friends over video calls, talked with family, I went through old love emails and pictures, reminisced about past loves they are and was that really the wisest decision I made back then. I tried to be productive by watching photography tutorials until I realized it was much more gratifying to just get lost in a book. I dreamt of giggly adventures and breezy vacations and the feeling of dewy green grass on my feet and wondered how long I have to exercise from home before I truly lost it. I had friends who told me to try out dating apps because now you have no excuse but to talk, but I realized I’ve reached the point where I just don’t care anymore to impress - don’t we have bigger things to worry about than how they’re going to ghost me the next week? It’s been a rollercoaster of emotions, and I’m pretty sure I am not alone in these feelings of despair laced with hope. So I cannot make this about me. A part of me felt that I had gone down this route so many times before - stuck at home for days at time, on my own choosing, because well, what does a single person do who wants it all but is too tired to go down the route of the age old scenario of asking someone to love? As every business emails keep saying while they try to maintain their loyal customers fanbase, we are in this SHIT together, and you know what they’re right… it doesn’t feel so alone now, ha!

Accept your present. Let go of what you can’t control. Practise kindness. Stock up on compassion. Adapt. Be open about your pain. These are some of the advice we have been given (also as per the HBR article) to overcome our grief. Hmm. I don’t know. We all have different stages of accepting and overcoming. Some are faster and better than others. While the pandemic is still ongoing because Rona hasn't left the chat yet, the lockdown has been removed for a while now and I cannot honestly say I’m over it. I am not sure where I am right now in my phase now. I know I had a much needed respite for sitting myself down and embracing my present and asking the hard questions. What do I need to do, if I haven't finished answering them though? How is it I have more questions now than answers? Does this mean I’m growing? When can I stop growing so I can finally start living?

I don’t have any answers. I can give you all the PR talk that you’d like to hear because sometimes we need it and my business demands that I put up a brave front so people are confident in my skills as a photographer, but on a personal level, I am still on my tippy toes.

If I am being completely honest, I know somewhere along the lines I had found a sense of meaning and purpose in my darker hours that I was able to fine-tune, something that I had been putting off for a while now. And among them is a sense of appreciation and love for something for a finite amount of time, and how we take it for granted. Isn’t that what we have all been fighting for? A reason to continue and keep going, even when we are alone in our darkest hours. So that is what I made.

I guess this is a start.