THE NEW NORMAL
It’s been awhile since I've posted on my blog, and although I do want to return to regularly scheduled programming soon, I felt the need to address my absence. Not because I think anyone cares or noticed, but because it would have felt weird for me to continue on as though everything was normal, as though everything was the same as before.
Normal is an odd concept
.Society thinks that it's common sense, that's it's fact. That it's always been and will be always be. But the truth is it changes constantly. It's relative. It depends on the year, the location, the country, the culture, the family. Everything changes. Society changes. Normal changes. In the personal sphere, normal is what's known, what's comfortable. What we do everyday. Normal life. But normal changes. Sometimes it's expected, it's slow, it's predictable. But sometimes it's none of those things. Sometimes things change so quickly it causes whiplash. Suddenly you're plunged into the unknown, the new. Abnormal life.
But that's the funny thing, it may seem abnormal at first. It may seem so foreign and strange. But soon it simply stops. It stops being foreign and strange. Soon it becomes everyday life. And it'll surprise you how fast that happens, how quickly it all becomes normal: going in and out of hospitals to visit, talking about insurance, joking with the guy in the opposite bed about cancer after finding out that he had the same type several years ago. It's now the new normal. Things have changed, and not the slow gradual change that most of us experience throughout our entire lives. This had been sudden. A sudden new normal.
That is not necessarily a bad thing. You learn things; you learn about yourself, about life, about the people around you. You figure out what this new normal looks like; what you look like in this new normal. And thankfully in this situation, things may eventually go back to being, for the most part, like they were before. We may need to make a few adjusts, but at the end of the day we’ll have the same laughs, watch the same quiz shows together, argue the same petty things. No matter what happens, it'll become normal. It always does.
I'm sorry this post has been vague, but it's not my story to tell. I just wanted to get this off my chest before starting to post again. As I said, regularly scheduled programming will resume soon.
Jane x