Who I am, a year into the pandemic

When the pandemic first broke out and the government put Metro Manila on strict quarantine, I thought it was only going to last for a couple of weeks. Then I thought it would only be a couple of months more. A year later, we are still under lockdown. There is fortunately an end in sight as vaccinations start rolling in, giving immunity to many of my friends and family, but it’s still a long way out to “normalcy”. I don’t even think that’s possible anymore. I know I’m not the same.

In the last year I’ve experienced true, deep grief and existential fear - both for my business and my own life. You know what they say, right? You can’t stare at an abyss and come back as if you didn’t. I went into therapy for a while which helped a lot. (I implore you, see a mental health professional if you are troubled.) But still, I am not put back together in the same places, without these obvious new seams.

“I miss myself,” I told my husband the other day. The sentence came unbidden, really out of nowhere, so I’ve been studying what I meant by that. I’m lucky to have the privilege to suffer this pandemic with dignity despite everything. I know that I don’t have much to complain about once everything is tallied up. Despite this awareness, it’s also true that I miss myself.

I miss the person who would come whirling into parties knowing many of the people in the room. I miss the person who would carefully dress up to the nines to events and work engagements, sharing my story to hundreds of people. Perhaps I am looking back with the wrong prescription lens, but before the pandemic I felt successful and optimistic about everything.

I just realized something after writing that line - I am looking at myself from the point of view of other people. Now that I haven’t been around them, I can only turn my own gaze inwards.

In the last year, I got married. I now know how to bake bread. I drink gin and tonics, too, and have a bar cart. I put up a new jewelry business which is incongruously doing well. My beloved dog unexpectedly passed away. I have hypertension.

Any of these things could have happened on any year and I would still be a different person nonetheless. But because it happened in the boiler room that is the pandemic, I believe that I - we - have emerged stronger from the extreme pressure. That’s something to be proud of! We don’t have to be modest about how strong we’ve been and how stronger we are becoming every day. We might not be the same person, yes, but we are surviving. That’s an achievement.