third year claire torak

Lately, I keep finding myself holding my breath. It feels like I’m always waiting. For relief, for permission to exhale without feeling guilty, for answers to the questions trapped inside of my head. Is now the time for unabashed honesty? Will I be more or less afraid of intimacy after this? Will there ever be an “after”? Why does every step I take feel like learning how to walk again?

(It seems that the jury is still out on all of those.)

Before the quarantine, the word “stillness” was not in my lexicon. Every moment was just that — a moment, one after another. Being busy made me feel worth something. Space—to breathe, to pause, to think — was uncomfortable. I overcommitted myself to school and jobs and a social life because it felt safe. It felt familiar. If I wasn’t flying through life, I was falling.

As of March, I’ve made full impact with the concrete. There is nowhere for me to go but a screeching halt.

I’ve never been one for optimism. I’m chronically negative and clinically anxious. You’d think that when tension feels commonplace and every headline is worse than the one before, I’d be wearing wariness around my shoulders like a blanket. Yet in confronting placidity, I’ve found it to be completely the opposite.

While my breath sits heavy in my chest, hope is swelling there too. In my newfound idleness, I’m allowing myself to see the silver linings and sit with them, fully.

Here’s what I’m learning:

There’s a lot I miss from life as I knew it: Hi-Lo trivia on Tuesday nights, scratching my friends’ backs when I hug them, playing pool, the way kissing feels, live music, when my friend invites me over for breakfast, just to name a few.
In absence, I better understand preciousness.
Cooking three meals a day is an act of self kindness.
Going for walks in the spring is worth the allergies.
There is unprecedented joy in solving a New York Times crossword over the phone with friends every day.
I will never again take for granted the way music feels when it’s in front of me, on a stage, seeping into every cell of my body.
Time spent with my friends is a gift.
How lucky I am to have so many people I love and care for so deeply, knowing that love is returned.
Having hope (even just a sliver) is the only way to stay sane.

I don’t know when this pandemic will end. I don’t know who I’ll be when it does. I don’t know what life will be like two months from now, but I have to believe that it gets easier every day, that within this chaos there is some good. I have to believe that we’re all learning how to be kinder. How to take care of one another.

I have to believe that one day I’ll finally exhale. Until then, I’ll be waiting, holding onto hope with both hands.

looking up: insights from six feet apart