It has been almost a year now and we are still in the middle of a pandemic waiting for our lives to return to normal. However, reality may never be the same again.
So much has changed, but it seems like nothing and it makes it difficult to feel the comfort of real security.
My return - and the return of many other patients with chronic conditions- to normality may be further away than most of you. But I know that all this is equally difficult for all of us.
They say that only the elderly and people with underlying diseases are at risk. The vulnerable population.
But what happens when you are the vulnerable?
I belong to those who they call vulnerable. I never hid my illness nor was I afraid of the stigma.
I look young and healthy, but I’m not!
I’m immunosuppressed, which makes me vulnerable to any kind of infection.
We have been in lockdown for months. This is certainly not easy, nor is isolation.
I understand that it is difficult to change your daily life, but do you know how many times we, the vulnerable, have changed our daily lives not because we wanted to, but because our health imposed it?
How many times have we canceled a plan at the last minute, favorite foods we stopped eating, parties we missed and much more?
For those of us who are vulnerable, it is not so foreign to stay home, since we have spent long stays in our home and before COVID-19.
I am in quarantine for a long time. It is not easy, it dissolves your mood, your body. Staying home is unbearable for everyone.
Isolation, despair.
And it is now that we are all looking for ways to balance our security with our contact with the world.
All of this is not so foreign to me. I have some chronic illnesses that require me every day to choose what to do and what not to do. Even before the pandemic, I was very careful, evaluating what was safe to do and what was not.
I do not understand big differences in my own life now with quarantine; that I am not allowed to be touched, that I can not go to the hospital and maybe two or three more things.
And recently I made a finding that has a lot in common with today's reality.
I realized that my illnesses will never leave me, while a cure seems like a distant dream for now.
Yes, I can take steps to improve every day, but what I thought as “normal” in previous years may never come again. For many years I waited for the cure to continue my life. Now that I accepted that I would carry my diseases with me, I gained freedom. My goal now is not to be cured, but to live better.
So as I realized that it is not realistic to wait for the cure to live, so is the pause we have entered because of COVID-19 until our life is “normal” again.
And this is the real challenge: how to move on and stop waiting to get back to normal.
Stay safe!