Dear quarantine stranger

Hi! This blog is a way to pass the time during quarantine. These letters to strangers will talk about living isolated, self-love, self-care and grief. I am writing about my life, my story, in hopes that it will bring comfort to some of you. And if not, at least it will bring me comfort. After my mother died, I searched for stories similar to mine and found only one, which made me feel very frustrated. What if I couldn't relate to it? This blog is a way of sharing my story, so that others can relate to it if needed. If you happen to read through my blog, please feel free to talk about your story, or share your opinions and pieces of advice. (And, please be respectful !)

[quarantine-stories]

Hello again stranger,

I haven’t written anything in a month. I’ve been very busy, and frankly it’s been a nice break. It gave me some perspective on how I was feeling, and allowed me to move on from some of the grudges I was holding. The backlash of holding in my feelings hit me hard this week.

I didn’t even realize that I was hold in my anger and my sadness. I hadn’t taken the time to consistently meditate every night before going to sleep and I went back to my old habits of shoving down my emotions instinctively. Usually, meditation helps me ground myself and let go of all the negativity I stored during the day. I noticed that following through this simple tasks I have assigned myself to do every day was necessary. I recommend you do it too. I just lie down in the dark for ten to twenty minutes every night and I try to focus on my breathing, on the energy flowing through my body, and I let my thoughts run through my mind to see if they hold any of the emotions I carried through the day, and if so I try to release it. Of course, it seems easier writing it than actually doing it.

I have actually welcomed that break from my feelings, although I’m going to have to try to work on not swallowing down every single negative emotion. It was nice to have a break from feeling like shit. The last few months have been rough. It’s hard enough going through a major historic event, without having lost someone I love. 

Tomorrow, it will be six months since my mother passed away. So naturally, I have been feeling anxious. Life flies by so fast. It’s actually frightening. In half a year, I have done so much introspection. I feel like I’ve grown up so much. I have accomplished so much for my career, even though the pandemic slowed me down. Somehow I feel happier than I did before, because I have begun to figure myself out more. It makes me feel hopeful that I can still carry on with life after losing my mother. I am grieving but life doesn’t have to stand still, even though at first I wished it did. 

Her death was always something I didn’t have to worry about before she was diagnosed with cancer, so when I was thinking about it I thought that I wouldn’t be able to recover. I imagined that I would also be paralyzed by my sadness after losing her but I found out that I am actually much more resourceful than I was giving myself credit for. I was able to pick myself up even though I wanted to stay down. I’m not saying that there weren’t days shortly after her death where I would phase out of my body. I was in a deep state of depression for the first few weeks following her passing, nevertheless I’m still proud of myself for not losing myself in that sadness completely. I’m not saying that I have recovered either but at least I’m coping and I think that’s good enough for now. I still occasionally feel guilty that I’m starting to move on, though. There is still not a day that goes by when I don’t think about her. It breaks my heart that I am starting to feel a little happiness again, and that I’m not able to share it with her. I feel guilty that I get to live and not her. I understand these are normal feelings, so I try not to be too hard on myself. Grief is a journey you have to take on one day at a time, and for today it feels a little easier. And that’s okay.

[letsmakeitwritee]

13 things i learned in 2020

nothing stays the same. without a moment's notice, everything can change and leave you wondering what the hell happened. living in the present and appreciating the small things is important because nothing else is guaranteed or permanent.

we humans are not as important as we believe ourselves to be. when the bee dies so do the flowers. when we die the flowers grow back. if we are to build a better future, we must give back to the planet by changing the ways we live on it.

time is not real. there is nothing in the laws of physics that can prove it is anything other than a human construct.

power of the people will always outweigh the people in power. the 1% are scared of us realising this and acting upon it.

home is more of a person than a place. the way i see my family has changed. all that other stuff i thought i wanted when the true treasure was here all along.

distance does not lessen the value or strength of true friendship.

self-care is by far the most important skill to learn in life. being aware of my needs, how things effect me, and eliminating harmful inputs has gone a long way in improving my physical and mental health.

social media does not offer an honest or healthy way in which to view the world. like a toxic friend, it uses our desires and insecurities in all sorts of manipulative ways. being able to take a step back and reconnect with the real physical world can be both invigorating and revelatory.

simple acts of kindness cost nothing but are as precious as gold dust.

eye contact has become a new form of communication. with masks hiding half of our faces we have no choice but to look at each other's souls. we see each other more now and we offer strangers in the street smiles from our eyes rather than our mouths.

being lonely doesn't mean we're alone. everyone is going through something. even if they don't show it.

laughter is the closest thing there is to magic. watery eyes, burning chests and aching ribs from laughing too much are the most wonderful feelings in the world.

i am much more resilient and capable than i thought i was.

[luniapoetry]

“Nostalgia has a funny way of being the elephant in the room when it’s already hard to breathe. I never know quite what to do with it; how do you drive away something that’s so much larger than anything else within you? Do you shout at it with angry words and hope it leaves? Do you curl up into a tiny ball and hope it disappears? Before I have a chance to decide, the monster of indecision and lost nights sits all too ungracefully on my chest. It pins me to the spot, memories creeping out of my already-red eyes and sneaking down my cheeks. But honestly? It’s okay. It’s okay because this way, I can remember the good times. I can pretend you’re still lying beside me as my tears carry me off into sleep. This nostalgia might be heavy, yes, but the weight of losing you was far heavier.”

— let me forget, just for tonight (1/6/18)

[quarantine-stories]

Your posts make me feel less alone. Like somebody finaly understands me.

Thank you for sharing that, it also helps me seeing I’m not alone in this grieving mess. I’m happy if what I’m saying makes sense to someone other than me

[quarantine-stories]

Dear stranger,

As expected celebrating Christmas with my family this year was not as joyful as intended. After testing everyone in the family, and our tests coming back negative for Covid, we gathered on the 25th for a long lunch with my father's parents, his brother and my aunt (his wife), my cousin, my father and my sister. Small committee. Everyone acted as if no one was missing from this family reunion, and for a few seconds during the day, it felt like everything was normal.

People say the holidays are hard for those who have lost members of their family, and it's true, it was, but it was easier than I thought it would be. It almost felt normal for her to not be here. As I'm writing this, though, I remember that every time I started to notice myself getting confortable with the idea of her absence, a wave of sadness swept me off my feet. So, maybe it wasn't as easy as I think. I just thought I wouldn't be able to go through the day without having some sort of breakdown.

The hardest part was opening the presents. It felt uncomfortable to have everyone cheer as they opened their gifts. I noticed that my sister didn't have as many as the years before, because it was probably my mother who bought her presents, and she seemed disappointed, which made me even sadder. The ones I received were nice, but I couldn't feel grateful because nothing came from my mother. I didn't get one of the special presents she usually finds for me. She would take time to find something I actually needed, and she would add something related to one of our private jokes in the wrapping paper, so not getting something similar this year was disappointing. I'm not trying to be ungrateful, because I am lucky that I even get to have presents, and a good meal, and I get to spend time with my family, but it's just not the same without her. Something just felt wrong.

Since yesterday, I have been in a dark hole of sadness. The hurt from Christmas day caught up to me, and I've been trying to deal with it with as much dignity as I can, but I can tell you that I've been ugly crying a lot. Imagine that Kim K gif of her crying, it was worse than that. I guess it is part of the process but sometimes I just wish I had a break to feel happy for a day. I have really been missing her lately. It's taken a toll on my well being, and it feels like the pain and the hurt will never end. Eventually, I know I'm going to be okay. I'll be able to live normally without thinking about her every second of everyday but for now, I'm not yet ready to deal with a world in which she doesn't exist.

[academicsoftie]

"One of the most prevalent obstacles in our ability to heal and self-actualise is when our productivity is tied to our worthiness."

I think the studyblr community especially needs to hear this. You don't have to be productive all the time, you need rest. Recovering from internalised capitalism means unpicking all the messages from family, friends, school and workplace that have reinforced the idea that you are a commodity, and that your worth is based on what you do. Your worth is inherent.

Source: therapywithlee

[quarantine-stories]

I’ve been keeping this post in my likes because I wanted to write something about self worth and productivity but I feel like now is as good a time as any to post it. Our current way of life, and the fact that our whole lives revolve around capitalism has really fucked our mental health. We need to be allowed to have time to rest. It’s okay not do be active all the time. It’s important to listen to ourselves and not be busy all the time because doing so will mean putting ourselves second. We need to be able to have time for ourselves in order to grow as people. Taking some time of from being productive means focusing on ourselves and our needs. That’s important too!

[quarantine-stories]

Am I weak for feeling so overwhelmed? I feel like I'm just making excuses for my laziness..

There is no such thing for me as weakness, emotionally speaking. You can be physical weak if you can’t lift something up but I don’t think people are weak when it comes to emotions. You’re not weak for feeling overwhelmed. It’s alright to feel the way you do sometimes. It’s also okay if you feel overwhelmed most of the time. I think what’s important is learning to manage this feeling. We feel the way we do because our bodies/brains need to feel that way so I think it’s important to not feel too guilty about the way we feel and the way we act when we feel something. I understand it’s hard not to feel guilty especially when we think we should be more productive. I often feel the same way. I’ve learned to be kinder to myself by analyzing the situation : how do I feel? Why do I feel like that? What behavior are those feels creating? Can I change the way I’m acting right now or are my feelings taking over? Is there anything I can do right now to shift the way I’m feeling? If there isn’t then I try to accept the fact that today will be harder but that doesn’t mean other days will be as hard. Does that make sense?

We’ve been conditioned to think that we have to do something at all times, that productivity is the only thing that makes us feel alive but that’s not the truth. It’s okay to be lazy sonetimes. You will always have tomorrow to do the things you couldn’t do today. You can have lazy days, the most important thing is to not make a habit of it because it can impact your mental well being. Sometimes laziness is important because our bodies and our minds need rest.

I was meditating one time and the women guiding the meditation said that water is energetically cleansing. She said that whenever you feel guilty about not doing anything or whenever you feel like youre in a bad place mentally you have to try to take a shower and it will help. I’ve been trying to do that whenever I feel like I’m going to a dark place and it’s been really helpful. The hardest part is actually getting yourself up and taking that shower. It seems like such a simple acts but sometimes when you are too overwhelmed it can take so much effort... it’s important not to be too hard with ourselves! It’s of course easier said than done but it can be done.

[quarantine-stories]

Dear stranger,

I was scrolling through Instagram, as one does, and found a post about a woman dealing with the loss of her mother. Instantly, I clicked on “see more” to read the description on her post. I didn’t think I would relate that much but read on anyway. I thought it was going to be another feel-good post, that was going to annoy me but it was the opposite. So, for today’s post I will only post what she shared. Grief is not a linear process, it’s messy and complicated. It’s only been six months for me, and yet some days I feel like it’s been years and some days I feel like I was talking to her to day before. The only thing I know is that it will get easier as time goes by. 

She wrote :

“Just wanted to normalise the fact that numbness and disbelief are felt months and years after loss.

Some days you might wake up and your loss feels like a long time ago which carries it’s own pain of longing and guilt, other days it might feel like a crushing new reality. It might feel like you just got that call all over again. It really proves that time is just time. I will never accept my loss or ‘come to terms with it’ I might find elements of peace in my life, but my mum dying will always feel like it happened to me in an alternate reality and this is a nightmare I will wake up from. It will always feel unfair and sometimes not real.

Today is one of those days when I just can’t believe that you actually died. I feel the pain of not seeing you ever again deeply in my bones and even after nearly a year, I’m shocked and it feels raw. Let me know if you think this or feel this. Sending you all lots of love today”

[quarantine-stories]

Dear stranger,

Since my mother died, I’ve noticed that we are surrounded by death. I didn’t notice it before because it had never touched me so suddenly. My great grandmother died two years ago but I was prepared for it. She was 98 so, even though it was sad, it was also natural to see her go. With my mother, it was very much different. She died a month after her 50th birthday. This is not common for someone living in Europe in the 21st century...

Everywhere I go it seems I am reminded that death is part of life. I guess it’s normal because if one thing is certain about life, it’s that we all die in the end. Everyone will experience it eventually, it’s part of the natural process of life. However, I didn’t expect to be impacted so profoundly every time I watch, hear or read about it. 

I remember after she died, all I could see in the street were ads about cancer. Any type of cancer, you name it, there was some kind of prevention about it wherever I went. I thought it was some kind of cruel joke the universe was trying to pull on me. Then, when I scrolled through Netflix everything seemed related to either cancer, grief or the loss of a parent. It seemed absurd, and yet I watched all of these shows. I even started watching Grey’s Anatomy again, because it made me feel less alone in my grief. While it’s normal to see sick people in these kind of shows, because that’s the whole point of a medical show, I wasn’t expecting to see a character who had lost his wife to ovarian cancer just months after I had lost my mother to the same type of cancer. Was it the first time it was portrayed, or was it the first time I was noticing? I could really understand the word trigger now. As soon as that character spoke, I burst into tears because I could relate, but also because I couldn’t escape my mother’s death. 

I feel like we are all so disconnected from grief. We are so used to seeing wars, violence and death on TV, whether in the news, or in fiction. We’ve been desensitized to it. We even joke about it by saying “this killed me” or “i’m dying from laughter” or “i want to kill him/her/them” or “i’ll kill myself if this doesn’t happen”, as if it was some funny and light-hearted thing to experience. I understand that we joke about it as a way to get rid of the anxiety surrounding the subject, which is understandable. I joke about it too, but whenever we talk about it ironically, it makes a joke of the real experience. 

I think experiencing the death of someone you love will make us hyper aware of everything related to it. It doesn’t seem healthy to be surrounded by death everyday though, even if it is fictional death. So, we need to try to preserve ourselves from all of this grief because it’s unsustainable to live in despair all the time.

[embracewithintention]

It’s important, I think, to be able to stand up and say, “All that has happened to me, all that I have done, everything that has brought me to this moment, here, today; it’s part of my story and it’s shaped the person that I have become. But it isn’t the whole of me. My past doesn’t define me. My story doesn’t end here. I am more than this.”

[quarantine-stories]

Somebody who was really close to me died on the 5th of November 2019 and although it was over a year ago I feel like it was just yesterday. I can't help but wonder, what would they have thought about this whole quarantine thing? I still can't fully grasp the fact that they are gone. I feel as though nothing is real. Were they ever really here in the first place, or were they just a creation of my imagination? How could they have been here one second and be gone the next? Nothing feels real anymore. I feel like I'm going mad..

I'm sorry for bothering you with my rant

Hi, thank you for your message.  Please don’t apologize to me for sharing. I welcome any message that is sent to me. 

I am really sorry for your loss. I hope it’s easier to grieve now than it was before, although a year is not a lot so I hope you are okay. I completely understand you saying that you can’t fully grasp the fact they are gone. We are living in a really weird time right now and dealing with it without grief is hard enough, so I don’t know about you but dealing with it with grief is hell. It would have been easier to grieve without everything else happening. It would have been nice if time just stood still while we piece ourselves back together. Sometimes I like to imagine another world where my mother is still here, and I try to imagine how she would have reacted to me getting a new job or to the new book I bought, what type of advice she would have given me on certain things. It’s nice to pretend for a second that she is still here, and it helps a little. I’d like to think that she is. I don’t know if you believe in spirits/souls but I’d like to think she’s still here watching over me somehow. This might be weird but I talk to her sometimes before going to sleep. If someone saw me from the outside I would look like a crazy person talking to myself but I don’t care because it makes me feel better...

I also feel like this can’t be real, that I’m in a bad dream and once I wake up everything will be “normal” again. It’s hard to cope with the fact that someone can be here one day and gone the next. I know that how life works but whoever created it could have done things differently, right? 

I feel like my message didn’t really helped, I just ranted and went nowhere with it... Don’t hesitate to message me again. Have a nice day.

[quarantine-stories]

Dear stranger,

During this last month, as I wrote about before, I went down a weird and depressing spiral where I was reliving my childhood traumas. It made me think about everything my parents did wrong, and it made me realize that I could blame them forever or just move on. It's hard to realize that your parents aren't perfect and that their flaws have impacted you forever. Unfortunately, that is how life works. We are touched forever by the actions of others. I would want to say that we can choose to absorb the positive and leave out the negative but that's not the truth.

As children, we are not equipped to understand that other people's behaviors can hurt you and that their behavior will trigger something in you for the next ten years. For me, it's hard to realize that neither my mother nor my father were perfect. The way they raised me and my sister was the best they could do, even though I wish they would have done better.

My sister has autism, so her behavior was sometimes hard to deal with. When we were kids, and as soon as she started talking in full sentences, she would be verbally abusive with me. She would always reject me and when she grew up she would sometimes insult me. Until five years ago (at 17), I never understood how much it affected me. I learned that, even though I knew she didn't mean to be insulting, her behavior scarred me. I isolated myself from my family because I didn't want to suffer the abuse and that was the easiest way I found to prevent it. I am talking about her because when she was aggressive my parents would try to defend me, and ask her to stop. My father, as always, would also be aggressive and yell at her to stop. His approach would obviously never work because my sister is very sensitive to loud noises, so he would scare her and she would cry. My mother tried to explain to her, gently, that her behavior was rude and that I wasn't there to hurt her or take her place but it didn't work either. In the end, we tried many things to get her to stop but nothing ever worked. That is, until I moved out of the house because I couldn't take it anymore. I wasn't ready but I did it anyway and it was a saving grace. Once I moved out, she stopped being aggressive and our relationship improved.

Now, at 22 years old, I feel resentful that my parents couldn't find a way to make her stop. I am furious that the only way I could get away from the situation was to literally get away. I feel guilty about being angry at my parents because overall I still had a nice childhood, if you disregard the abuse, and I still loved them. I feel disappointed and powerless at the fact that all of these emotions and realizations arose now instead of a few years ago, when I could have talked to my mother about it, and worked through it with her. Now, I only have my father to talk to and I don't want him to react aggressively when, and if, I talk to him about it. I don't want to judge him. I want him to understand that I was hurt by the way they chose to parent, and that when thought I am still hurt by it, I have learned to deal with it and moved on from it.

Losing my mother should at least serve for something. It's bad enough that she is dead. I don't want to also lose my family. This month, I have understood that I can, now, choose to let go of my anger and stay resentful forever. Had my mother not died, I don't think I would have had this thought process, so at least her death taught me to be kinder to myself.

[quarantine-stories]

Dear stranger,

I have been having anxiety about the holidays. It’s almost Christmas, which will also be the six month « anniversary » of my mom’s death.

A month ago, I decided to take a break from social media because it made me procrastinate from work. I will continue to take this break because people are starting to talk about Christmas and family reunions. It’s hard because I wanted to be consistent in keeping this blog updated but its making me anxious to post... This writing project meant that I could talk about how I’m dealing with grief, so I could feel more aware about what I’m feeling. I also wanted it to help people who are feeling the same way. For the moment though, grief is kicking my ass and it’s keeping me from this blog.

It’s getting hard to realize that this will be the first holiday without my mom. It’s also bringing up a lot of emotions. Im still trying to figure out how I will fit into my family now that she isn’t here. She used to be my ally during family reunions. Now that she isn’t here it’s going to be hard.

The pandemic isn’t making things easier for me. I’m feeling hopeless for the future. It going to be weird to start a new year without my mom. We are going to move on. It feels so strange even writing it. Time is going by so fast but in my mind my mother was alive just a few days ago. It’s really troubling to feel like time is passing by and I’m stuck in the past. I hope these feelings will pass. I think eventually they will.

See you soon.

[11990904]

[werelivingarts-deactivated20230]

how to deal with mental fatigue

Hi, it’s werelivingarts! Exam season is coming so soon, and some of us might deal with a lot of stress and mental fatigue while preparing for the exams. 

Here are some tips on how to prevent and deal with mental fatigue (before it becomes too serious and leads to burnout). Exams are just ways to test your knowledge and understanding, so please do not expect too high and take care of your health! 🌿

Hope that we would all do well! 😊

[oopsabird]

the reason you were able to read more and do more activities in a day when you were a kid than you do as an adult isn’t because you got stupider, it’s because as a child you generally had your base needs taken care of and your schedule provided to you, so you didn’t have to use as much of your mental and physical energy on planning, life maintenance (ie food and administrative tasks), and general executive function. of course you could focus on reading a novel in two days, somebody else made your lunches and you never thought about phone bills and you didn’t even have to decide for yourself when to take a bath. c’mon

[newhologram]

[kingvamps-archive]

[id: two tweets by twitter user sickgirlmeg reading 'I'm not sure how to express how annoying it is to me that most people consider 2020 a "waste" because they had to spend part of it living like I've lived for nearly a decade due to chronic illness and disability'

the second reads 'I have so much more to say about this, but mostly: my life is not a waste.' dated 9/17/20 /end id]