A trembling that I couldn’t identify. A glance around the room—Kira across from me, Emma to my left, my professor of two years to my right. A reading I had done at least three times before. A comment that I knew made sense. And yet, I’m trembling. It may have started while my hand was raised. Look at her shoes, and hers and hers. You can see their backpacks, look at that pen. They can see you. Are they noticing you like you’re noticing them? Ah, she’s talking about my point, that’s great. I went to write down something she had said, but I couldn’t. My hand could barely hold my pencil. Put your hand in your lap, don’t let them see. My whole arm, not just my hand, was shaking. In the perfect, most low stress situation, my body was physically unnerved. The last time I had been in a non-virtual academic setting with thirty other people was March of 2020. Seventeen months created multiple holes on the cloth of my class skills, but those can be hemmed. I raised my hand in all of my classes today—no shaking at all. But the shaking was not the first sign of a hard adjustment, and now that I fixed that, it doesn’t mean it’s the last.
The physical I could fix. The physical I would fall back into. But I cannot as easily persuade my emotions from the last year and a half to forget all that I went through.
It wasn’t just the physical adjustment of being back in-person and back in my physical routine, but it was all of the emotional adjustment that has been holding me down like an anchor on a boat. I’ve found myself sitting in my apartment, hearing the music from Coupe’s die out around 1:30 a.m., wondering when I would feel ‘normal’ again. The physical I could fix. The physical I would fall back into. But I cannot as easily persuade my emotions from the last year and a half to forget all that I went through. At the risk of sounding whiny, I don’t want to act as though I have had a harder time than others with this emotional adjustment. I hear from my friends everyday that they want to cry at random times, or immediately leave a social situation, or just pause. I am no different, but how we all are handling this emotional adjustment is messy and varied, and hard.
And where exactly do I delineate between emotional adjustment from COVID-19, and fearing for my family, and physical isolation—and having my heart broken, and my friends helping to keep me grounded, and finding happiness again but still feeling like I want and need more? I have been struggling trying to put emotions from different issues into different categories, but why categorize anymore? I think I’m trying to do it for others, so that they can categorize me and put me into whatever boxes they want to.
Like I was walking in fuzzy socks across concrete, the tufts of cotton pulling out on every jagged edge. I put on boots, but then I felt like I was keeping something from the concrete, and so I then went barefoot.
All I ever do is try as hard as I can, and all I do is give everything that I have. And sometimes I want to stop doing that, but I can’t. I try, and then it feels wrong. What if they need that extra love? And taking on their indifference helps them? If I don’t try, I’ll never know. But I want just one person to take on my indifference, too, just one. I want one person to put just as much energy into me as I put into everyone I love. And I’m just tired. I tried to be a little more abrasive, I thought maybe it would save energy, but I just felt worse. Like I was walking in fuzzy socks across concrete, the tufts of cotton pulling out on every jagged edge. I put on boots, but then I felt like I was keeping something from the concrete, and so I then went barefoot.
There’s no delineating anymore. I can live with that, but I do want to feel ‘normal’ again. Driving down Route 29 with a different destination from the one I had two years ago still makes my heart feel like something is wrong, but I get out of my car, run my errands, and act as though the past didn’t just come flooding through the mental dam I try so hard to maintain. Adjustment is not always being okay with something, or fully understanding how to help yourself—it’s just trying your absolute best to make yourself happy. I just want to be happy all the time, not just sometimes.
