Trigger warning: death of a parent.
A month ago, I wrote, but didn’t post, some thoughts on normalcy. I think I was still hoping to return to it in some way, hopefully imminently at the time.
My dad died 5 months ago, three shorts days before my birthday. His health had been declining a bit too quickly in the year leading up to an unexpected hospitalization at the term of which, ten days later, he passed away peacefully.
2024 was not great for me. This time last year, my work life started getting upended, and it didn’t get better in the following months. Then, once my dad was gone, I put my own grief on the back burner (purposefully) to stay with my mom for nearly two months. I’ve been back in my own home for a little under 3 months now.
And for all of this time, I’ve been trying to go back to “normal”. Even being fully aware that I’m not the same person I was a year ago. Knowing that normal can never truly be what I remember it as.
The general goal was to… create some sort of foundation to hold me, before I allow myself to fall apart. For safety. Because I’m always the person I have to lean on during tough times.
But the normal I was aiming for was the normal of January 2024. When I was excitedly working with great people and exercising and cooking and doing all my dailies. Before I cared too much about work and found myself seriously losing sleep over it. Before I touched my dad’s cool cheek and realized he’d passed away while my sister and I were asleep next to him.
That “before” normal cannot exist anymore. I can return to doing all of those things and they can help me in the same ways that they did back then, eventually, but fundamentally, it can never be the same.
I have been so focused on setting up something really solid that I didn’t realize that, once I fall apart, I won’t be able to maintain it anyway. It wasn’t solidifying in the first place, either.
And I need to fall apart. I’ve been patching the cracks for a year, not with the proper glue and lacquer that turn into golden scars, but with cheap duct tape from the dollar store.
Upholding this empty shell of normalcy has been preventing me from processing my grief. Not just about my dad.
And so after years of dailies, mostly completed but sometimes not, I’m giving myself at least this month off. Doesn’t mean none of them will get done – a month without cleaning at all would be bad – just no checks to be completed. I’ll be going with the flow on a day-to-day basis. So when I do fall apart, I don’t also carry the perceived burden of failing self-set expectations. Bad days can just be bad days, not a bad grade.
In March, self-compassion is going to be letting go.
Towards a new normal.