Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Uncertainty

Hello there dearest blog. It's been awhile since I last spent time blabbering my thoughts away to you. And now, it's a full moon once again and suddenly it feels like all of my nerve endings are into overdrive and I'm overwhelmed by all of these emotions that I can't quite explain.

So, where should I begin?

2021

The first half of this year is quite a roller coaster ride. So many ups and downs, slow beginnings and free fallings; and currently this shuttle is spinning around and around through a maze of surprising twists and turns. If I may tell you the truth, I'm finding it a bit hard to keep up, let alone to just catch my breath for a few moments.

Uncertainty. This is probably the thing that I fear of the most now. Before, uncertainty is something that excites me alot. Don't get me wrong, I still love surprises and unexpected adventures, but maybe not as much as I did when I was younger.

Why?

Well, the only reason that I could think of was maybe because almost everything suddenly changed - drastically - in such a short span of time. It made me lose my balance and now it seems like I'm back to where I began. I find myself testing the ground first before taking the next step, fearing that it might suddenly crumble underneath my feet.

** Commercial break: The weird thing is that this song by Griffin - Nobody Compares to You - played on my speakers and midway through it, my vision suddenly blurred and I realized that I'm actually beginning to tear up over the song. Hahahaha! I know. I'm weird. 

Anyway, let's go back to what I was saying. 

Where did it all begin? Simple - the pandemic. It did a reset button on my brain and now I see things more differently than I did before. I've become more cautious of my actions because I can't help but think that every small thing or action that I do could somehow greatly affect someone else. 

*** NP: Taylor Swift's Death by a Thousand Cuts and Cornelia Street. Seriously, I don't know if my laptop is trying to make me cry my eyes out before I finish this post.

Another thing is my work. Don't get me wrong. I love my job. I love how I was able to become a part of someone else's life - even for just a short span of time - and was able to make them feel loved and cared for. However, being an empath (yep, I'm one of them), makes it easier and harder at the same time. 

Easier, because I can sense the kind of attention that each resident (this is what we call the elderly people that we cater to in our shelter) would need from me. Some of them needs a person who will listen to their stories, others need someone who will tell them stories, and some need someone to just accompany them in complete silence. And honestly, I can shift into each persona quite comfortably.

Harder, because to be able to know what a person needs, you have to put yourself in their shoes. And most of the time, once I do try  to put their shoes on, I also get to experience not just their joys and happiness, but their pains and heartaches as well. Imagine doing that for more than one person at a time on a 12 hour duty. I'm telling you, it can get really exhausting that at the end of the day, all I just wanted to do was fall onto my bed and go into a deep sleep and hopefully wake up the next day with a clear state of mind. 

Still, I'm grateful for this gift and I wouldn't want to trade it for anything else. It's just that I am still human and I have to admit that it's hard when it turns into something more than I can handle. I know it can be a burden, but it's a burden that I'm willing to take. 

Maybe, the only part of my work that I'm still trying to get used to is losing them one by one. It is inevitable, I know. But it still shakes me to the core everytime it happens, eventhough I already knew that it was going to happen soon. And hearing their stories about how they never thought that they would end up in a place like that makes me sad as well. Most of them admitted that they sometimes feel dejected knowing that it is the last place they will ever be because they have nowhere else to go to. And it breaks my heart and makes me scared at the same time; scared because it made me reflect on what my future might look like. 

Most of the people who know me well already know that I don't have any plans of getting married or having a family of my own. Like, ever. I'm sure you're wondering why. Even me, I sometimes wonder about myself. Haha! What makes it even weirder though is that I'm a hopeless romantic through and through. Trust me when I say that I'm one of the cheesiest person you'll ever meet. I know, I contradict myself too much but I guess that's me and my Gemini heart talking.

The thing is, I was all set on growing old on my own, with family and friends on the side. It's just that lately I ended up feeling something similar to an empty nest syndrome. When my brother got married, I was still okay because I already got used to the idea of him not being home most of the time. Now it feels like my other siblings will soon be next, off to their own adventures as well. Then, my bestfriend, who has been a constant entity in our house for the past decade, transferred also and started on a new job that is at least a plane ride away from here. I understand that they will still be there when I need them and that what we are doing is part of our growth as individuals. It's just that they're my safety net - they're the ones who usually save me from myself and the nonsensical things that I sometimes end up doing. And now that they're far, I guess that's where my fear of uncertainty comes from. Fear that I might not be able to pick myself up just in case I stumble and fall. That's why I ended up almost rethinking my earlier plan.

But at the end of the day, when I think more about it, I still can't see myself in a lifelong relationship with someone. Please pardon me and my fickle Gemini heart. But I don't think it's a good idea to have the fear of being alone as a motivation to be in a relationship with someone. I know that there are days when I daydream about it, especially after watching some silly romantic movie or reading cheesy books on love and such. But after the high comes down, I still end up with my initial plan. Oh well, maybe it's really just the pandemic that unnerved me. Here's to praying and hoping that once everything becomes "normal" again, my thought processes shall be back to "normal" as well. Haha!

And there is so much we don't know
So we love and we hope that it holds

***P.S. I was looking for a song that would go along with this post when I tried searching for a song that would have the word uncertainty on it. And voila! I chanced upon this one. I just learned of its existence now yet somehow, this song fits so well.