The Moment I Realized Life Wasn't Going Back to 'Normal

There wasn’t one single moment that changed everything. No loud bang, no dramatic goodbye. It was more like a quiet, slow unraveling—a thread pulling loose until suddenly, I was standing in the middle of my life and barely recognizing it.

It started during the early days of the pandemic. Like everyone else, I thought it would pass quickly. A few weeks at home, some canceled plans, and then we’d go back to how things were. I stocked up on coffee and snacks, told myself this would be a good time to catch up on sleep, maybe even learn something new.

But weeks turned into months. The routines I relied on faded. The coffee shop where I wrote on Sundays closed. The gym that gave my anxiety somewhere to sweat out disappeared. Friends I saw weekly became names on a screen. And my father—he got sick.

That was the moment everything stopped pretending to be normal.

We couldn’t visit the hospital. We couldn't say goodbye properly. When the call came, it was from a stranger's voice, delivering a sentence that sounded like it belonged to someone else’s life. I sat on my kitchen floor, holding the phone, and realized that grief doesn't always come in waves. Sometimes it just sits quietly beside you, every day, like a shadow.

For a while, I kept waiting for normal to return. I clung to old habits. I tried to fake motivation. I made plans for “after.” But even as things opened back up, I could feel it: the world wasn’t the same. More importantly, I wasn’t the same.

I started noticing little things. I didn’t enjoy the same music anymore. Conversations that once felt effortless now seemed tiring. I found myself needing more silence, more space. Crowds felt overwhelming. Small talk, unbearable.

At first, I thought I was broken. That maybe I had lost something essential—my spark, my drive, my ease with the world. But slowly, I began to understand: this wasn’t damage. It was change.

I began to walk more. Not to go anywhere, just to move. I started journaling, something I hadn’t done since college. I deleted social media apps and left them off. The world felt louder than ever, and I needed quiet to hear my own thoughts again.

Some friends drifted away. Others surprised me. One, who I hadn’t spoken to in over a year, sent a simple message: “I don’t know what to say, but I’m thinking of you.” That meant more than all the perfectly worded condolences.

Healing didn’t come like a sunrise. It came in small, almost invisible ways—a morning I woke up without dread, a meal that actually tasted good, a laugh I didn’t expect. It came when I stopped asking when things would go back to normal and started asking, “What do I want now?”

I started painting again, badly, messily. I spent time with my mother, sitting in silence, watching old movies. We didn’t talk much about Dad, but we didn’t need to. He was everywhere—in her smile, in the old armchair he refused to throw out, in the way the dog still waited for him at the door.

Eventually, I stopped waiting for “before” to return. I realized life had given me a different map. It didn’t erase the past, but it asked me to walk forward anyway. I couldn’t undo the grief, the fear, or the silence—but I could carry them and still keep moving.

And that, I think, is what strength really is. Not pretending everything is fine, not pushing through like nothing happened. But learning to live honestly with what has happened. Letting the losses shape you, but not define you. Finding beauty in the quiet, hope in the ordinary.

It’s been over a year now since I stood in my kitchen, phone in hand, trying to make sense of a world that stopped making sense. I’m still figuring things out. Some days feel light, others heavy. But I’m no longer trying to go back. I’m trying to build something new.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s better than normal ever was.