How many times have you heard the phrase “we’re living through a pandemic” recently? And how many times have you been told to “be kind to yourself”? Indeed it is painfully true that we are all living  through a fucking pandemic! We just celebrated the first anniversary of Covid-19 being declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization. Infrastructurally Africa was not ready for a pandemic, as most Africans governments struggle to get the pandemic under control, it now must grapple with its failings in leadership and governance.   

This virus upended and continues to upend our lives without our permission. The rug pulled out from under us and we didn’t know how to stop it. The little control we had on our lives was taken away. We lost our loved ones silence and we watched our neighbours grieve alone unable to escape the four walls they called home. It has been a time of great loss, great pain, great suffering and many injustices have followed. 

In all that loss and pain it has also been a time of learning. The stillness gave us time to discover who we are at our core. It taught us about our friendships, about our lovers, our spouse and how we can choose the kind of relationships we have. It taught us that not everything is meant to last forever and that more favours can be big wins.

As we continue to live through the pandemic, living is important and precious. We are continuing to notice things that we are losing, little things and big things. Some of us do not even understand the gravity of the things we are losing in the pandemic. 

We’re losing our sense of safety not just physical for some but emotional safety as well. Our anxieties continue to haunt us like shadows in the homes we cannot escape. We are anxious about everything and anything. Our reactions are disproportionate to what is actually happening. All our mental guards are down and they do not know how to go up again. There is a feeling that the world is spinning out of control and no one can pull it back. Even the connections that kept us going last year, we are beginning to lose.

With our sense of safety went our sense of comfort. Control seems to be our biggest loss because everything is out of our control, you cannot control the pandemic as much as governments have tried. Human nature keeps taking over. In our desperation for connection, our desperation to find some form of solace. We are defying safety and logic. We hug, we kiss, we shake hands and we are forgetting to sanitise or wash our hands frequently. We go to parties because the loneliness is too much to handle.

But the things we are losing in the pandemic are not all bad. Some of us are losing our inhibitions because there is nothing left to guard them again. Some of us are losing our fear and gaining courage to speak our minds. Some of us are finding wholeness and the quiet. We are realising that though we should care about how we show up, we cannot carry that burden of regret always. We cannot take it into our dreams and our happy places.

And in knowing that our spirit cannot break anymore, we are beginning to heal it and put it together. Some of us are beginning to enjoy meals by ourselves, and we are not so afraid of ending up alone. 

All these things that we are losing in the pandemic are part of the new building block of our new souls. There is no new normal to get used to this just the ever-changing nature of life and the next phase of who we get to become. The things lost in the pandemic we were always going to lose anyway, the pandemic just accelerated the process.