Coping with Ch-ch-changes

Remember precedented times?

Remember when we had the illusion of being able to predict what could happen next because what happened next wasn’t absolute chaos?

Good times.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the past two and some years and how I’ve been forced to confront my long-standing fear of change and the unknown. And it didn’t quite happen the way that you’d expect.

Generally, my fear of change would reveal itself when I was going through life transitions. Sometimes things as simple as moving up into a new school year would get my anxiety going.

I used to take a lot of comfort in the predictability of my day-to-day life. I liked when things stayed the same because, if my life was predictable, it meant I always knew what was coming. I could always prepare for it. I could even control it.

It was a very unrealistic thought, but it was a comforting one.

So, yes, the pandemic was honestly my greatest fear made manifest: a sudden and life-altering event that affected all areas of my life, one that I could not have prepared for nor seen an end to.

But between the distractions of The Big C and all the lockdowns, I went through perhaps one of my biggest life transitions yet and didn’t even realise it until it had already happened.

In 2020, I graduated from university. I started a new job. I started thinking about my career and plotting out its trajectory.

And I didn’t even register that it had happened until months after.

In fact, it was late 2020 when I realised that my idea of the life I was hoping to return to “post-pandemic” was something I could never actually go back to. Because things had changed right under my nose.

(And, boy, was it weird trying to process that. Y’all ever had to deal with your brain trying to retroactively give you anxiety? Anxiety over something that has already happened? Very odd. Why are brains so weird?)

I had inadvertently faced my fear. And, clearly, I survived.

And that inspired me to take a step back and re-evaluate my attitude toward change and the unknown. Because it’s a little counterproductive to keep being afraid of something so inevitable.

It is just so much easier to hold on to what I know rather than embrace what I don’t, even if what I don’t know can present something better for me.

And that’s the whole point.

I always saw change as something negative without considering the positives.

Change can bring good into your life too. Change allows us to see, think, and do new things. And newness always presents the opportunity to learn and grow, if you’re willing to take it.

And, as much as I dislike change, I dislike the thought of remaining stagnant so much more.

And it’s true that not knowing what’s around the corner is a scary thing—especially when the thing around the corner could be absolute chaos—but that is not something I will ever know.

Instead, I focus on what I do know. I focus on what I need to do in the present. I take things one day at a time. And on the day those things around the corner arrive in my life, I’ll deal with them then.

Learning that life is inherently unpredictable was a hard pill to swallow.

I don’t always have control over my circumstances and how they may change over time, but I can control how I respond to them.

I’m learning to find some comfort in that instead.

Until next time,

Siobhan K.