I had gone on a short trip to a temple that was 5 kilometers away. Didn't break any Covid guidelines as I would be keeping my distance from people because I was walking all the way up to the temple with a couple of friends. To say that it was merely tiring is an understatement. I was completely and utterly exhausted by the time I reached the place. I did enjoy that trip spiritually and socially. Although we didn't enter the temple we had a good amount of time enjoying its beautiful architecture. But the trip had completely robbed me of my energy.
I had to also come back with that minimal energy. I hadn't done my breakfast because we started way too early. My head started throbbing on my way back. It was torturous in a way as I had to wait with my sister for a couple of shopping. I did some too, because I was there and why not use that opportunity!
By this time it was only around 10 am but it seemed like I had spent the entire day outdoors because we not just walked all the way up to the temple but also stopped by to by some essentials in different places, hung out in a church watching people reading the bible just so that we felt like it and we were tired with all the walking.
I was horrified at the thought of walking our way back home even though it was hardly a kilometer. But that's exactly what we ended up doing. Once I got back home, the first thing I did was not breakfast but a hurried bath (life's definitely harder with this covid world). Despite having breakfast, the headache didn't vanish. All that day's hard work had me drunk with fatigue and put me to sleep for a couple of hours.
I thought that was it to the entire trip. No more pain!
But never before have I been ridiculously wrong!
The aftermath of walking for an hour after nearly a year of no workout started showing up the next day and then the next! It was the worst kind of cramp with every part of feet screaming for relief.
I thought only a good food can make this experience better and I treated myself to some fish! ( Again I was testing waters after over a year!)
I thought I was fine. Again... wrong like so many times!
Somehow in a year of not consuming non-veg (even then I never ate non-veg often), I had turned allergic to it and now it's poisoned my system. I suffered severe body pain, fever and indigestion. And it lasted for a week and later on it did reduce considerably.
This illness, maybe it had to do with the timing, had really shaken me to the core. Up until then I remember having thought so many wonderful ideas and to compile them in a vision board. With the illness, I had to pause all of my work for a while and it was the most horrible thing to experience. All the dreams that seemed like wonderful fantasies started seeming like an impossible and even a stupid tale that I could never achieve. My dreams seemed too heavy for me to carry anymore. There was weaker self in me that told me I'll just end up as an average person in life. That was the most frightening thought I ever had.
It's strange how when you're not well physically your mind starts to get fed up too. Maybe its not... considering that our mind and body are connected.
Once I started feeling better my mom and sister fell sick too. Didn't know for sure if it was the SARS-Corona virus but whatever it was, that day made me realize how poor you can actually feel when you have big number of people at home sick even if you may have a million dollars.
That day I had to take care of them, it was then that I understood the real pain of taking care of loved ones especially when they're ill. I felt devastated on the inside. It was not just normal care and house chores.
Staying at home also started revealing all the stark gloom of our lives, with nothing to do but restrict our activities to home. The fact that I didn't have people my age to interact with really started to affect as it was nearing a year. I was craving to socialize and the social media could be the smallest contribution to it.
As I recovered, I started gaining back some of my confidence. But I had this embarrassment of having wasted a lot of time and especially with quarantine. Our mind unless it has something absolutely necessary to do tends to put it for another time and never gets it done. It takes a lot of effort to make something a habit and a second nature. In fact, anyone with that level of discipline is a legend.
Right now from where I stand, I see a huge path to be taken with a lot to learn on the way. I may have been a procrastinator, but I'm not a quitter. And I'm not postponing either until I'm where I should be.
Although I wouldn't ever want this kind of experience in life ever again, I'm grateful for the experiences and the lessons learnt. The illness had revealed me how much work I had to put on myself physically and intellectually, and from this point it seems extremely hard, but not impossible. One step at a time...
It's tiring and exhausting but absolutely necessary. It's better to have done your work and get exhausted than never to have done and yet exhausted.
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