Two years it has been and yet, she wonders, staring out at the slice of the world visible from her window, why could she remember the days that have passed since then so exactly. It was as if those two years had been seared around her head like a firebrand. 

Many a times she has wondered if the last two years had not been but a fever dream, something that she would wake up from and find all the world unchanged, but every time, with an increasing force, life has reminded her that this was the truth. This was the new normal. 

She could not pinpoint the exact day it happened. It was the subtle things; the fear, the helplessness, and finally the voluntary imprisonment, all in an unfathomably short amount of time. But the pandemic was not the worst of it, at least not for her. It was how she slowly lost her vigor for life. It was like watching her death through the eyes of someone else. 

She was unsure of when it started but one day she woke up and found out that she did not remember what day it was. Everyday of every week had begun to feel the same and the end had begun to evaporate, leaving behind an eternity of routine. 

In the early months, she used to go up to the terrace, to find a change of scene but even that became a constant. There were only so many new things she could discover in a place so small and when barred from the world, her little corner began to shrink, too. The clouds and the birds began to look the same. Little by little, she started giving up - on life, on living, on continuing - and following the routine became just the action of going through the motions. 

It was then that sickness caught hold of her. It was not just the physical sickness but the constant mental exhaustion of not moving forward. She could not bear to think, because thinking meant reliving a past that could no longer be reached. There was no happiness in her memories, only the pain of what had gone and what could never again be.

Social media then became her meaning for existence and the toxicity, the jealousy bled into her stationary life, into her dreams tainting them with a need to be superior to everyone else. 

She began to work, in earnest, day and night to prove herself but she did not realize that her efforts were for naught because there would always be someone better and slowly, this jealousy began to poison her, and she, who was already losing herself, found her soul breaking from within. 

She started giving up on life, the desire to be better rendering her useless because her mind was already made up that she could not achieve what they had. She didn't have the resources, she would tell herself and contented her heart with vile, harmful thoughts against them. It never amounted to anything and neither did she.  

Life would have continued like this if she had stuck to her ways but nothing remains constant and she didn't either. She spotted the weak, flickering light buried deep in the void of her soul, and somewhere along the road to spiraling deeper into the rabbit hole, she stopped and looked within. 

Until then, she had not believed that there was a different path for her but now she could see it. She could see the other life waiting for her. All she had to do was take that turn, that path which had not been trudged by many. And so, instead of waiting and hoping for a miracle cure to her hopelessness, she started to pull herself out of it. 

It started slowly and required a lot of patience but she began to conquer her thoughts and direct them towards a route of positivity. It was not easy, following that path, there were a lot of dirt roads that branched off into darkness and she still hadn't found the place where she would like to be.

Physically, she's still suffering and even now her mind goes back to that dark place where nothing looks worthy of holding on to but she has learned the art of bringing herself back from it and looking beyond the darkness, into the light at the end, even though it is so far away. 

Time might have stopped but it does not mean that she needs to and though it is still impossible sometimes to reconcile herself with this new reality, she has made the promise to keep trying and moving forward because she has learned to believe that life is not about speed, it is about direction. 

.    .    .