Your home, confined or comforted?

Here is what I have been thinking about recently…

After the pandemic, how am I going to feel about my house? I have two battling opinions running around in my brain.

Have I seen too much of it and felt trapped and captive here? I have literally been in my house 95% of the time since last March. I know every scratch, nick, dent and “wow we should update that” corner. I have felt claustrophobic, isolated, bored and trapped. Please be assured I know how blessed I am to have a roof over my head and be in a safe place, and will be eternally grateful for that. However, I’ve also started to ask, do I really need or want all this space? What do I want to have learned and changed about myself through this experience? Where do I want to be in my post-pandemic life? To be honest I’m not sure if it is here. We are already empty nesters in a too large home for my husband and I. Simplifying our life and de-cluttering sounds lovely. Not to mention the financial freedom and adventures we could have without being quite as tied to the house expenses associated with this home. Do I want a fresh start with a fresh new post-pandemic chapter? If I stay here, will I always remember the long scary days of March 2020 when no one knew what would happen from one day to the next?

However, the other part of me has felt safe and comforted here and will be eternally grateful to these walls for keeping my family safe and healthy. Our little cocoon has seen some deeper levels of family bonding in the last year while we have spent countless hours together and found ways to laugh and amuse ourselves even amidst the chaos of the world.

For the first 2 weeks we quarantined and that was all four of us. My grown children choose to quarantine with us and there were literally three of us in one spare bedroom serving as the makeshift Doherty co-working space. Not to mention a dog and a cat who made their appearance on all our laptop keyboards as often as they could. We laughed and cried and were scared together but at the end of the day we were together and that was all that mattered. The space isn’t perfect but it gave us each a quiet corner when we needed them and lots of common space for bonding over yet another Netflix movie, game of Pictionary or kitchen table ping pong. We are fortunate enough to have some property so when summer came we were able to have social distanced guests in our backyard and enjoy our own outdoor living space as a bit of a haven from the four walls of the inside.

Suffice to say, I haven’t decided how I will ultimately feel and unfortunately, we aren’t “post-pandemic” yet so I don’t have to decide. I wonder how others are feeling? Have you had similar thoughts? Maybe I’ve just had too much time to think.

For now, I’ll just continue to be grateful for my safe haven and know that I blessed to have a place I love to ride out the storm. I’m not ready to emerge transformed out of this cocoon yet.