I just finished the miniseries The Time in Between (for the third time in my life, I’ll admit), and lately I find myself relating to the protagonist in her periods of strife. Sira Quiroga grew up poor in Madrid and was destined for a simple life. Not long into adulthood, her collection of experiences have been far from average.

Things got particularly abnormal for her when she cut off her engagement, was swept away by Ramiro, and ran off to Morocco. After being deceived and abandoned in a foreign country, she seeks stability, relationships, and trust. She achieves those things — for a while — and then she embarks on a new chapter of danger and adventure. Although she is growing into a stronger woman, she accumulates mounds of stress while navigating immensely risky and challenging terrain. When she feels particularly disoriented and strange regarding her fast-changing reality, she longs for a “normal life.”

Remember being a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed adolescent imagining the future? Did you crave an adventurous life and vow to keep things interesting?

And in the last year, how many times have you wished to “return to normalcy” or “get your old life back”?

My life has been nothing short of turbulent, unpredictable, and adventure-filled over the last year. I’ve experienced unforeseen and unparalleled events that I never would have hoped for. I moved six times so far in the pandemic, living in three different cities and two different countries. I went through a breakup and painstaking heartbreak from which I’m still currently healing. My two closest friends are going through divorce and unprecedented depression from which I so badly wish I could rescue them. I’ve learned I attached a chunk of my sense of self to someone I grew up with who disappeared from my life last year. I switched careers, taking on more risk, and witnessed my hometown go up in smoke and flames in a once-in-a-century weather event. I watched my country divide as violence skyrockets and the economy begins to crumble.

In a sentence, I learned firsthand about the very real dangers of existing on planet Earth.

My insouciant and childlike sense of awe was confronted with the reality of navigating today’s perilous world.

I still frequently feel disoriented. I don’t know where my home is and I’m looking for a new community of friends. This is hard when relocating to a different country, but a government-mandated lockdown makes it all the more challenging.

I know I’m not alone in my sporadically overwhelming sense of disorientation. We’ve had to muster up opinions about topics we never considered before – like mask-wearing, election fraud, and whether it’s better to shut down cities entirely, partially, or not at all to stymie the spread of a novel respiratory virus.

Friendships and families have divided over differing opinions as the pandemic became politicized. We’ve learned the media can cry wolf and thus have polarized over mainstream news coverage. Distrust and disinformation abound, and those that question it are met with strong opposition by those who grip onto “normalcy.”

But which normalcy? Is normalcy going to an office every morning to the job you resent? Spending 50%+ of your waking life around a group of people that you wouldn’t spend time with otherwise? To wish you could move your family to a different city but being chained up by the restrictions of your employer, or society? Or to sweep major societal issues under the rug with friends, family, and colleagues with the shallow intent to “keep the peace”?

Is living for the weekend and deceiving ourselves most of the time the normalcy we all crave? To feign peace and happiness when we’re tormented by the suboptimal conditions we feel enslaved to? I’ve witnessed friends and family members resign themselves to lifelong depression because “it’s the status quo.”

Maybe your prior “normal life” was better than that. But who says it was normal at all?

When I look back on the past year, I recall heaps of anguish. But that is not merely for the lives lost due to covid, increasing political tensions, or the inclement weather events endured. We’ve writhed in our personal, professional, and political lives because truth has surfaced.

And the truth hurts.

We don’t have to be stuck in one place. We’re not imprisoned to the “traditional path” we locked ourselves into years ago. The world is unpredictable, turbulent, and even dangerous, yes — but it always has been. This fact does not have to demand our focus or deny us of living the lives we truly want.

We have no one else to blame for our misery anymore.

The only way out is through. When I see people’s lives in disorder, families uncertain of their future, and tension among nations, I see people coming to the truth. Some have already found it, and others are still in search for it.

But we can’t deny that we left behind our prior concept of normalcy. The cards are all on the table. We are staring the opportunity to create the lives we want directly in the face. The only way to fail is to wish for the past.

“Normalcy is no more than what you think it is. To look for it somewhere else or in the past doesn’t make any sense at all.”

Doña Manuela, The Time in Between

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You can watch The Time in Between (El Tiempo Entre Costuras) on Amazon Prime UK with a VPN. You’re welcome.

Photo by Aron Visuals