Why I Felt Pressure to “Be Back to Normal” — and Why That Expectation Quietly Set Me Back
Normal sounded comforting, but it wasn’t neutral.
As stability returned, a new pressure appeared.
It wasn’t external. No one told me to hurry.
It was the idea that now — finally — we should be back to normal.
I felt like there was a clock I was supposed to catch up to.
Wanting normal didn’t mean I was ungrateful — it meant I was tired.
Why “Normal” Became the Finish Line in My Head
Normal promised relief.
It sounded like proof that everything was behind us.
If we were normal again, then nothing lingered.
Normal felt like an eraser.
I used normal as a way to close the chapter quickly.
When Improvement Didn’t Match the Pace I Expected
Things were better — just not instantly easy.
Energy was steadier, but not boundless. Calm existed, but it wasn’t effortless.
That gap made me uneasy.
This mirrored what I felt in why moving forward didn’t feel like closure.
Improvement didn’t mean return.
Healing was real even when it wasn’t complete.
Why Chasing Normal Increased Internal Pressure
I started measuring again.
Comparing days. Tracking ease. Noticing what still felt different.
The pressure didn’t motivate me — it tightened me.
Normal became another benchmark to monitor.
Trying to arrive somewhere kept me from settling where I was.
How Grief Complicated the Idea of “Back”
Part of me was still grieving.
Not the present — the version of life that felt simpler before everything shifted.
I wrote about this overlap in why I grieved our old life.
You can move forward and still miss what you lost.
Grief made “back to normal” a confusing destination.
What Changed When I Let Normal Be Redefined
I stopped asking to go back.
I let “now” be its own version of normal.
Different, slower, more aware — but stable.
This softened in the same way trust returned in why trusting things were finally okay felt harder than enduring the crisis.
Normal doesn’t have to match the past.
Redefining normal gave my nervous system room to rest.