Different Better

My world has not been the same lately.  Well, to be honest, it hasn’t been the same in the last couple of years.  A difficult situation went south and grew more challenging and turned grueling as time passed. Stress and tension were with me and around me.  Pain and suffering took on a different meaning.  Nothing to do with the physical, although the effects were many times corporal and felt in many unusual ways that I could not begin to describe.  I don’t want to exaggerate it nor make it something it wasn’t.  No one died.  No one is very ill.  We are all here; but there’s still a sting there.  It was a protracted situation that has, for now, met its end.  An end that has a changed beginning for me.  I wish I could say that things are good now. I want to be positive and encouraging, but the fact is that things are just different better.   Things have improved and I feel healthier overall.  When people talk about a ‘new normal,’ I get it now.  The phrase new normal is meant to describe something that was abnormal before and is now accepted as normal; or the state in which one is after a crisis – both of which I’m sure no one necessarily wanted.  During this time friends and family told me that things would get better.  My result is a different better. Not the better I expected or wanted, just a different kind of better.  But still better.