The impact of lockdown...

I'm still struggling, are you?

I’ve had, since I launched this newsletter, various iterations of this piece sat in drafts. Something always stops me, my finger hovering over send, before backing away, choosing to write about something else.

This is for a number of reasons. The first being, I don’t feel qualified. I didn’t lose anyone to covid, I struggled but… I got by.

The second is that, by bringing it up, I’m breaking some sort of unspoken code that we’ve all begun to abide by. We’re not meant to talk about it. It happened, it was horrible, move on. I have told myself it’s insensitive for this to land, plonk! in people’s inboxes, reminding them of a time we’d all rather wipe from our minds. I can’t think of a headline – I’m wary to even put covid in there, convinced you will see it, slam your eyes shut and scramble for the delete button.

This, of course, could not be true for you at all. You might be quite if-not-happy, then comfortable, in talking about covid, lockdown and how that time has imprinted on you, warped you, changed you. But I can’t. I make a habit of this naturally, I turn my back on what is painful and walk, hurriedly, in the other direction. I know it’s not healthy, I’m trying to stop but… it’s what I do.

There’s a loop-of-a-walk, from my house, all the way up to the country lanes and back home again that I now refuse to take. I won’t climb the stairs in my work, as they’re still etched with social distancing markers. I can’t look at them. I almost turned down a recent work project, something that excited me, that I ended up really enjoying, simply because it would involve being on video call for a few hours each day. Why? All of those things remind me of 2020 (and 2021…) It's why I’ve found this so hard to write, to put into words. As I’m still figuring it out. That period of in-and-out lockdowns has damaged me somehow. And I’m not able to face up to exactly how, just yet.

As I typed that out I felt a rush of tears race up my throat, threatening to spill out. I swallowed them back down in shame. I, once again, contemplated deleting this letter. As, I know I’m writing this from the viewpoint of someone healthy, who has been able to, of late, live a normal life. For those immunocompromised this isn’t possible. Families are still quarantining. Millions have long COVID. Is it fair of me to write a letter about the long-term impacts of covid, and lockdown, when many people are still living that?

I’ve spoken before about how I believe that playing a game of one upmanship with pain is dangerous. But I also don’t want to appear as if I’m lumping everyone together, as if I’m making the assumption that everyone is in the same place as me.

Yet the aim of this newsletter was always to open up about every aspect of grief, even the gritty, sandpaper rough parts that we don’t want to. Mostly this is done from a safe distance, looking back and trying to unpick the past. This is the first time I’m writing something in active grief.

As I do believe that we are all standing within collective grief. And if I believed in the seven stages of grief (which I’m not sure I do) I’d say we’re hovering in denial. Or (and this isn’t even one of them) fatigue. I remember when mum was ill, I wrote in my diary, in screaming black-biro capital letters, I AM FUCKING TIRED OF TALKING ABOUT THIS. I pretended I was fine because I was so bored of not being fine. That’s how I feel now. I’m tired of feeling this way, of bringing it up.

But I do want to talk about how we’re feeling, where we’re all at. One of the things I’ve learned about grief is that it can come with a side of ‘aren’t you over that by now?’ I see this happening now, in conversations about the last few years. As when people speak about lockdown they tend to do so lightly, brushing over what it was really like.

What did we do in lockdown? We baked banana bread! We did Zoom workouts! We stepped away from the rat-race! We figured out what’s really important! I didn’t. Did you? Did you move to the seaside as, god, the cities are just so damn polluted. Isn’t remote working great?*

It was even reported this week that research (quite shoddily done research if you ask me) showed that the mental health crisis from the pandemic was minimal. I spent time shadowing suicide hotlines in the wake of it all… it definitely wasn’t. During that time I also learned that the worst thing we can possibly do for our mental health is bury our feelings. How does releasing research like that help anyone? It will only further our shame in suffering. Silence us more.

Most people I know are feeling a little lost right now. If it’s not easy to pinpoint then we’re scrambling around looking for the cause of why we have lost our footing. Is it our marriages, our jobs, our homes? Have we made the right life choices? Why does everything feel a little flat? Why, after all we’ve been through, do we not feel happy?

And while it won’t be the only cause (there’s rarely just one cause for how we’re feeling) I do believe that it’s down to those locked-in years. I know it’s not strictly true to say we lost years of our lives, but we did lose a huge chunk of time, living life as we knew it. It left us at best discombobulated, at worst fucking terrified.

It feels like we’ve been chased, endlessly, over and over, for years. And now we’ve landed somewhere, seemingly ‘safe’ and as we look around, covered in the grime, dust and blood from that chase, it’s not being acknowledged. We’re told the dirt has a sort of shimmery, fun sheen to it. That we are the silver-linings. That the chase taught us something, that it helped figure ourselves out – what we want, and what we don’t want. But how can that be? When most of us are exhausted, panting from that chase. When we lost people along the way.

Am I making any sense? I don’t feel this is my best work. But how can I capture something when I’m numb to it? When every cell in my body is telling me that I am fine. That I’m being ridiculous. So, OK, if I’m fine then I’ll go on that walk. That loop. Stand by that smashed up, abandoned green house; right at the top of the hill. The view is beautiful from there. Except I can’t, can I? Because something isn’t right. I’m not right. Are you?

It can feel like, out there, there’s only two outcomes from that time. You either lost someone or you didn’t. And if you didn’t, well, shut up about your problems. Don’t be so insensitive. But what if you gave birth alone? Lost your job? Are now burdened with the lingering effects of a virus, one that’s taken away the energy that used to flow through your veins? What if, for you, the air still holds threat?

I don’t think this make-do-and-mend, stiff upper lip, count-your-blessings attitude is helping us. Yes, we have to keep going. In grief that’s often the only option. I’m not criticising denial. I’m fucking in it, after all. It’s just that so few of us are talking. We don’t want to turn to our friends and say ‘hey I really suffered during all of that’ as we know that they did too, but in a different way, that our wound won’t match their wound. That they’ll feel upset, or angry, that we’re even bringing it up.

But people are feeling forgotten. Ignored. The impact is playing itself out in a myriad of uncontrollable ways. I don’t have a solution. It’s simply me, putting my hand up (hesitantly) and saying I found that hard. I’m still finding it hard. I’m lost within the aftershock.

How are you?

*For more on that please read Sam’s* guest post on how damaging covid small-talk fodder can be for those who lost someone.

Thanks so much for reading this one! I’m very scared to put it out there! If you relate please do share and if you wanted to write a guest post about your experience I’d be happy to hear it.