Lockdown - How I Really Feel
Oh lockdown you funny beast you.
I am writing this at the end of 12 weeks since complete lockdown here in Wales, unsure what the assembly ministers will announce as our next step and whilst it’s likely it’s a move toward normality, it’s unlikely to be anything that different. 12 weeks since I last went to work, 12 weeks since I last saw my family, 12 weeks since I saw my colleagues, my friends, since I did my commute. And actually, longer than that for most.
If you’d told me at the beginning of 2020 this was the year it was shaping up to be I’d never have believed you, in fact I’d have said I absolutely could not manage it. I couldn’t physically go that long without seeing my family, that my mental health would spiral without work and that I couldn’t withstand the potential pressure of losing my job.
And yet here we are 12 weeks in. The new normal. When seeing our family outdoors is considered a good thing, when the government is paying for a huge percentage of the countries wages, when we wear masks and gloves and finding baking products is like a drug deal.
So how am I really doing in lockdown? When all the Instagram posts of sunny days are gone - I’d say I am coping like the majority of us are. Up and down. Good days and bad days and really bad days. Muddling through this ‘unprecedented time’ and trying not to lose my head in the process.
T H E G O O D….
The weather - We’re in a bit of a patchy weekend here in South Wales as I type this but on the whole HOW good has the weather been? It’s like the world went ‘ok they’re dealing with enough’ and gave us week after week of glorious weather so we could take our government allocated walks without dodging showers. I remember being sat in the garden in March having a BBQ, we’ve had hosepipe bans in May and we had 25+ degrees at the beginning of June and it has been so nice to spend some time outdoors enjoying the weather for once instead of being stuck in an office.
More time to spend on everything - Lockdown has created a natural slower pace of life and dare I say it, I imagine most of us needed the break. I know I live my life at full speed at all times and one benefit of the sanctions has definitely been being able to allocate proper time to everything. At the beginning of lockdown I, like everyone, took to deep cleaning my house to keep boredom at bay and I actually had time to dedicate to doing it properly not just hoovering the spaces you can see and not much else which is pretty much what my weekly clean consists of normally. I even cleaned out the inside of the fridge, defrosted the freezer and had a clear out - the insides of the kitchen cupboards are my next challenge.
Exercise - Lockdown conveniently coincided with the clocks changing so our evenings are lighter and lighter and we’ve managed to pick up our exercise routine now we have more time. We were one run off completing couch to 5k at the tail end of last year and then we ran in the dark and Jos broke his toe falling in a hole so we never completed it and we had set the clocks changing as our target to start again. We are now on week 8 of it (12 weeks into lockdown, you see my issue) and we are running as much as we can, weather and business depending and I am really enjoying it. As most of the UK will have felt, I have never needed to go on a walk as much as I have since I was told our movements are limited and a daily walk became an essential part of my wellbeing. We have walked most evenings we haven’t run since lockdown began back in March and I am now able to socially distanced walk with my Mum too which we do one morning a week physically together and a few mornings chatting away on the phone in our respective villages. It has become a staple for clearing my head and something we have said we want to continue long after this is done as much as we can.
Spending time with Jos - Definitely Jos’ favourite part of lockdown for sure has been the fact I am home much more and we can spend time together. I have a busy life and am out two nights a week minimum and at least one day on the weekend, plus five full days a week at work - and more often than not I’m busier still with full weeks planned and I think I have 3 free weekends in the whole of last year? We didn’t expect newlywedded life to look like this (blog post coming on that soon) but it has been nice to dedicate some time to us and just hang out. For the first time since we were in school we spend lunch time together, we haven’t eaten anything we didn’t cook ourselves (welcome to rural life living - no takeaways) and with our walks and runs and general life, it’s been nice to have some time for us.
Saving money - I thought I was saving hard when I had a wedding to plan for but lockdown has been a game changer for my savings account. I thought when I took a hit in my wage every month we’d be skint and struggle but apparently I didn’t quite realise just how much my day to day life costs me. I have managed to save at least half of my wage every payday that I have been off work and lockdown has really helped the ol’ bank balance. One of the pits of living rurally has always been couriers cannot find our house so I never order things here, instead opting for work or for my Mum’s but in lockdown, and combined with a moral quandary of making posties deliver non essential parcels, I have barely bought a thing. My shopping habits are at an all time low and in fact before this week I hadn’t bought a single thing that wasn’t food or a gift and my balance is looking healthier than it has in years.
More in tune with myself - I feel like lockdown has allowed me to be more aware of myself and how I am feeling. I have been fortunate enough to never struggle with my mental health that badly but the pandemic has tested that, as I am sure it has for a lot of people. In a cruel twist of fate, what is causing me to feel anxious or unwell is also giving me the opportunity to deal with it, rest, relax, distract myself, take myself back to bed, whatever I need to do. I feel like so often we just keep on keeping on, push through and it’s not doing us any favours so it’s probably the rest a lot of us need. Just maybe not how we would have chosen to get it.
T H E B A D….
Being furloughed - Yes I, like millions of others in the UK have been furloughed, and as of today I have been out of work for 12 weeks. My work situation has undoubtedly been the most stressful part of the lockdown for me as my job is still very much up in the air. I work for a company that organise face to face training and in one hellish week before we left work, all our current and future business fell off the edge of a cliff. We were very lucky the furlough scheme was announced a mere 13 days before we were due to be made redundant so I have been paid 80% of my wage by the government which understandably took a huge weight off. As a small company with no indication really of how or when our business will be able to resume our jobs are still very much up in the air but with the introduction of part time furloughing from July, I am hoping I will at least be given the opportunity to try and fight for my job.
Grocery shopping - Twelve weeks on the scenes of empty shelves and panic buying and all those weeks we couldn’t get milk or flour or loo roll seem a distant memory but it was real and we all lived through it. Even now, grocery shopping is one of the crappiest sides of lockdown for me as I am shopping for all my family and for Jos’ as they are all in varying degrees of isolation. On a good day I shop for 4 households but on the busiest days it is 6 or 7 and it’s been an experience to say the least. At the beginning of the pandemic I was going to local shops twice a week for essentials for everyone, queuing round the block in sun, rain and wind, gloves on anti bac at the ready and social distancing and one way systems became the norm. However, as families stock cupboards depleted it became impossible to get everything in a small Waitrose in my local town and I was feeling secretly judged for the size of my trolley and my bill - I felt like I needed a sign that said ‘this is for more than just me’ at all times. Supermarket deliveries became like an art and for weeks I was regularly staying up past midnight to wait in a virtual queue for a click and collect slot but these days the shops have more slots available and I have got into a groove so I’ve got a good routine of a click and collect every week these days, something I expect to continue for a long while yet.
Social pressure - There has definitely been a pressure, put on us by both ourselves what we perceive other people are doing, to be using lockdown for good. We needed to be making banana bread and sourdough loaves every week, losing 2 stone, running a 10K, checking in with all friends and family, creating 12 new paintings and getting our blog content back up to full capacity - all whilst remaining a good social citizen and staying home at all times, and make sure if you DO post that you’re out you mention something about social distancing and how you haven’t seen anyone you know longer than anyone else. Combine that with the fact my own insecurities tells me extended family on both sides and society itself see me as sitting on my arse getting my 80% and my head is fried. I am a naturally productive and busy person and I definitely set out to get loads done and complete all the projects I never have the time to do but I think we all forgot that this was the weirdest thing most of us have ever lived through and adding a tonne of pressure to make the most of your new found time off was a step too far.
Keeping up with politics - I mean, it’s just been a shit show hasn’t it? I have to admit at the beginning of the pandemic I was fully compliant, I trusted the government to be doing the right thing, I said things like "‘I don’t think it matters who the leader is, it’s clear they’re being led by the science and Boris is just a figurehead” and as someone who considers themselves well versed in politics I am ashamed I was sucked in. It’s insane really when you think of Cheltenham and Liverpool playing in the footy being allowed to go ahead back in March and since then really, keeping up with Westminster has been a headache we didn’t need. From the conflicting advice from members of the cabinet, to the easing of measures being different in all devolved nations, to our Prime Minister nearly dying from the virus himself only come out and let us all free, the PPE mess…..and let’s not get started on Cummings shall we? Trying to watch the daily briefings, follow the news around the world, learn what rules apply to which nation and then try and read unbiased opinions surrounding all information - it’s been a minefield.
Lack of motivation - Tying into my own, and social, pressures and want to stay busy, a major struggle of lockdown for me has been my lack of motivation. Everything is slower, I don’t achieve as much as I would normally even on a ‘good’ lockdown day and my motivation is at an all time low. Turns out, all those projects I never get done because ‘I don’t have time’ - the problem is me. My mornings become slower and slower, my lie on in bed is getting later and later, I am taking regular breaks and stops for cuppas which turn into half hour scrolling mindlessly. And I really really hate it, it makes me feel crap and like a human slug but I cannot shake it at the moment.
The chores - You’d think lockdown chores were no different to normal life but maybe it’s being here more I am generating more or maybe simply because I am at home more I can’t unsee what needs doing but I feel like I am in a never ending cycle of chores. Our dishwasher is used every single day, cooking is never ending now I eat three meals a day here not one, the house always seems to need hoovering and dusting and I cannot get on with my day until everything is tidy, the bed is made and the dishes are complete and the counters empty. Except none of that ever seems to be achieved and the washing basket somehow never empties and I feel like maybe part of the reason why I don’t feel like I am achieving anything is because by the time everything is done that I feel needs to be done (and because I am not working I feel like it should be me who does it) there’s not enough hours left in the day to do something for me.
T H E U G L Y….
The fear - I don’t imagine there is anyone in the world at the moment except maybe Donald Trump whose heart hasn’t skipped a beat in fear of what is going on at the moment. I second guess every hot flush, every cough, I am crippled at the idea of infecting someone I love, I have had more headaches and more bouts of nausea in lockdown than I have in the last few years and the whole situation is so alien it is sending me into a panic regularly. Right at the beginning of lockdown we went on a mad 7 mile unplanned walk in running vests and shorts with no water back in the cold of March and came home starving, dehydrated and freezing and that night I vomited. In the back of my mind I knew it was all the reasons listed above but the sweats I had immediately freaked me out and I worked myself into a right state. It was that evening as I lay on the sofa trying not to fall into a full panic attack I deleted all my social media applications and downloaded calming games and apps and massively limited my intake of what was going on around me. These days my news consumption is probably back up to the same level as pre pandemic (probably more tbh) and I am fine with that but I do often lose myself to full mornings or afternoons of obsessive reading and it’s not healthy.
Fun policing - I have spoken to my Mum and my friends about this a lot in the last few weeks and I hate myself for it but I became such a busybody in lockdown and a major fun killer. I am a nosey person by nature and I like to know everything about everyone but I have become obsessed with other people’s movements since the pandemic started. From people obviously travelling further than the 5 miles we are allowed in Wales to exercise, to friends going into the homes of people they don’t live with, from people I follow on social media sitting closer than 2m from the friends they have seen in the park to family members breaking the rules - I have become enraged at what other people are doing and I haven’t loved myself for it. I have a massive injustice complex when it comes to lockdown and the idea that 1. people are putting the rest of us at risk infuriates me but also 2. the idea that people are breaking the rules and seeing their loved ones when I don’t see mine has become an obsession.
The other global pandemic - The Black Lives Matter movement and the injustice and inequality people of colour has really come to the forefront of all of our minds in the last fortnight or so and it’s uncomfortable to admit it’s taken way, way too long to say the least. I don’t intend to try and coherently say what I want to say about my own personal feelings and opinions because I don’t think I have found the words to add to the conversation, rather I want to amplify the voices who have lived through the horrors we are seeing in the news and on our social media every day. I have spoken about it on Instagram and continue to share resources I find helpful on there but I think I can safely speak for the majority of the people in my social circles both on and offline when I say we have had a wake up call to the fact that not being racist is not the same as being anti racist and we intend to do better.
Missing the kids - I miss all my family don’t get me wrong and as I have explained to Jos, seeing my parents or my brother at the end of the driveway once a week when I drop off their groceries is not a normal, natural situation and I find it hard to come away from there without going in, plonking myself down on the sofa and having a cuppa. But by far and away the people I miss most are the two smallest in my family - my two nieces. They only live about 6 miles away from me and as they went into lockdown before the rest of the country, this week will mark 14 weeks since I saw them. As my brother put it the other day ‘you’ve had to be like a parent to them at times’ and going from three days a week minimum, to seven days a week at it’s maximum of hanging out with them and caring for them, being apart has been heart wrenching. I cannot convey the physical ache I feel when I think of them, see them on Facetime or look at photos of them and ‘missing’ them doesn’t quite cut it.
Lack of coping mechanisms - I would say this is probably the same for most people, but finding myself lacking in coping mechanisms has been a major struggle for me in lockdown. When I say I have been lucky enough not to suffer with my mental health, I know there is a lot I haven’t yet processed and dealt with and I remember one particularly bad day a week or so before lockdown I came home from work knowing I was losing my job and the children had already gone into lockdown and I was stood in the kitchen with my head in my hands saying things like “I can’t do this” and “I am afraid with nothing to do that everything I haven’t dealt with in the last 5 years are going to come for me” and I scared myself to be quite honest. It took me a few weeks of lockdown and few more of those kinds of meltdowns to realise my fear was realised mostly by the fact my normal coping mechanisms were removed from my life. I cope best when I am having a tough time by being busy, taking my mind off things and spending time with the people I love - so in lockdown, with no work, no travel, no family…..no wonder I was in for a tough time.
Uncertainty - And finally, for those of us who have been lucky and had no real close encounter with COVID, probably the worst part of lockdown has been the uncertainty. The uncertainty that we are safe, that we will return to normal, that life will resemble something we are familiar with soon, that our jobs will be safe, that we can hug our families again, that we will be able to go on holiday or enjoy the things we took for granted before all of this. If someone could tell us on this date you can do that, on this date it’s this and by this date it’ll all be over and you can go back to your usual life then I am sure we would all manage so much better. Whatever it is you are hopeful for, if it’s returning to work, seeing your loved ones, moving house, being able to go the pub again or booking a holiday, we will all be happier most settled people when we know we can do those things safely.