Life after lockdown

No, living life as I was before. If anything, I'm happier and more positive.

I’ve noticed this as well.

It’s not just in a scare-mongering ‘Covid hasn’t gone away’ sort of way either. I think people attribute far more things to Covid than makes sense.

For example, on the Holidays board, whenever someone complains about the cost of a summer holiday in 2024, there will always be posters replying with “it’s pent up demand due to Covid” or “it’s people who had their holiday cancelled during Covid pushing up demand”.

Virtually everyone who had their plans cancelled in 2020 managed to go away in 2021 or 2022, and maybe some left it to 2023. The holidaymakers who are still deferring their 2020 holiday into 2024 are, I imagine, a very small minority. The compulsion to blame everything on Covid is utterly bizarre.

I was the one that commented on this thread that we are now nearly in 2024 so we just just get on with life.

Whilst I stand by that statement, it's incredibly sad to read all these comments about how people's lives were affected and still are. 😢

My teen dd suffered badly during lockdown and the return to school and crowds. Thankfully she has come through it now.

I don’t really give it much thought anymore. I still find it hard to get a GP appt, dental appt and kids swimming lessons - they all blame Covid!

I only recently found out that our local maternity unit still only allows dads in to postnatal wards now, no more grandparents and half the village popping in to see baby. I find that a bit sad as I loved my mum coming to see me after a section, but I also think it’s probably a good thing really.

In some ways I agree. So I have a wfh job which wouldn’t have been wfh. I started this a year r so ago and I have really struggled with it in a way I’m sure I wouldn’t have if it would have been face to face. I also find it pretty lonely. But that’s just my job (which has been so miserable at times that it’s interfered with home). I’ve also gained weight that I can’t shift and generally feel less healthy- but also I’m a few years older so…..

I also think we’ve remained more into our screens and devices which makes us feel crap.

outisde of that I think it’s actually better. I used to run around busy busy. Now it’s a slower la e of life. A few people dropped off the list, there’s more downtime etc etc.

Not saying this applies to the OP, but on MN I have noticed a small faction who seem to almost wish we were still living with restrictions or at least keeping covid at the forefront of our thoughts.

In RL, people have long ago moved on.

@delisane I absolutely agree that I lack an understanding of your lockdown experience …and everyone else’s as they are personal experiences which are individual to all of us.

However, I was disappointed to read that you feel I lack empathy when it comes to lockdown experience. I can and do feel empathy even if they are not my lived or personal experience. Being empathic is possible without having a need to be in agreement. I do wish you well.

I kind of agree with this. Restrictions lifted around 2.5 years ago, and as we go into 2024 it will be 4 years since we first went into lockdown.

I see this as quite a long time and the whole lockdown thing to now be part of history. Partly because I like to move on from bad things as swiftly as possible, but also because we’ve got bigger problems on our hands in the present, so why continue worrying about the past.

Edit: Neither of my nephews (aged 6 and <1) will have any memory of lockdowns or what they meant when they’re older, and I really envy them that!

This sounds so tough and it sounds like you have been incredibly strong. I hope some new sources of joy will emerge for you even if it takes a while. x

I agree OP.
Lockdowns broke me. We were very careful as 2/4 of us have serious health issues that meant we were much more at risk, so we felt completely isolated. I used to do so much before, but since have had zero energy/head space/inclination to do anything beyond the necessary.

I don't feel depressed, but my life has shifted dramatically and try as I might, I can't get it back to where it was.

To be honest, my life has continued on as normal pre covid. I was big on personal space out and about before covid, so that didn't really change during covid. Life is back to normal for me and has been for a long time.

For me lockdowns were a period of our history, not our present.

I worked 80hr weeks for the first 5 weeks of lockdown, not knowing if the business I worked with would survive and the following 4 weeks I works 65 to 70 hrs per week. I look back and wonder where I found the energy but with a sense of pride that I cared so much. And no, I’m not looking for a medal - I am simply describing that it was physically hard going.

My DH faced similar uncertainty with his business, but used that certainty to question and probe what could be different and better if it survived.

Our kids (a teen and pre-teen at the time) were feral in those 9 weeks. They home schooled themselves or didn’t some days during those 9 weeks. My oldest was diagnosed with a living changing, chronic health condition during this period, his life is forever different as a result and that is bloody tough.

My memory of sunshine and lovely weather is vivid though I wasn’t out in it but our kids were out in the garden every day loving it.

My Mother is different post lockdown as she because very anxious about contracting COVID but if I am to be completely honest there is evidence of moderate health anxiety being present throughout our childhood. It was COVID that changed her not lockdown though it was hard for her - she adopted her own version of COVID protocols that were very self limiting and nobody could talk her down from them.

While I would not wish to return to a lockdown period in the future I would take 10 lockdowns than live where war atrocities are happening.

Our governments made decisions in the moment, some were positive and worked while others were poor and ill considered - I don’t believe any were made with malicious intent (I am not referring to some individual politicians who behaved atrociously).

OP, like others I think you’re describing something beyond an impact of lockdown be that depression or something else.

Speaking with a professional therapist could be really worthwhile. For my Mother, I wish she had sought counselling with she was younger to address what I believe to have been health anxiety in her case. I really believe it would have helped her resilience for what live brings which just happened to include a pandemic. And selfishly, it would have helped her adult children which as a Mother she would also have wanted.

Look after yourself

I know I have changed over the last 4 years. I’m more outspoken and less of a people pleaser but I don’t put this down to lockdown. I put it down to my age!
Everything that happens to us through our lives shapes the person we become. We will alter over our whole life span. Very few people can say ‘everything about me is due to this one event’…..

Agree - and in the same way that people in secure jobs, with guaranteed incomes, were more pro lockdown than those whose jobs were vulnerable, were more anti.

Incidentally, the reason furlough payments were so generous was because the government realised if they weren’t, the public wouldn’t be so compliant so it was a firm of bribery to keep the majority onside.

As with most things in life there were definitely Winners and Losers from the COVID pandemic

I think that's a good point.

The positives and negatives were definitely not evenly distributed, and inequality widened. We're seeing the knock on effects of this now.

As with most things in life there were definitely Winners and Losers from the COVID pandemic. Key workers didnt get the choice to lock themselves away in safety from infection. Recently I heard that the wealth of the top 200 families in the UK (the report didnt mention which families they were, but I'm sure we can guess) significantly increased during the crisis which is astonishing but not surprising.

I remember all the slebs showing the inside of their homes during lockdown, with their massive living space and expansive gardens, and it made me think how insensitive and out of touch they were, when there were families entrapped in high rise flats with no space or gardens having to survive on furlough with no way of knowing what the future held for them. It was heart breaking and just showed how social media can be the scourge of society for its divisiveness in shining a light on the Haves versus the Have-nots.

You’d have expected a site for parents and predominantly women to be focussed on the damage being done to those groups

It wasn’t it was a raging angry go at anyone pointing it out and demanding more restrictions

I was incredulous at it

I don’t feel exactly as you do but I do feel changed. It’s hard for me to pinpoint whether it’s covid or parenthood though, because I had my baby during lockdown. But I do feel more mistrustful of the world than I did before. I’m more inclined to believe people will behave badly or selfishly.

In many ways I feel happier in my own life, which is generally a content and calm one, but more anxious and less hopeful about the world at large. We saw the reality of a worldwide crisis managed by incompetent and actually quite malevolent leaders, and it’s like the veil has been lifted. I don’t have the same naive hope that this nation could basically weather a crisis that I had before the pandemic, because we didn’t really weather it and we will be paying the price of that for a long time.

I think you’re absolutely right.
I didn’t agree with the restrictions at the time and I’ve heard nothing that has changed my mind since, despite losing two frail elderly relatives during covid. I’d worked out by May 2020 that there were clearly different rules for different people so, whilst it annoys me and has reawakened my anger, nothing being revealed in the inquiry surprises me.

Lockdown has certainly made me more ‘stroppy’ and now more inclined to civil disobedience. I certainly wouldn’t comply again and make my own judgement about safety of my loved ones and I was always the model citizen before!

I’m sad how divisive (and political) it all became. I lost a couple of close friends who had such strong views, couldn’t accept that I didn’t feel the same and tried to force those views upon me. So many people became over zealous and the amount of aggression and accusations, particularly on the internet, was depressing. I was genuinely shocked how many were willing and quite proud to announce they would dob others in to the authorities - almost like collaborators during WW2 - so I think I am generally more distrustful whereas I used to be pretty laid back. There was so much ‘moral grandstanding’ too.

Lockdown has definitely affected my mental health too. Even though it shouldn’t and I know it’s not my business, I get very angry inside when I see people wearing masks! I understand that their reasons might be nothing to do with covid and I’m being totally unreasonable and illogical but it’s what the mask symbolises to me and a reminder of a time when our lives were being manipulated as much as though around us as those in power.

I'm certainly much more aware of the power of the internet and the media too. How we’re always being nudged to think a certain way and how we’re fed news in a very specific way. I’m more inclined to turn off and treat information with more cynicism that pre covid.

I've completely changed since March 2020. Much more cautious, much less sociable, much closer to my DH and less to my friends. However, I had my first baby in December 2019 so I spent most of the lockdowns very focused on him, and then just as the restrictions were lifting in summer 2021 I fell pregnant again. I think motherhood radically changes your identity anyway, so I find it hard to separate the effects of lockdown from the effects of becoming a mother.

Lockdown made no difference really, it didn't bother me at all.
I came back from working overseas - I always attribute it to COVID which was in part true but if I'm totally honest, I think I was ready to come back anyway, and blaming it on COVID has become 'convenient'.

We went straight into lockdown and it was fine, I spent my time redecorating my new accommodation. I wasn't lonely (we had the internet for contact with family and friends) nor was I traumatised or depressed. It was just one of those things. I went walks in the countryside and delighted in the absence of traffic, airplanes or general noise and still wish life was as quiet as in lockdown.

I had COVID and it was nasty but I was fine afterwards. Yes, I lost a close friend and various distant family members and former work colleagues. It's sad but no, I don't blame the government, they died from COVID. I believe lockdown saved thousands more deaths although there was bound to be a long term affect on the economy, which we are feeling now. I'm happy to accept that and work through it as a nation, I wish people would stop grumbling and use their energy to make things better.

And I've moved on. I've done two different jobs since lockdown, made some new friends and even work in a different part of the country. Life changes. Quite frankly I'm far more concerned about climate change and the terrible war atrocities which are happening across the world right now than any lockdown issues, which were 3 years ago now anyway.