Visceral memories of lockdown 1

[devastating]

I know everyone will have experienced the first lockdown in different ways and a year on from it I can’t believe how isolated I was. I didn’t have work at the time but live with my teens. Every evening there would be about two hours during which a horrible gut-churning lonely anxiety would descend.

The isolation, the fear that there would be no food left in the shops let alone toilet paper, later - weekly trips to the supermarket to buy a massive trolley full of food because I didn’t want to go shopping again, standing on the stickers as I queued up at the supermarket, staying away from public transport, volunteering for the local food bank, watching the press conference every evening, walking in the park with my daughter, developing an obsession with sunsets and the moon and photographing plants, watching the death toll increase, watching the news with incredulity, talking to my Dad who lives in another country (and whom I haven’t seen for two years now), eventually being amazed that I could walk with a friend in the park, etc etc etc.

All of it is etched in my brain but I don’t realise to what an extent until I listen to some of the music that I was (repeatedly) listening to at the time. Then it comes flooding back as do the somehow visceral connected feelings, and they are unlike other feelings - they are vivid and painful. And disbelieving - I can’t believe we went through all of that, and are still going through it albeit it has changed.

So I was wondering if others experience similar kinds of deeply felt lockdown 1 memories that resurface in the same way? And if so what they are of?

Crying after talking to ICU patients relatives on the phone

Sheer exhaustion

Thinking:I can’t do this any more. Then doing it, again and again

Contracting COVID but feeling so poorly generally anyway I didn’t even notice

Deleting WhatsApp messages from friends enjoying a Prosecco furloughed lockdown and feeling so very, very angry

Mainly…despair and anger

Being at work with tiny classes of children, spending lots of time playing outside with them. Then trying to go shopping after work and there being nothing on the shelves.

Having covid but there being no tests unless you were famous. Losing my sense of taste for months on end.
Clapping on the doorstep.

Watching the news , seeing the temporary mortuaries being built and being terrified.

When the electric went off late one evening and I thought I’d have no fridge/freezer food or way of getting food for my kids.

Theres a kind of hand-wash that I bought because I really loved it. If I smell it now I am catapulted into that frozen fear, isolation, panic we all felt at the beginning of the first lockdown

Also the Disney chanel have mindful animated shorts and I used to play them for my little girl, I was going to play them for her last week but I suddenly got really weepy like I used to last year.

Feeling I had no control.

Classed as cev, being absolutely terrified.

The images from Italy .

The nightingale hospitals.

Antibacing everything to an inch of its life.

Not opening post for three days and storing it outside in piles labelled with days of the week.

Hanging bags of shopping in our log shed for three days to decontaminate and washing things that needed the fridge in Milton and removing all packaging

Washing school uniform the second DC where in from school.

Frantically sewing face coverings.

Feelings of guilt because I was furloughed.

Being un able to do the stuff I usually do to keep occupied because I had no concentration or will.

I get random flashbacks, verging on panic attacks, I don't think they have a specific trigger but I'm transported right back. Is not nice in any way shape or form.

I've turned into my gran who always had sugar and toilet rolls in abundance ' just in case'.

In Italy.
Telling my students off for being silly and getting over-excited with hand gel.
School closing for 3 days deep-cleaning. Going back for 2 days then it closed "until the 16th March" We never went back.
Evening of 9th March, my one moment of actual fear- the PM spoke to the nation and put us into lockdown.
Living on the main road and hearing the ambulances. Only the ambulances because there was no other traffic really for 6 weeks.
The relentless news programmes
People I haven't spoken to, or been in contact with for 30 odd years sending FB messages "hi, just wondered how you were?" Because they didn't dare say "Wonder if you're alive"
First time I left the house- would have been around May. Went for a walk. Very weird.

I experienced this today as I was driving. Last April the nearest place I could get a click and collect slot was a Tesco 20 miles away. During the journey, obviously there was very little traffic but I saw 5 ambulances at different points throughout the journey, all with their lights on. I cried when I got home.

I had to drove past that Tesco today and it really brought back the feeling of despair.

Being on the phone to my boss whilst supervising my toddler in the garden and then having to hang up to throw up in a bush due to morning sickness.

DH was working mental mental hours. I was a teacher who declined to send my toddler to childcare because technically I could have him at home with me.

That was a dark day.

The flowers in my front garden have that effect. DH got covid on 29th March and was severely unwell for 5 weeks, culminating in a secondary pneumonia. His sats were in the 70s multiple times but he refused hospital as he believed he’d die there (he has no recollection of most of this and until it came up a few weeks ago believed he’d been ill for 2-3 days!) 3 of the dc also had symptoms. For 5.5 weeks I didn’t leave the house and just went from room to room taking obs/ giving meds when needed/ opening windows/ bringing food and later providing activities for dc/ homeschooling. We had only the food we had in the house and couldn’t get a delivery: I darent go the shop in case dh died. I hardly ate, feeding everyone else instead and only eating every 2-3 days. I plotted case and deaths rates on graphs. I read research papers in English, French and German and followed any advice that had any possible evidence behind it. I hid my fears successfully from the dc, who still have no idea how ill their dad was. I cleaned obsessively. I used hand sanitizer so much my hands began to blister.
To keep me sane I’d sit on the front step for 10 minutes 3 times a day to look at the world and sometimes talk to neighbours a couple of doors down who’d got into the same habit. When the flowers bloomed this spring it took me straight back there.

Feeling utter despair at being on house arrest and being lonely and isolated with a laptop all day for work.

Furious with my colleagues who thought it was the best thing since sliced bread to sit in ass wfh and most of them have never attempted a single day at the office. They have a very I'm alright Jack mentality

Working in an embassy and going into crisis management mode 24/7 for months on end. Trying to repatriate thousands of British Nationals on planes that didn't exist and being told I'd be held personally responsible if X son/daughter killed themselves if I couldn't get them on one of the few planes we did manage to secure. Dark times.

Hearing that the school didn’t want my kids to attend (they didn’t stay open for any “key workers”) as my kids were too high risk.

Occasionally I think of when I heard that and I feel the same feeling to my very core, cold at how I could be going to my job, and the teachers wouldn’t /no one wanted to look after my children because of me.

Hired a nanny that I didn’t have time to vet/interview. Was a shit parent but a good GP.

Being alone with my son and worrying how I would feed him - I was shielding as CEV and couldn't get supermarket slots so for a while I had the choice of going shopping and risking covid / death and leaving my son alone or feeding him

My overriding memory is setting alarms for 2,3,4 am every day to try and book a supermarket delivery to make sure my son had food to eat

This takes me right back to that time. I always remember scrubbing my hands in work then remembering Charlie Brooke singing 'happy birthday twice' and it made me laugh.

Honestly my life didn’t change. I was already trapped at home with DC, no friends and couldn’t afford to work because of the cost of childcare. The only thing that changed was that we stopped going out for lunch and to the park, which I didn’t enjoy anyway and only did to benefit DC. Now it’s over for everyone else and I’m still trapped.

Getting a call from the hospital to say my husband - who had walked in a few hours previously with mild breathing difficulties - was very sick and had been put into an induced coma and on a ventilator.

Finding him dead in our bedroom a few weeks after he got home from hospital and we thought he was on the mend.

Tbh everything else pales in comparison.

Anytime I put ‘Little Baby Bum’ on tv for my kids it takes me right back to Lockdown 1, trying to work from home full time with a toddler under my feet all day, as well as being heavily pregnant. I too can’t believe we got through that sometimes 🤯

@peachgreen

peachgreen
sorry to read that

I remember talking my dog to the local park, and someone yelling out their window at me... "go the fuck home!". Also, seeing an elderly gent sit down on a park bench with bags of shopping, and a cop telling him to move on.
Buying wine with dog food in the local shop and the security guard telling me that my shopping was not essential.
Living alone, and not being allowed to see anyone at all, not even my own mum.
Social media and all the obsessions with infection rates and death rates, and all the discussion around that. Tuning into the daily Gov press conference like it was something out of 1984.
I could not deal with it at all. I tried to take my own life during the first lockdown. Even now, I wish I had succeeded.

So sorry for your loss @peachgreen, under such cruel circumstances too.

It's all food related!

Not being able to get a food delivery or go out for any as CEV but it took weeks to be added to the shielding list. Went a month without a food shop

The "boris box" turning up, sitting on the floor reading the letter with it, looking at the box and thinking WTF, they really don't want us to go out

Having a craving for gnocchi and asking if someone could get me some as I couldn't go out and I did a swap for toilet roll and tea lights!

My haematology consultant going absolutely batshit that I still wasn't on the shielding list and despite being in a a totally different area, after hearing I couldn't get a food delivery, somehow managing to get me both a supermarket slot and the council to deliver stuff to me

My son getting brought back from France (where he was working), to the other branch in the east of England (nowhere near where we live!) Finally, he got a lift with someone else who lived in the Midlands and I drove there. We got home minutes before the first big televised speech that locked everything down.

Driving to get petrol after 2 weeks without leaving the house and doing a longer trip, purely to charge the car battery and passing our nearest pub where the car park was roped off and feeling it was the end of days.

Oh god, this thread is bringing it all back and is making me cry.

I vividly remember:

Setting my alarm clock for 4.30am so I could join the online Ocado queue for spend 2 hours it in so that I could try to secure a delivery slot for my parents (200 miles away) as I was convinced that if they went to the shops, they would catch Covid and I would never see them again.

Having to get out for a walk on the eve of the first NHS clap. Walking through a housing estate at 8pm and hearing the clapping - I burst out into tears and sobbed all the way home.

I’d started an NHS management job 6 weeks prior to March and the sheer pride I had about everyone I worked with in the hospital in preparing and undertaking what they had to do during Feb/March last still brings tears to my eyes.

The first time I went into work (hospital) at the end of April and the eery silence and lack of people in the corridors. A&E was empty bar ambulances bringing covid patients in. People were too terrified to go into hospital unless they were in such a condition that they had no choice. I refused to eat or drink anything at work in case it was contaminated.

Doing my shopping at 6am in the morning and prioritising the bread, cleaning and pasta aisles to try to get essentials. Empty shelves everywhere - not something I ever expected to see in my life. Bringing all the shopping in through the utility rolm and washing everything in bleach before it came into the house.

Looking back I do wonder whether it has some long lasting effects on me. I cannot bear to run out of anything now and my cupboards aways have 2-3 weeks food in them and I get twitchy if I am down tk the last 10 toilet rolls!

I am so sorry as well @peachgreen, and I hope you are getting the support you need @XenoBitch, and that sounds very hard @AnyFucker and @Howmanysleepsnow, and love to everyone on this thread .

How are people (in the world!) going to process the collective trauma and how long will it take? Maybe its effect will always be there.