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?

The worst bits for me were

It being announced people had to quarantine coming back from Italy for 2 weeks. My kids were in Italy with their dad and missed the deadline by 12 hours. So I didn't see them for another 2 weeks.

They came of quarantine on 23rd March. I took annual leave and was so relieved to have them home. But I was called to the office to get the rest of my stuff and my team home. My MD asked me to cancel my annual leave. On my drive to the office, I had that sick feeling. I knew we were 100% locking down that night.

The atmosphere in the office was terrible. People had been falling out. People were scared, stressed, scared for their jobs.

We had already moved to a rolling rota for wfh, to reduce office numbers. So I only had one person in. We packed her up and sent her off and I packed my car and dropped things off for people wfh.

My mum and dad were at her caravan and security came and told her they needed to pack up and leave.

I hadn't been able to do a full shop for weeks. I usually work 8-5. I couldn't get in a supermarket before 8 because I was elderly or NHS. By lunchtime, they were empty. So we were pretty much living on what we got from the local shop.

Mum had stocked the caravan with food for the year. She also had stock of toilet roll. Every winter she buys bits of tinned food, toiletries, toilet roll etc for the summer at the caravan. She already had plenty before the big toilet roll shortage. They brought all the food and supplies home.

On the Tuesday morning as lock down had started, after trying the supermarket again, I drove to mum and dad and they left boxes of supplies at the top of their drive. And I remember them stood on the doorstep looking terrified. My dad worked for the NHS and I worried I wouldn't actually see them again. Technically, I shouldnt have been going. But I didn't have a choice.

The weather was beautiful, the roads were quiet and I had an awful feeling in my stomach all the way there and back.

Now, when I drive on a nice day and the roads are quiet, I feel physically sick and tears just start rolling down my cheeks. I am not crying or sobbing. Just constant tears.

There were worse times during lockdown 1. But those 2 days are what bring back a physical reaction.

Just to add, I think I am extremely lucky, that my only physical reactions seem to be to that.

The rest all seems a blur. I can't shake it and it keeps happening. But, I think I am lucky its the only physical reaction I have to memories over it

I'm not in the UK but in a country where families would be split up for isolation and my DS, who was less than 1 at the time, could have been taken to isolate away from me if either of us caught it.

I have really struggled with my MH since and have my first appointment to deal with it finally this week. As a healthy mid-30s woman I have never worried about catching it but fearing having my son taken from me after struggling so much with PNA my fears have all been on the social implications.

Listening to elderly people sobbing down the phone after they’d taken an overdose saying that they didn’t want to live like this. Most of the overdoses were non fatal but the misery was heartbreaking.

so sorry peach green for your loss

I was really glad of the brexit prepping threads on here , especially having children with asd who are fussy eaters.

The whole madness of everywhere selling out of loo roll. Just feeling anxious and really frightened about who would look after the dc if i got sick

thinking that all the help out there didn't apply to me and no one cared

Checking the headlines and thinking 'no one is going to save you so you will have to save yourself and your daughter'.

a particularly kind staff member at the school the parent coordinator who did the rounds phoning every one when it started to check we had enough food. we did.

being in a second floor flat and doing the can I get a delivery thing and then realising that delivery people were stopping coming in to the building so leaving the food outside the building where it would get nicked.

Losing my milkman don't know if he got covid. He was lovely and wishing i had given him his christmas tip early.

Losing my faith as noone from my place of worship community even cared about me as a single parent home schooling.

Loving my daughter.

Loving my tiny dishwasher and praying it wouldn't break down.

Loving the only shop at the end of the road we have, being shocked the shelves were empty of paper and notebooks when I had started home schooling.

Hating my ex husband more than I ever have. He lives in a major town and at that point I phoned and asked him to send some notebooks through the post. His response was 'the shops are shut'

You bxxxtard I thought. How typical.

Wondering if I was having a nervous breakdown at 5 am in the morning often and then grabbing my notebook making alist of things to do and putting the today programme on. Phoning the Samaritans to keep talking.

Appreciating my post woman. And appreciating my post man who had cancer and still worked and wondering if he is still alive.

Being determined to carry on. Taking the bin out at the end of the day as if my life depended on it.

I've had it easier than most but I do sometimes get hit with a wave of disbelief that that was our life. At the time we took it a day at a time.

I just remember going on furlough and knowing without a doubt I'd lose my job, which I did . Other than that luckily I didn't suffer with any anxiety or anything, just felt a bit miserable

Just constant ambulance sirens near us, morning day and night, and no other traffic. We live in a city near a hospital. That was awful.

to you all. This thread is bringing it all back. It's like a collective trauma. I don't like thinking about those early days.

That was meant to be flowers not gin!

So much really. My dh having his car vandalised and having abuse hurled at him by someone in the street because he was going to work was quite a low moment.

I’ve been through severe trauma. It’s the first time I’ve felt understood by a lot of people.

Trauma is what it lockdown was for a lot of people. I think we will have a lot of ptsd cases around and general anxiety.

No, I don’t really have any but I was lucky I didn’t have live TV and I’m not one to read the news constantly so I created my own little bubble and ignored most of what was going on and got stuck into a lot of projects and finished a load.

I didn’t homeschool my DC throughout lockdown. We did our own thing instead with agreement with the school as DC had severe anxiety around schooling. We (the school and I) made the decision that DC would spend that time resetting. It worked brilliantly for us.

Tbf though I needed Lockdown as I had several years of trauma before hand with horrible abusive teachers of DC, DC running away and pleading for social care intervention etc Ex partner cheated in a horrific way and lied for the entire relationship shaking my foundations plus family deaths and major surgery all in the 3 yrs prior to lockdown.

I wouldn’t say lockdown saved me and my DC but that enforced time at home and not having the pressures of the real world interfere allowed us both to deal with a lot of things that would’ve taken yrs of life had been normal.

I am waiting for the stress and trauma of being so isolated to kick in and i certainly haven’t processed the complete lack of care from my family - not one of them got in touch with me during lockdown to see if I was OK or needed help, my friend did, DCs school did weekly check ins with us. My mother and siblings, not once.

Getting the call that my IVF was cancelled. I know it’s not on a par with losing someone but I’d been gearing up for it for so long and it felt like/feels like a massive blow.

Working all the hours to deliver online teaching whilst looking after a 1.5 year old. Then coming onto Mumsnet and reading thread after thread about how lazy and useless teachers were. Realising just how little respect teachers have. Quit Mumsnet until a few weeks ago.
To all those sanctimonious people out there who were so much better than teachers, I hope you’ve had fun polishing your Nobel peace prize this morning.

I remember the dread, of losing people, of trying to work out how we would cope. The prepping threads here helped tremendously. Looking back it feels unreal.

The Passenger song Venice Canals made me cry, still does at times. It encapsulated how I was feeling at the time.

DH was in France when things started going crazy back in the UK. Joint exercise with French Army. He witnesses a different kind of madness...from both Armies being told the exercise was continuing, then shortened... then 24hrs notice the French officers needed to get to their home bases... and the British being told you need to be on the road to the port while people in England tried to book them crossings... they made it onto the last ferry.

Meanwhile I was worrying about feeding the kids and knowing deep down the birthday party my DD was due to have would never happen as I continued to plan it.

She didn't get a birthday party this year either. Her 7th birthday is what I remember as the last normal day. Her party was supposed the next weekend when her father was home.

I can't imagine the trauma that the NHS frontline staff went through so mine seems petty in comparison so i try not to dwell or get upset by it now it's done.
Having to juggle wfh and looking after 7 and 9 yo, on my own.
My main work colleague being taken off my vv small team to work on a different project so didn't really have anyone at work to talk to, or at home.
DCs dad refusing to see them leading to emotional fallout from the dcs which then made me angry that i had to hear him over Skype telling them how much he wished he could see them and knowing that he could if he wanted to.
Going to the shops to be told i was.only allowed one child in the shop with me and 'couldn't I get someone to look after them' made me angry.
Having to leave children in the car in a car park to do the supermarket shopping because as i wasn't cev or elderly I didn't qualify for online shopping and obviously no one was going to look after children and weighing up odds of something happening to them if I left them at home versus in the car.
Knowing I was a single parent, no welfare check from the childrens schools (let alone anything else) until I complained after 10 weeks...to be told that some rule change had meant that they were now busy(!!) and how could I possibly expect a teacher (or her TA) to ring 30 children in 10 weeks. The school wasn't sending out any work at this point either.

Angry and lonely were my primary emotions.

Having 2 dads and a mum die within a week in May; Year 7 & 8 students. We knew they were in hospital and 2 of the students (who's mum died) where in school when they were collected by grandma and we knew what had happened. After that.... I have sat and held so many crying students in the past year that my own mental health has taken quite a hit. Plus crying staff; I'm the one with the tissues and sweets in my office so people tend to end up with me.

I remember someone telling me I was lying about the impact all of this was having on teaching staff; I knew one who had had a stroke, another with organ failure, one had lost their vision in one eye and several in hospital across the North West. But nope, I was lying apparently. That morning I had been with my Head trying to figure out what to say to the family of a colleague (younger than me) who had been in ICU for 5 weeks, and died a week later. After all of that my own DP ended up in hospital 3 times and is still struggling nearly 6 months later.

The pair of us will not be teachers for much longer; just need to get the youngest through university then we are done.

I had given birth 8 weeks before lockdown and was still recovering. My husband was diagnosed a with stage 4 cancer the week before lockdown. It was the most lovely, harrowing experience of my life and I really thought the sky would fall in on us. There were other micro traumas in the first couple of weeks (redundancy even on May leave and the death of a grandparent, serious financial hardship).

Im just thankful now that things across the board seem to be improving.

Mine seem very minor compared to.others on here.

I remember having a huge argument on the phone with ds2 who was at uni. it was the afternoon of 23rd March and I was telling him he needed to pack his stuff and I would come and get him after work as we were going to lockdown. He refused to believe me. Then after the PMs announcement at 8.30 I jumped in the car and drove the 130 miles to get him, panicking that if I didn't get there by midnight I'd be stopped by the police and wouldn't be able to get him.

My MiL was hospitalised in April 2020 leaving FiL at home. He was 94 with dementia and there was no way he could cope. We drove 5 hours to stay with him - the roads were empty, I remember we had to stop at a motorway service station at one point as we needed to use the loo and get a coffee. I was so nervous, all the outlets were closed apart from the WHSmith which had a coffee machine. We got back to the car and I was frantically sanitising everything.

I stayed up until after midnight trying to grab Tesco slots for my elderly mum who lives 90 minutes from me. And being so concerned about her being socially isolated.

I work in Adult Social Care and remember calls with Care Home Managers who were at breaking point, with residents dying, and feeling so helpless.

This is goi f to sound awful when so many people had a horrible time but lockdown 1 was a total novelty for me.

I genuinely thought I’d be working from home for 2 weeks, then we’d have 2 weeks Easter holidays and then we’d ‘be in a much better position’ and everything would return to normal 🙈 I honestly thought we’d all run out of our houses and have a massive party!

The things that stand out for me are endless hot days, BBQs, making afternoon tea of VE Day, Captain Tom, homeschooling DS (around work) but enjoying it, the timetable DS made and stuck on our kitchen door that gradually faded away, going for our ‘daily walk’ along the prom as a family, sitting down at 5pm every day to watch Boris before making tea, hearing about food/ toilet roll shortages on here before the North caught up and going to every supermarket in town to stock up without taking too much of anything from each shop, my mum delivering Easter eggs and talking through the window, my sister walking past and her girls sitting on the wall at the end of our drive to chat, moving house during a lockdown.

Then it dragged on and on and that where it all went downhill for me…

Lancashire not allowing pupils back to school with the rest of the country, further restrictions even though our cases were low, then even further restrictions, ducking facemasks, multiple threads on MN with people musing why things were so bad in the north and coming to the conclusion that it’s because we’re too thick and poor, more lockdowns, still working from home over a year later and letting down the families I work with every single god damn day and still having no idea if we’ll be back to normal in September despite footballer being allowed to flaunt their rule breaking, still not being able to have a holiday. Now I’m at the point where I’m done.

to all of you.

These are the threads that those still denying any of this happened need to read.

I was also told (on here) by a well known MNer that "a quick Google" showed her that I was lying about what was happening here, then organising a pile in on me by her mates. One in particular kept quoting me as a liar on other threads. I still feel viscerally sick when I see her (prolific) username and I'll never forget that "a quick Google" comment.

I hope both of them fucking rot.