I feel like I'm still getting my sense of self back gradually. Restrictions stole my routines and social contact and switched them on and off. It took a lot of drive to keep going through 2020 and the winter lockdown especially the 12 hours notice of school not returning for 2 months and then having 7yo DS2 sobbing into my lap through the online lessons, and regular raging meltdowns from DS1 who was diagnosed with ASD shortly before the first lockdown. Really it's taking all this time for DS2 to rebuild his social confidence, and DS1 is hard to gee up to do anything because staying at home suited him... but that's not a healthy way to live. DS2 said for the first time last night that when he went back to school in Sept 2020 he'd forgotten who his classmates were. It's taken a long time to remake friends because of the two-tier access to school and others carring on while he regressed at home. Superficially life has been normal for at least a year, but everything feels like it costs 10% more effort. Then there's things like all the bloody pre-booking, and trying to work out if a website has just been left 2 years out of date. It's like everything has an extra layer of awkward on top.
I feel that social contraction. Friends weren't interested until about a year ago- easing of compulsory isolation seemed to be the game changer. I feel like I use my social energy on chivvying my immediate family and it's hard to chivvy anyone else along. I don't have much to talk about and I feel like I've lost social skills through neglect. I do say yes to opportunities, and I don't bail out. It never took emotional effort to socialise before, and I'm always glad I've done it. It's more the fear that plans won't come to fruition because so many plans didn't for so long.
We've reached the elderly parents age group which is one factor in my peer group becoming more socially insular, and a lot of parents seem to have accelerated in their decline since 2020 and their loss of interaction so that's a factor affecting my peers behaviour.
In external factors, 2022 was a bitch of a year. 3 family bereavements for me, plus a school friend. We had a shit run of luck with disruptive injuries and illnesses. Plans were still being constantly disrupted at short notice. Covid had little to do with that but it was the last thing needed when I just needed stability and predictability.
The DCs and I never saw MiL again. Covid restrictions couldn't prevent her dying from old age, and loss of routine medical treatment in 2020 accelerated her decline. We travelled over to see her in 2021 in a catalogue of changing travel restrictions, but as she was in a care setting, only DH could see her. As she became frailer, it wasn't practical to make family plans to see her again as she switched between settings frequently and by her final months in 2022, she was struggling to recognise family members, and we decided that it was better for the DCs to remember her as she was than to go all that travel and risk distress at not being recognised as had happened with teenage cousins.
There has been change, it's been pretty much 3 years, and life evolves. We don't normally have a full stop and then have to restart everything, and that has a cost to it. It's sharper to see what was and what is and there hasn't been the gradual shift through life that there normally is. It's not necessarily that I'm in a substantially different place to where I would have ended up, it's just been an emotionally more draining route with very few rest breaks and light moments along the way. It is gradually improving though, and I'm getting emotionally healthier from the numb/ angry, inert state of spring 2021.