What the hell happened?

[IwanttobeMrTumble]

Instagram and Fb oh so kindly showing me memories from last year. We were at my friends child’s party, my toddler Dd was in her swimming lessons, we were preparing for my parents to fly over to us in the April and we’d booked a holiday ski-ing, for the end of March.
My posts are all chirpy and funny, I can remember the feeling of happiness, it feels like a lifetime ago.
Cut to now-struggling with long covid for 10 months, Dd is involved in no groups and doesn’t socialise. Flights from where we live to the U.K. aren’t allowed, I don’t know when I’ll see my parents or family again, we never see any friends or have real contact with others. I’ve lost my job and spend my days crippled with anxiety about what the actual fuck is going on.

Can anyone give me some positivity about the situation and the future at all, in any way? Feel like my mind is spiralling out of control with people talking about this being it forever now.
How do you handle all this?

It's hard to stay positive, but what's working for me is to remember that this too shall pass. I imagine that families during the last major pandemic, or those during wartime also felt it would last forever, but it didn't. Neither will this. I hate the twee phrase as it was used a couple of years ago, but now I finally see the point of the "keep calm and carry on" wartime phrase.

hang on in there OP, this is proving a marathon but we're surely at the halfway point now or even past it. Hope the long covid gets better soon x

It will pass. It's incredibly difficult and I genuinely feel for you. We will never forget how shit this time has been but we will get through it. Try to focus on something nice each day for yourself and for your family.

If you have long Covid have you looked into any Facebook or other LC support groups or the ME Association or ME Action? My DD has very severe ME and groups like that have been a lifeline for me.

It has been a miserable 11 months, I never expected it would go on this long. Like other posters, I think of what other people have gone through, war, pandemic and the human race always recovers and we will this time too. Sometimes I think maybe I am lucky to have spent my existing fifty years without any challenges on this scale.

I really miss my holidays too, particularly my massive but cancelled 50th birthday trip last year that I spent three years planning. But I daydream about the day, whenever it may be of going to the airport. That will be so exciting, I will appreciate it more than ever.

@Sooverthemill Thank you, I’m on them all! 💐

@Aprilx That’s how I feel too, as if my ‘Old’ life is now just that and how lucky we were to have had it and not gone through anything like that. But I worry about the future for my daughter.
All this talk of it being forever and everything changing? I don’t see how it has to, I just want it all back to the way it was.

We had so many years of struggle with infertility and ivf, plus money worries from it all. Then we had our Dd and everything seemed to pick up, in barely any time it all came crashing down for everyone.

You know how you're looking back on that time, and it feels like such a long time ago, and so unrelated to your life now? At some near point in the future you will look back at today, and you will feel exactly the same way. You will have your family around you, you will be happy again, and this time will be the distant past xx

One day at a timd
Walk outside edvery day
Show your dd the shoots of spring
Life is different
But there is hope
Your dd kniw no different

You do but you can make it ok for dd

There are things you cannot control

There are things you can
Your daily walk
Finding changes around you as seasons change

Trite but think of how you want dd to look backon this time

Look at tools to batten down anxiety

My FB memories from 1 year ago today.
Is my sister's 50th surprise birthday Party at my house. Picture after picture of groups of family and friends all close together eating, drinking.
This was the last time my 5 siblings and I were all together, which is mental when you think about it as we are always in each other's houses.

I know what you mean OP. That life is starting to feel like another time now, rather than merely "last month" or "back in January". I've noticed it myself recently. The distance.

I like seeing Facebook memories but the ones coming up now make me well up. I remember being worried about what was happening in China but I never imagined this would be how we would end up.

The memories coming up now are us at restaurants, DD12 at a scout event and DD10's birthday. Happy relaxed times. I think the last times I remember actually being truely happy.

Fast forward 1 year - DH is isolated upstairs in the bedroom after testing positive for Coronavirus at the beginning of the week and the rest of us are just hoping he gets better and we don't also develop symptoms. How did life get so rubbish. ☹

@Lindy2 I know, it’s so surreal isn’t it 😞

@ReallySpicyCurry2 It is, it’s almost becoming ‘Before covid’ which seems daft when it’s not a year yet, but in actuality, a year of your life and longer is pretty significant.

@ParkheadParadise It’s so strange

@Embracelife You’re completely right, have to embrace/make the most of it somehow. I’ve been pretty ok and resilient throughout (aside from high anxiety at the start) now it’s turning into some kind of depression/apathy/what’s the point

@CastleCrasher @lubeybooby 💐

@JovialNickname Thank you 🙏 that made me well up a little...it’s just all so messed up!

I know exactly how you feel. I can’t do it anymore 😢.

Something has given way inside of me today. So i sympathise. I've got absolutely nothing to look forward to on the calendar, I've no job, no one I can visit even if I wanted to break the rules, I found out one of my care clients died before Christmas and no one at the agency told me (I thought I had friends there). I've got lots of things, health, children, a house. But going forward there will be no positivity from me. It's just duty and responsibility keeping me on my feet. Everywhere I turn I just get "that's life now". How bleak.

Did you suffer from anxiety pre covid?

@Sethy38 No?

@B33Fr33 So sorry 😞
That’s the thing, it’s become so accepted now, that’s what worries me? It will get back to normal, won’t it? It will get better, surely?

@LadyCatStark 😢