I don’t like this life.

[Maskedminger]

It’s been almost a year, everything changed, am still suffering from covid from March, am inside for 12 hours per day with my toddler. My ‘Old’ life seems a far away, distant memory, the only highlight is going to do the food shopping, feel there’s nothing to look forward to.
I’m starting to feel just nothing inside, anyone else?

@AtlasPine

Sorry to hear that

I feel you there, my relationship is damaged too, not sure it will ever be the same

[quote canipressthebackbuttonplease]@AtlasPine

Sorry to hear that

I feel you there, my relationship is damaged too, not sure it will ever be the same[/quote]
Thanks - it was a bit tongue in cheek and I hope we will recover when things are more normal but the intensity of only having each other has taken its toll. We were never a couple who depended on each other and got everything we needed from each other - like most I suspect.

My VR headset has been my lifesaver. I was socialising last night with a group of random people that I've been speaking to the last few weeks on it. Haven't laughed so hard in a long time. I usually find it hard to speak to people but in VR it's ok as I don't need to make proper eye contact or worry about my appearance. I've been using it for exercise as well, Beat Saber is so much fun! And I use a Google Street View type app to roam around the world, it feels like you're actually there, 360 degree view. Best £300 I've spent. Makes this shit show a whole lot less depressing.

Same here. DH working from home since March, I was WFH last lockdown but this time I'm working. I have to educate key worker children, I'm wearing a mask that causes panic attacks for 6+ hours and is making my skin angry and painful while fighting off parents complaining or trying to get spaces for their kids when they don't qualify. We've had 3 holidays cancelled, including my 20th anniversary trip with DH. I've not had a break from my teen DD since March last year - she's amazing but I need a break. Dh and I are forgetting we exist outside of being parents.
The relentlessness of working, worrying, mask wearing, family missing, stuck at home etc etc has got me to the point of being absolutely fucking done with this.

That's exactly how I feel. Dead inside.

I was starting to feel this way and then my Dad died of (not with) Covid at Christmas. I liked my job and will possibly return to work in a couple of weeks but I am so down and the thought of trying to keep everyone safe is just making me worse. I had Covid same time as my Dad and Mum as I help with some of their care needs.
I try to look forward to the future but all I hear is new variants and vaccines may not stop them. Life is very bleak.

My ex saw a meme about the war being harder than covid and laughed his head off. He was born during a revolution, grew during a 8 year war and was tortured by the regime he lived under. He escaped in a lorry and arrived in Britain on a dingy. He says covid is worse. It’s never being able to relax, worrying about going outside. Not being able to hug your relatives. It’s a hidden enemy and constant fear.

An elderly relative of mine just killed herself through starvation. She lived in an old people’s home. Once she was told she would not be allowed to see her son again through another lock down she said there was no more joy to her life and she stopped eating and drinking. She was dead within 5 days.

I felt so very sad but could also fully empathise. Life isn’t worth saving at all costs. If this was my life for another few years I wouldn’t want to live it.

Waving lethargically from my bed in sympathy and with empathy.

Mostly I feel guilt and shame because on the surface I'm lucky - no school age kids, elderly parents are all stable at the moment and at least partially vaccinated.....spoke to my Dad who will continue to SD as mandated to protect us all .....

Everything seems utterly pointless, illogical and endless and I can't shake the feeling that nothing will be the same again even if / when things progress.

And my ability to communicate with anyone other than my nearest and dearests is dwindling because everyone is on a knife edge and I'm terrified of upsetting people.

Posting here is my only way if making sure my brain still functions, and that's mostly an effort too.

And I feel guilty for feeling this shit because other people have it worse, but I did lose my Mum to cancer last April so logically that's part of it. It's her imagined voice that stops me from unleashing my inner angst. I smile and nod and soothe my DP while internally screaming at him that losing his reading glasses is not my problem but hey ho, I shall be nice, be kind, and probably be a fully fledged alcoholic pretty soon.

Yep I feel dead inside like pps have said. Drag myself from bed at a few mins to 9 to my spare room to sit at a computer trying to do a job I despise with a manager who is awful (can count the times on one hand they've spoken to me since last March), no support, work piled on with no help or training. Log off at 5 and go back to bed. Repeat. I have no motivation to do anything else and I used to be someone who couldn't sit at peace. I just want to stay in bed all day and tbh I wouldn't care if I didn't wake up tomorrow.

Sick of it too. I’ve deleted my news apps and started avoiding listening to radio 4 which I ordinarily love but the only escape from constant chatter of vaccines seems to be the Archers and desert island discs.

Homeschooling Is a nightmare and I’m so bored of going on walks but we have to do it else we’d just be in the house all day every day. I miss boring normal things like trips to the cinema and sitting in coffee shops. Life felt semi-normal in August again and it was lovely, completely yearning for that again. I honestly feel like we’re living in an Orwell novel.

@CovidRage

My VR headset has been my lifesaver. I was socialising last night with a group of random people that I've been speaking to the last few weeks on it. Haven't laughed so hard in a long time. I usually find it hard to speak to people but in VR it's ok as I don't need to make proper eye contact or worry about my appearance. I've been using it for exercise as well, Beat Saber is so much fun! And I use a Google Street View type app to roam around the world, it feels like you're actually there, 360 degree view. Best £300 I've spent. Makes this shit show a whole lot less depressing.

Please tell me which make/model and where I can buy one!

May I please recommend that everyone read this article?

www.juliusruechel.com/2021/01/bystander-at-switch-moral-case-against.html

@CallMeCleo I understand the concept of weighing one human life against another. No one should be sacrificial lambs but we cant live like this indefinitely. Call me selfish, cold hearted I really dont care, the majority of us shouldn't be living like so a small percentage of the population dies, most of which are near life expectancy age.

Selfish of me, yes but I don't think children should miss out on social lifes, education and the world to save people in their 70s plus who have lived their life and could die of natural causes or other illnesses.

I don’t see it as so much about protecting a minority of people, rather it’s more that we have to stop the NHS being overwhelmed and completely collapsing - because if it does, there’s no plan B.

If previous governments hadn’t cut, cut, cut away at budgets and instead put proper funding into the NHS, so that it’s fit for purpose, we wouldn’t be having to take such extreme evasive action. We would have a health system that could cope.

I have been following the rules strictly for a year now, but I’m really at the point now where I and this close to saying ‘fuck it’ and just doing what I want.

I have had the easiest, safest, cushiest of lockdowns and am on the verge of losing my mind. I can’t imagine how others who have it worse are feeling. Enough is enough.

I hear you.

Cushy life here to, but furious.

I’d like to change the strapline:

Fund the NHS, Be Prepared, Crack On

Hope you’re all feeling a little better today.

I went food shopping..again, to get out of the house. I veer between wanting to stay there for something to just occupy my time and giving in to the fear and feeling I should get out as quickly as I can.

To a pp, can’t find you now, sorry! I’m not able to go to a play park with Dd, they’re all shut where we are, plus we can’t see other people/friends... all beaches closed, even benches have tape all over them so people can’t sit down, it’s just unreal.

Oh when people say this it really makes me so angry! Or when my mum said to me "we're all in the same boat", while she lives in a mansion with acres of beautiful garden and I live in a small terrace with two severely autistic children. I didn't speak to her for weeks.

@Flackattack I kind of get what you're saying but I think that's a dangerous line of reasoning. Who gets to decide the criteria and thresholds for the less valuable lives? How old is too old? Some of us with disabled children were sent into a flurry of desperation when at the start of the crisis it was suggested that autistic or learning disabled people with no underlying health conditions would potentially be denied ventilators. It was the same kind of reasoning.

I think March will be a tipping point for a lot of people as we’ll have been living like this for a year. I suspect (and hope) a lot of us will take it upon ourselves to change things and act more ‘normal’. Of course individual people can’t reopen schools, restaurants or whatever, but I think there’s going to be a steady increase in socialising etc. I for one plan to start meeting up with friends and their children at the park, finally seeing my family and giving them overdue Christmas presents etc!

For me the biggest risk we face is us all attempting not to live like the social beings we naturally are.

Every day seems the same. Going to Aldi is a treat, even though they only allow one person per trolley. I have to seriously think about which day of the week it is. We just have to get through this peeps.

Completely agree OP. But mostly I’m just bloody exhausted. I get up at 6:30 with the kids. Bring 2 yr old to nursery. Come back to sit next to 7 year old doing Teams classes from 8:20 to 3:40. Try and work my full time job alongside her but interrupted every 10 minutes with her chatting or asking for help. Then toddler arrives home at 5:30 with DH. Feeding, playing, bedtime until 8:30. Eat and straight back to the laptop by 9:00. Work until whenever I can no longer keep my eyes open - usually between 1 and 2 am. And then fall asleep stressed about all the work I still haven’t done and rubbish job I have done of looking after and home schooling my 7 year old. Ron W and repeat. With no meal out or theatre experience or holiday to look forward to.

That should be “rinse” and repeat!