Anyone else still feeling flat?

[Summercocktailsinthesnow]

I will say I am grateful to still be here, and I have not lost anyone very close to me to covid. Believe me I am grateful for those things. I am not depressed in the slightest either, however I am finding it increasingly hard to listen to all the conversations about hugging and enjoying life again on the radio and every news channel, and I am just not feeling it. At all. Things don't feel very different to me.

I have shivered through meals and drinks with friends, braved the weather for BBQs, I have even had my hair done! I imagined by now to be feeling much better than I am. But I don't feel better. I am so flat, and find things are not much better than before. The things I most want to do seem still a million miles away.

I am desperate for a holiday, we have worked all the way through, but how easy it that going to be this summer? Chances look exceptionally low. I want to dance at a festival, no chance. Or go to something with live music, anything.
I want to enjoy shopping without feeling muzzled, and I really feel what we have now is not really a whole life at all, it is like a half life. It is nothing like the life I left behind. I have no sense of when it will end. The scientist on the BBC today said she wasn't sure the next reopening will even happen....the moment when some kind of normal happens on the 21st of June.

I can't summon the energy to look forward to anything, because we have no idea if it will happen. I feel like I am being lied to, look at all you can do is the strap line, the reality is freezing cold, wind swept evenings eating cold over priced food, and everything is so limited in experience and in interaction, like trying to enjoy a facial with someone covered in PPE none of this is actually fun anymore!

I am optimist, by nature, and of course I have already counted my blessings for the things we can do, but really I just want my old life back so so so badly. Does anyone else feel like this?

It isn't just spontaneity that is missing, it is the total lack of adventure that is possible.

Everything is so ordered and sterile, and predictable. There is no opportunity for any sort of adventure - large or small. And humans need adventure; they are necessary for health (ironically)

Of course, there are huge individual differences in how people tolerate chaos (predictability) and I am guessing that a lot of people on this thread have a high tolerance for chaos and therefore love adventure. I know I do....it is the absolute lack of chaos that is driving me round the bend. I don't need everything to be predictable and ordered. The orderly people have dictated the terms of our lives for the past year, and I know that it is literally burning my brain cells to dust with every passing minute. I am not joking when I say I think I have had cognitive decline because of the total lack of mental stimulation.

On the variants, a study in June last year found there had been 353,341 variants. There is just no way to make order out of that chaos and people really need to get to grips with that.

It isn't just spontaneity that is missing, it is the total lack of adventure that is possible.

Everything is so ordered and sterile, and predictable. There is no opportunity for any sort of adventure - large or small. And humans need adventure; they are necessary for health (ironically)

Of course, there are huge individual differences in how people tolerate chaos (predictability) and I an guessing that a lot of people on this thread have a high tolerance for chaos and therefore love adventure. I know I do....it is the absolute lack of chaos that is driving me round the bend. I don't need everything to be predictable and ordered. The orderly people have dictated the terms of our lives for the past year, and I know that it is literally burning my brain cells to dust with every passing minute. I am not joking when I say I think I have had cognitive decline because of the total lack of mental stimulation.

On the variants, a study in June last year found there had been 353,341. There is just no way to make order out of that chaos and people really need to get to grips with that.

No idea why my last post glitched so badly. Sorry

Nope 32D here

Nope 32D here

why are we still doing this when all of the vulnerable are now vaccinated. Barely anyone is dying of anything, the numbers in hospitals have plummeted. Why is it still okay to inflict all of this on us now?

I think part of my problem is a kind of split thinking, we're unlocking but at the same time we're not supposed to act as if it's really all over. I'm trying to be calm about it and not get too angry myself, because we are not out of the woods yet. We haven't reached herd immunity yet though we might get there soon BBC linky It's not just about vacccinating the vulnerable, it's also about vacccinating the spreaders who can incubate variants that are more infectious, or get past the vaccines, or make people more ill, maybe variants that will be more dangerous to younger people or even children. It bums me out that we still have to take all these precautions.

And we still don't know everything about the illness. I live in Scotland where the infection rate has dropped except in one area Moray where it's high and going up. Why? No-one knows. Until recently Moray had a very low infection rate. Every adult there is now being called for vaccination and hopefully that will soon knock it on the head, but we still don't know for sure.

Worse still, now I have new family connections (lucky for me not close family) dying in India and that's also changed how I feel. A few weeks ago it was just something on telly, doesn't really affect me except maybe through new variants if we're very unlucky. And now I feel that disaster could so easily have been us, until very recently everyone was admiring how well India were doing. Of course it's so much worse for my family who are closer to it, and as for the young people trying to get back to the family or arrange medical care for them from a distance, they are in shock.

That makes me feel worse even about "going back to normal" here and coming out of lockdown etc because even if we are allowed to do everything we could do before and even if it's safe, it wont be the same. The big wedding where we get introduced to this new family will have serious gaps if it goes ahead at all

So much as I hate lockdown, masks, restrictions, etc. I am trying to be angry about Covid and not about the absolutely grim miserable measures that we're taking to try to stop it.

Hamster "On the variants, a study in June last year found there had been 353,341. There is just no way to make order out of that chaos and people really need to get to grips with that."

Yes. It's a shock to me that people thought everything could be controlled or prevented and they think so many things should be changed to achieve that.

I had to pop to a shop today and they had loud music on. No worries, if it helps the staff get on with their day, great. I sort of jumped though. It was just a rap song on a fair bit louder than I'd have at home...
But I'm so separated from ordinary life, it made me jump, which is silly.

I'm so glad to see this as I feel the same and thought it was just me. My get up and go has got up and gone. Maybe we've just got out of the "habit" of doing things. Everything really does seem like a chore, even the nice things.

Well I just added to the general monotony with multiple duplicate postings. It wasn't even that good a point

Sorry - no idea what happened there

Yes. It's a shock to me that people thought everything could be controlled or prevented and they think so many things should be changed to achieve that.

The pandemic has really brought home to me how many people genuinely felt that our world is safe and sanitised, and every risk managed for them. Covid blew a hole in that and it seems to have shattered some people's hold on reality. Problem is, when your life is spinning out of control (or feels like it is) that's when the coping mechanisms start: the telling off of others, the policing of what people around us are doing/not doing, the introduction of our own version of the rules, telling people how terrible it is or could be...all of it is a desperate attempt to wrest back some morsel of control.

What's worse though is the number of people who seem to want all this - the rules, the regulations, the tracing, the masks - to continue forever more, because that way they feel safer from the Covid Bogeyman. If we're going to wait until the world is safe before we unlock, we're going to be waiting a long fucking time.

Ostara212 "I'm so separated from ordinary life, it made me jump, which is silly."

I don't think that's silly at all. I've been trying to do some "ordinary" things just to get used to them again even if they makes me nervous now. But right now it's mostly an effort not a pleasure.

I walked out of the first restaurant we went to - it had a marquee and the noise and music was deafening and such a shock we just left, it was an overload. So definitely not you ostara The second time around I mentally prepared for the racket and it was fine. Just keep going, you will soon adjust

So my mother calls me this evening one of my lovely great aunts has died, not so surprising but very sad because she was a beautiful person as old as she was.
What was surprising is that she died FIVE weeks ago, I asked my mother why on earth she didn't tell me before we have had several calls in that time, and she said there was no point as we couldn't go to the funeral anyway Just like that. No chance to send flowers, to say goodbye, to comfort the rest of the family. Some people, my parents included are now so deadened to loss that for them this did not seem a priority to tell me.

I think I am right to think this is so far from normal as to be positively unnerving.

My cousins will think we don't care - and nothing could be further from the truth. Things like this keep happening all of the time, the protocol is not there anymore. The order of life, of passing and births and being together covid has fractured everything.

We are on survival mode still as a country, and sometimes it shows.

I feel like this too and I get increasingly angry every time yet another goalpost is moved or when another headline date is further explained and we find out that actually, all is not as it seems and we won’t actually be a free as we were expecting. The lifting of the ban on travelling abroad is a good example, yes it’s no longer illegal to go abroad but it’s only really possible or not extortionately expensive if you are travelling to a minute amount of countries, half of which won’t even let you in.
I have turned into a grumpy, angry and frustrated woman drifting through a half life and I hate the powers at be for that because it is not who I am.

QuoteSummercocktailsinthesnow I am sorry for your loss And I am so sorry that your parents didn't feel able to tell you.

It is not my parents didn't feel able to tell me, just that this is the sixth person they have lost in a month and as they can't go to funerals, and we are all unable to grieve together, as we would normally do, I guess they thought they had told me, when in fact they hadn't.

I am now wondering if they are suffering from some kind of dementia, it is a pretty big thing to forget, even with all of the loss they are experiencing. Thank goodness I am seeing them this weekend. They seem to have aged with all of this stress overnight.

Thank you Amaryllis It is my dd's name - and you are as lovely as she is!

OP, I am sorry for your loss.

I have a floaty detached feeling many days so I think I can see what might have occurred in your parents minds?

Op I feel the same, I just didn’t really realise it. I’ve been having a continually hard time at work, I work on my own but have lots of contacts in the same field and we all feel similarly. Our job has changed a huge amount and is no longer one I’d ever pick but I’m stuck. Everything is disappointing and a hassle. I haven’t been to a pub or restaurant since they opened, can’t really be bothered. Friends have tried to make plans but I haven’t organised anything yet.

I’ve done some ‘normal’ things but I’m not that interested in them anymore. I feel like my cosy covid lockdown routine has been shaken up and I’m expected to go out and do stuff but I don’t really want to. Everything seems lack lustre and a poor version of what they used to be. ‘Social distancing’ and ‘covid safe’ used as a positive tag line that’s meant to draw you in and encourage you to visit somewhere- no thanks.

I love my abroad holidays but I won’t be trying to go anywhere, there’s not a chance I’ll go if I have to get tests done. The risk of it being cancelled, having to quarantine, having to wear masks and feel like a criminal because I stand too close to someone... forget it.

Life is a shadow of its former self, a mock version of what it used to be and I’m over it.

This thread is actually a ray of sunshine for me and has done me the world of good as I thought I was alone in feeling how I do. I honestly assumed that everyone else was happy with things and rushing out to sit in rainy pub gardens was on the top of everyone's list of fun.

To be honest the thought of a pub or restaurant with all the rules still in place puts me off. Yes we can go inside but once inside it is like being on a weird new ride at a grim themed theme park.

Yes to all of this. I adore adventures and travel. They recharge me. Until last year I had never spent a single full day at home in the last decade. Seriously.

Now we can do more it's still freezing outside, the weather is unpredictable and most things are a total ball ache. People are also so scared of doing anything.

I've booked a night away with dp in a nearby city and am so excited it's pathetic.

@Summercocktailsinthesnow I’m sorry for your loss

All the spontaneity and fun is gone.

We have paid a terrible price .

Restrictions need to end NOW

For me, it’s not about restrictions ending NOW but can accept that that’s how it is for some.
I want to live and I want others I know to live. So that is what we get with restrictions. I am in a strange place of places being completely uninhabited to everywhere being very very busy. And with that, as pp have said, lack of spontaneity because you need to book everything.

I just feel that there’s nothing to look forward to.

@GrannyWeatherwaxsHatpin

Good God, I'm glad I found this thread. There's so much on here that covers exactly how I feel, but thankfully without the sanctimonious "Be glad you're alive/not a front line worker/it was worse in the War/insert other triteness here".

I'm tired. Not physically tired, but mentally tired. Tired of never knowing where we'll be and what we're allowed to do and never getting up your hopes because they'll get dashed.

I'm tired of the lack of spontaneity and carefree-ness. Going to the pub involved a "Fancy a pint?" text and finding my shoes. Now it's masks, checking in, sanitising, sitting at your designated table with your designated group (no popping over to see someone else) and that's always assuming you can get a table. No more squishing onto the end of someone else's. I'm tired of going out dressed for all eventualities and sitting in the drizzle keeping the raindrops out of my pint while avoiding hypothermia and trying to convince myself that this is just as much fun as it used to me.

I'm tired of the tracking. I'm no tin-foil-hat wearing 5G-will-kill-us-all nutjob but I am deeply uncomfortable with having to register when I go somewhere. I don't want a fucking NHS app, I don't want a fucking vaccine passport to prove I can go somewhere and register when I do.

I'm tired of kiboshed friendships - I've been horrified to see what sort of people friends turned into, with their shouting and lecturing at anyone who did something of which they didn't approve, or who seemed to find some comfort in scaring the daylights out of everyone else, especially in the early days. I've had to step back from those. Others, I think, have stepped back from me because they didn't agree with how I tried to carry on as normal as possible (although obviously within the rules). I'm a fairly solitary soul but I'm tired of the loneliness and the sheer amount of effort that goes into the few social interactions I have.

I'm tired of masks. The first time I saw a shop full of people wearing them, combined with having to wear one myself, I had a full-on panic attack. It was awful. And from certain quarters I got no sympathy beyond "Suck it up, it's for your own and others' good". I want to smile, I want to wear lipstick, I want to see other people's faces.

I'm tired of scientists who seem to think we should live in their version of a potential ideal world. Suggestions that we should continue to social distance/wear masks/be tracked forever more because "it will help with general disease control" as if this is more important than living our lives freely. Like this is all one big experiment and nothing else matters - not non-Covid health, not mental health, nothing.

I'm tired of knowing I could do something but all the fun will be sucked out of it by The Regulations. Tired of how our lives have diminished and we're just supposed to accept it. Tired of how things seem to range from bad to dull, and the other half of the spectrum has disappeared. I'm just...tired.

All of this. Every single word.

Ditto. With knobs on.

This thread is actually a ray of sunshine for me and has done me the world of good

I am really pleased this thread is helping. I started it wondering if it was just me, it is quite hard to talk about in real life. People either talk about big problems caused by covid or say they are fine. None of my friends are talking about their energy bypass, and nor am I. We are just getting on with it, heads down.

Lots of people have mentioned the weather, and there is definitely something in that. Lets hope when the summer arrives, it brings some relief for all of us.