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?

By the late stages of autumn when people asked how I was, I started being more honest and replied "existing", and you could see the recognition of it in their expression. I didn't want to pie and brush it off as "fine" anymore, nor be unduly negative. "Existing" seemed to sum it up pretty well.
That's about 6m ago, which shocks me.

This is me too. Thanks for expressing so clearly how I feel at the moment. I need to have something to look forward to and there’s just....nothing.

I think it really helps to know we’re all not alone in how we feel. I think I might start using the phrase “existing” when asked how I am - not only is it honest but if others feel the same way maybe they won’t feel so lonely too.

The funny thing is I always thought of myself as an introverted sort who preferred to plan and liked things somewhat predictable. Maybe I'd have coped better with the lockdowns and social distancing before having kids. I've also just been existing for the last year.

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.

This is so true.

I remember being very upbeat with the re-openings were announced. Then I read all the 'guidelines' - masks for staff, no ordering at the bar, wear a mask to use the bathroom, no 'mixing' with other groups, maybe even partitions between tables and I felt eally down again. For all I want to support the hospitality industry, I'd rather just have a drink at home without the expense and pretense that this is 'normal'.

I work freelance and my main job - which I love - is in the summer. I had assumed it wouldn't be happening this year, then about 10 days ago I got an email to say it might be back on. At first I was thrilled, thinking this might really be the beginning of the end of this horrible time. Then I read the email again, and saw that we'd have to wear masks, practice social distancing and due to a big drop in clients, most of my friends, who I love catching up with every year, won't be there. Not to mention that our usual social activities will be drastically curtailed.

As someone said above, this bloody virus has sucked all the joy out of life. And in a way this 'semi normal' makes it even worse. I don't want the 'new normal'. I want my old life back.

I did mean to go to St Paul's at some point but the conditions attached put me off, why would I bother.

This doesn't surprise me but it's sad.

What I might do is get the train into town at the weekend and take photos outside, before it gets converted into flats or whatever.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-56997142

There's an Alice exhibition at the V&A but how can it be enjoyed with all the crazy? I would have liked that - though I'll grant you I haven't seen the ticket prices yet, I still have a student discount though.

I feel the same, everything seems like a chore, nothing to look forward to, every day is the same, just feel I have no life, I'm extremely depressed and drained, tired. Just look forward to going to bed, dread every day. Still struggling with PND even though DD is 17 months now. Feel she's missing out, she's just stuck in the house with me. Even feel suicidal. Yet when I try to talk to DP about how I feel he says he doesn't want to hear it and he's not interested in all that "mental health shit", that I'm a miserable negative person and not to bother talking if I can't be positive. Feel completely alone, like what's the bloody point anymore

Whilst I agree that the loss of spontaneity has sucked a lot of the joy out of life, I take issue with the idea that the pandemic has been a walk in the park for people who like predictability and can’t stand chaos. Look at the on off Christmas. Look at the money wasted on Christmas decorations by pubs and other commercial premises who went into the second lockdown in Tier 1 and came out - if that’s the right phrase - in Tier 3.
People have cancelled weddings three or four times. Schools reopened for a day. Then there’s cancelled surgery. I’m sure you get the idea. It’s been utter chaos.
While I’m here, I’d just like to put in a defence of curtain twitchers. The stereotypical curtain twitcher is an elderly single female unlikely to be enjoying the restrictions on her life. My whole family report on their neighbours’ rulebreaking to one another other all the time. It says nothing about our views on structural inequality or anything else. We just don’t have as much to talk about as we used to.

I'm naturally very organised and all the uncertainty has absolutely done my head in. On the other hand, the planning ahead that's necessary to do anything at the moment is too much even for me.

The other thing I'm particularly struggling with at the moment is the "well technically you can... but please don't" messaging around foreign holidays. It's like Christmas again.

We have had the fear of God put into us for a year.
It's not surprising there is somewhat of a hangover effect.
I'm trying to be patient with myself.

@strugglingwithlife that sounds so very hard. X

Yes totally. Last year was great for me really and I got through it unscathed, but this year seems bleak with no end in sight. Even the kids seem a bit down at the moment.

Feeling very flat (and very fat) indeed.

@strugglingwithlife

I feel the same, everything seems like a chore, nothing to look forward to, every day is the same, just feel I have no life, I'm extremely depressed and drained, tired. Just look forward to going to bed, dread every day. Still struggling with PND even though DD is 17 months now. Feel she's missing out, she's just stuck in the house with me. Even feel suicidal. Yet when I try to talk to DP about how I feel he says he doesn't want to hear it and he's not interested in all that "mental health shit", that I'm a miserable negative person and not to bother talking if I can't be positive. Feel completely alone, like what's the bloody point anymore

I'm so sorry to hear this. Is there anyone else apart from your partner you can talk to? Please also speak to your GP or health visitor..

I feel I cant be bothered with pre booking everything so just dont go.
I feel huge social anxiety now that I didn't have before, dont want to go back to an office with others now...

It’s because it just doesn’t seem to be getting any bloody better! We were told that vaccines were the answer and that is very close to being fully achieved and yet still there are so many restrictions despite the opening.
It’s all allowed again but there’s still masks and social distancing and stupid shop announcements and pcr tests to take at least 3 times to get outside of the country and back and there’s still limits on numbers, booking into places and tracing, one way systems and endless government poster and radio propaganda. Then just today there’s new out of the US that vaccinated people don’t have to wear masks anymore, i.e. forced compliance.

I just want the whole lot to be gone now. It’s way past the time for people to be able to make their own choices and most people that need or want to be protected have been able to obtain vaccines.

The other thing I find difficult to get my head around is that, although it’s fast approaching the summer, there’s not that much sign of a real return to normal. Mentally for me, things really did need to accelerate towards total normality for the summer months, otherwise the next winter (and inevitable respiratory virus season) will be back upon us and we start all over again with the tiers and restrictions and it never ends!!

Thank you PetuniaPot and Turkishangora I have some friends who I can talk to although I don't really like to bother them with it all

I think it feels like we're just treading water. It doesn't feel much different to March last year.

As a business owner, I'm struggling with the impact it's still having.

As a person, I'm very close to the end of my rope with it. I've started taking Kalms in the last month because I can just feel this simmering knot in my gut.

I’m feeling awful today. I’d booked a short spa break for my husband and I from these-fri next week to celebrate him being brain tumour free. Just tried to book some treatments and dinner - can’t. Spa fully booked because the rules mean less appointments available throughout the day, one restaurant is shut as it can’t adhere to social distancing, the other one doesn’t have a working website and no one is picking up the phone “because Covid”. I’ve sent an email to the hotel asking for help as that’s my only option, but all the excitement I’d had about this stay is gone and now I feel like it’s just going to be more of the same, fucking masks, signs, stupid fucking arrows and constant reminders that even though vaccines were supposed to be the answer we’re all still living this shitty half life. Not sure why I wasted all that money trying to do something nice, it won’t be the experience we’ve had before at this hotel. I won’t be able to recreate that for my husband and not sure why I even thought I could. I could cry with frustration, I’m so done with all of it.

Thank you for starting this thread. I've been trying to work out where my mojo went too.
I think there's a big pressure to be grateful too - not that I'm not, but it's as if whatever you might be struggling with, the knowledge that other people are having it worse (you're sick? At least it's not Covid! Worried about your job? At least you have a job to be worried about! Hate homeschooling? At least you don't have toddlers/ students to worry about! Working all the hours there are? Try being a frontline nurse and then see if you complain!) etc. I am grateful, of course I am, but it saps my energy at times. The Attitude of Gratitude is great, but I feel a lot of pressure to meet everything with a Big Smile I don't ever feel. It's like I don't belong in the brave new Covid world we've somehow built for ourselves.
The endless cycle of work/housework without leaving the house doesn't help either, and nor does the feeling that it might all be taken away at any minute.

It seems very messed up that I can't, for love nor money get a HV appointment or go to a speech and language session for my toddler because of Covid, but from Monday the rules will be relaxed further.

Other than that I'm okay.

And this bastarding fucking awful weather feels like the final sodding straw. It's feels like it's been fucking lockdown February forever - nothing to look forward to on a daily basis, perpetually working to grind through another chilly grey flat day holding on to a hope that things will be better soon. And that hope is worn as thin as rags now.

It's a half life, and I am genuinely worried that i have found a new "low" from which I'll never rise.

I have no hope. I’m going through the motions for DS’s sake, but it’s soul-destroying trying to plan for his summer holiday when I know either the things I’ve booked won’t happen at all, or they’ll happen in such a constrained way that none of it will be any fun.

This is quite an interesting article:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-57100378

In a nutshell:

Dr Julie says that after a long period of not doing much, we can become lethargic.

"Not exercising or socialising as much as you might normally will have an impact on flattening your mood and your effort."

Her advice for getting out of the funk?

"Action creates energy. So once we start to do more, we will feel the energy that goes with that. But, bringing yourself to that point can be quite difficult."

@permanentlyexhaustedpigeon

Thank you for starting this thread. I've been trying to work out where my mojo went too. I think there's a big pressure to be grateful too - not that I'm not, but it's as if whatever you might be struggling with, the knowledge that other people are having it worse (you're sick? At least it's not Covid! Worried about your job? At least you have a job to be worried about! Hate homeschooling? At least you don't have toddlers/ students to worry about! Working all the hours there are? Try being a frontline nurse and then see if you complain!) etc. I am grateful, of course I am, but it saps my energy at times. The Attitude of Gratitude is great, but I feel a lot of pressure to meet everything with a Big Smile I don't ever feel. It's like I don't belong in the brave new Covid world we've somehow built for ourselves. The endless cycle of work/housework without leaving the house doesn't help either, and nor does the feeling that it might all be taken away at any minute.

I feel exactly the same. Feel quite down this last week and can't see why, nothing has changed, maybe it's 'same shit, different day' scenario.

Weather doesn't help!

I feel the same - I even wrote a blog post on it - thewownetwork.co.uk/lisa-wow/apathetic-not-pathetic
Still struggling but really trying to make the best of it.