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?

Op, you have summed up exactly how I feel.

Yes I can identify with this.
I feel more flat than I have done the whole way through.
I was supposed to have my hair done on Saturday but have cancelled as there doesn’t seem much point. (I’ve never been very interested in my hair anyway!).

It’s made me realise that I don’t have many friends too! I haven’t been invited anywhere or to anything.

That really is sad about Bit of Fun. I’ve been on here for 18 years and she really was a bit of fun 😢

@katy1213. Glad you don’t feel the gloom. I get the impression that the people who are suffering with the meh the most are those who used to be very spontaneous and go-getting in their lives. There ain’t much to go-get at the moment.

Feeling like you have some autonomy over your life is a huge source of wellbeing. We just don’t have the option of ‘being in control of your own life’ on the same scale anymore. And personally, I’ve spent a whole year trying to maintain some level of autonomy, be creative about how to feel a sense of individuation, adapting to how restrictive life feels and for some reason, this has manifested in a serious case of ‘just can’t be arsed anymore’. Maybe because everything you try doesn’t really bring any joy. Yes, there may be ‘more freedoms’ but IMO there are very few areas of life right now that are actually with true freedom.

And tbh, I also think ‘was it really worth it?’

Once the talk on the radio came around to adult social care on lbc yesterday I became very depressed.
My dh's and my own parents are now deceased but it was years of worry and stress for us and I am dreading getting older myself ( or having dementia which is a wicked disease)
I would rather die in my 70s and not have any of that. I felt quite down ; the future isn't a nice place.

Totally understand & feel the same, I keep blaming my age (50s) but I don't think that's it.
I just can't be bothered, I've stopped my hobbies & my fitness & I used to hate just staying in.
Trying to have a fresh start again today, hopefully I'll feel it this time.

It’s made me realise that I don’t have many friends too! I haven’t been invited anywhere or to anything

Could it be that you do have friends, but they are also feeling like this?
I have stopped organising stuff, because I can't be sure I will have the energy to actually go through with it, and it is unfair to let people down. Ask your friends how they are feeling, if tired comes up you have your answer.

I feel your languishing OP!

Work wise I work for a national Bank and it has been absolutely bonkers rolling out one digital product after enough to help people self serve.

It's drained me. I've invested more in hobbies (creative writing and puzzles) but it's getting the time to do it. Housework is drowning me. Every night the same dishes, bedtime etc that are a normal part of family life, albeit work anyway before covid, is swallowing me up now so I am either working or parenting and by the time everything is done for the day it's 9:30om and I'm knackered. Rinse and repeat.

I now have every other Friday as my non working day which has been a game changer. It gives me a bit of a mental health break while dd is at school.

The people that seem to be faring well are those that were not very bigger on spontaneous in the first place, hamster you are spot on with that observation. I had a very full life, one that felt really free and carefree even with children. We would just jump in the car and see where the road takes us, but everything needs pre booking, preparation and planning now. You can't just head out and stop for lunch, go to a random place and have free will. I miss the freedom I used to have, for my body to be free of restraints and masks, to not care what the 'rules' because there were no rules. Everywhere feels heavy with conditions. Even just stopping for petrol or picking up a cake.

@Summercocktailsinthesnow

The people that seem to be faring well are those that were not very bigger on spontaneous in the first place, hamster you are spot on with that observation. I had a very full life, one that felt really free and carefree even with children. We would just jump in the car and see where the road takes us, but everything needs pre booking, preparation and planning now. You can't just head out and stop for lunch, go to a random place and have free will. I miss the freedom I used to have, for my body to be free of restraints and masks, to not care what the 'rules' because there were no rules. Everywhere feels heavy with conditions. Even just stopping for petrol or picking up a cake.

I got irritated with the forced joviality. Someone would say they hadn’t seen anyone for ages and another would say with faux confusion ‘but you can go for a walk with one other person now surely?’ It’s not the bloody same!

Sure, let’s go for a walk in the cold weather with a baby that needs breastfeeding and changing, unable to hold a takeout drink and push the pram simultaneously (never got one of those cup holders as reviews were all bad). It’s just not the same, it isn’t. I went on a few mostly because I didn’t want to let down people who invited me. But it’s no substitute, it’s so shit. And the idea of sitting outside a pub for a meal in April cold weather is frankly laughable.

Think a lot of people have chosen to stay home and be lonely above what was on offer.

I feel I've given lots of things a chance and haven't enjoyed them. I used to like browsing the shops, stopping for a coffee then continuing. Not the same with a one way system and having to walk all the way out to have a drink on a bench, then go all the way in and rejoin the one way system. I've also got no luck with the weather whenever I do book something.

It took me a long time to finally build up a good adult life for myself with friends and pleasant things to do and it's no exaggeration for me to say it was traumatic having it suddenly taken and knowing it could be taken again at any time. I think it's changed me.

What a wonderfully articulate thread.
I hit this mode in November when the anger that had simmered since May/ June burned out.

My life is materially good, but it's structured around volunteering and all my external structure was stripped away last March and has only really come alive in the last couple of weeks.
I need spontenaity and that's thin on the ground and there's just too much uncertainty of weather/ joyless Covid measures.
My sense of time is broken. There's now, then and some kind of foggy not yet.

I ran two races in the autumn, but they lacked atmosphere. The second was in a county that went into tier 2 a few days before so it wasn't certain that it was happening until about 2 or 3 days beforehand, then the majority took the virtual option and it was a quiet, lonely anti-climatic experience that ultimately dented my ability to anticipate. Races this side of August are still being cancelled because of uncertainty over the distancing measures required.

Social commitments need to start up from cold. Normally they trickle onto the calendar.

Everyone feels differently about the virus threat and meaures. I've felt more relaxed about my risk than most and think many meaures have dragged on too long and the wider consequences have been ignored. While I have expressed my feelings about it on MN, I have censored myself in RL. It's draining having to filter what I express and judge what audience I'm with. Last year most family and friends were very risk averse and did not make the most of the crumbs of freedom on offer which was very isolating and quite rejecting. Some did creep out of the woodwork late autumn when it became clear it was going to be a long winter and finally began to pick up the crumbs on offer.

I gave up trying masks and visors after uncountable attacks of sensory overwhelm. I go to a very limited range of places when they're quiet where I feel "safe" to walk in unchallenged for having the audacity to have a bare face. I loathe being near people wearing them. I lip read and the added muffling is a major hinderence to communication. I can't even cope with looking someone straight on in one, partly the difficulty in understanding such limited expression adding interference to the auditory processing and likely a bit of birth trauma added in too.

DH is constantly around (WFH) which is a constant low level distraction. I'm very, very rarely alone, but still starved of my normal range of interactions.

I'm on St John's Wort now which has taken the edge off the dullness.

I’m so glad I am not alone in loathing masks. I hate them. I have been feeling better recently as have thrown myself into the gym and swimming and working with a PT, but I have to ask him to move his mask to hear him sometimes (he doesn’t mind at all). I can only imagine ever wanting to wear one in future is if I had a cold myself and didn’t want to pass it on (but needed milk or something).

I read an article the other day gist of which that some women find it empowering wearing masks as don’t have to smile? I did not relate to that at fucking all.

The only ‘cure’ I have found for this state of flat languishing that gripped me Jan - March this year was my business becoming hugely busy in a way that leaves me finding flow regularly (so that takes care of 9-6) and then getting into exercise for the first time in my life in the evenings.

But I want my old life back.

I know what you mean, I can't imagine I'll feel much different on 17th May or 21st June !!

I'm really glad to find this thread and know that I'm not alone.

I've been finding it hard to put my finger on why I'm not feeling ecstatic about things opening up again. My logical brain tells me we are in a good position in the UK, vaccinations going well, cases low, there is a feeling of hope in the air. And yet .... I feel completely flat and lacklustre.

I'm not sure how I feel about the 17th either. The positive part of me maybe thinks with more things opening up maybe there's more chance I'll find something I will actually enjoy doing. The negative part almost doesn't want to try anything new because previous attempts at finding fun during covid times have been such a disappointment.

I could have written your post OP. I feel the exact same. I’m an empty shell most of the time.

I keep thinking of the following Lord of the Rings quote “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.“

Great thread thank you op. I can identify with so many of the feelings expressed!
I had an accident back in January, so have been really incapacitated. I’ve lost count of the amount of people who said “oh at least you’ve done it at a good time - none of us are doing anything exciting now”. Well the two things I could do - running and walking - have now been removed so, no, for me it’s not been a “good” time to have a serious accident.
I feel totally disengaged and flat at the prospect of shivering outside, using one-way systems, masked up.
At the moment for my own mental health, being at home with my family, reading, and having telephone contact with friends is okay. I worry for my teenagers and that’s really upset me - I just want the world to be as mine was when I was that age 🤷‍♀️
Awful news about BOF . I’ve been on here for years and she’s always been here.

Thankyou so much for posting this.

I feel exactly the same and then of course it's mixed with guilt because I am very fortunate to have health, a family and an income to provide for them.

I actually feel incredibly let down when I have tried to enjoy the new freedoms.

I privately sobbed on a camping trip with friends with the disappointment of it all. The weather was awful, we had no sleep as a result, my autistic son struggled and all the plans we had made seemed to fall on their arse.

@katy1213

What a gloomy lot you are. I'm booking tickets and looking forward to everything opening up again next week. Last summer was pretty normal and this one will be, too.

You clearly don't live in the north of England. There was fuck all normal,about last summer around here.

Covid has just sucked the joy out of everything, that’s the problem.

This thread is resonating with me. As lockdown lifts, I’m just don’t know what I want to do. I’ve made arrangements to see friends and have booked for theatre in September but somehow, am not feeling particularly enthusiastic. I’m thinking of investing in a personal trainer for a while.

Absolutely. Hate wearing masks with a passion and I'm reluctant to go anywhere non essential that involves wearing one as they suck the joy out of something that is meant to be fun. Also the weather is awful.

For me is not being able to travel or having to do the tests to travel.I believe that the pandemic in this country is a lot worse because of the weather and being overpopulated. I have faith though that we are slowly getting out of this nightmare. However, I decided to leave the UK once is all over.

I agree with PPs that part of this flat feeling comes from steeling ourselves against possible disappointment. I have been out doing things, and I have got stuff booked in the calendar, and I do have a level of enjoyment/excitement about these things, but it's tempered by a layer of anxiety.

And for me I think a lot of that has come from the cycle of good-news-bad-news-good-news-bad-news that we've been presented with relentlessly for months. I try to stay positive but it's just bloody exhausting.