To ask if anyone else feels like the covid era is a bad dream

[23rMarch2020]

Whenever I think of 2020 or 2021 it just doesn’t feel real at all. The lockdowns for months on end, the clapping for the NHS, the track and trace system, entire school years being sent home because a single case was discovered, panic buying, people developing intricate methods of sanitising their shopping, public shaming of rule breakers, religious holidays being stopped at very short notice. It’s all so bizarre to think of that this was in our country so recently and, really, there’s nothing to stop any of it happening again. In so many ways it just feels like a different world, my DS who had his GCSE’s cancelled is about to go off to uni (if he gets the grades 🤞) and my then little year 7 DD is doing her own GCSE’s next year. I guess my Aibu is to ask if anyone else feels so totally disconnected from that era to the extent it’s all like a bad dream?

It doesn't feel real at all, I worked on covid ward for most of it and weirdly I feel nothing and never think about it.
I just get on with my job as normal.
I'm beginning to wonder if the forgetfullness is just a self protective mental device because really it was a horrible time but my mind just seems to have white washed it.

I do feel like we sleepwalked into the whole thing, imagining that the sort of infectious diseases/epidemics we’d read about happening over the years in far off countries couldn’t possibly happen here. That somehow made the restrictions hit even harder, the surreal sense that this just wasn’t the sort of thing that happened in the UK.

I remember joining the most enormous queue for a supermarket shop in the early days, and rushing around the one way system to not hold other people up who were equally desperate to get some food in. The sudden appearance of plastic barriers, tape on the floor, everyone’s faces covered, just lines of individual people, not talking all that much, all looking stressed and bemused.

Taking it home and unpacking the bags was done with a mix of joy and relief as we knew we’d be fine for a few more days whilst wondering what state the shops would be in next time we tried to go.

It was totally bizarre and yes, it does feel a bit dreamlike.

Totally get what you’re saying. It almost seems impossible to imagine it really happened.

I think maybe my memory has deliberately wiped the worst of it.

Like some awful dystopian nightmare. I hated every fucking second. It turned people into total arseholes who dobbed their neighbours in for daring to leave the house to walk through country fields and haters on Facebook lambasting people for buying takeaway coffee. I’m still furious about the whole thing and I think I always will be.

im so glad common sense has prevailed and life is back to normal - I did think it would never happen but it has.

YANBU. I had a baby and lost a parent during the first six months of it. A thoroughly strange time.

I wasn't in a shop or even on our main street for over three months.

I feel the same way, it’s bizarre that whole time feels so alien and strange.

Yes I totally get what you mean. We refer to it as ‘the weirdness’ in this house - such a surreal and inhuman experience.

Exactly. And sadly there’s still some arseholes out there who are clinging to the fact they were holier than thou during lockdown.

The impact of those times will be with us for so many years to come.

Yes OP - it was just so surreal wasn't it? I saw two friends last week, who'd been in Australia during the pandemic and I'd been here. We discussed how crazy it was, the closing of the borders so people couldn't visit their families or return to their home nations, banning people from visiting their sick and dying loved ones, banning people who didn't live together from seeing one another, queuing up outside the supermarket - it was like living in some dystopian film.

I remember seeing my friend in the supermarket during the first lockdown. She only lives a few streets away and normally we see each other regularly, but I hadn't seen her in months. We were both masked and keeping our 2m distance and we saw each other and started talking and it was just so wonderful! Everyone was giving us filthy looks for daring to speak in the supermarket, but we both had tears in our eyes. It was fucking crazy!!

Very weird, no one really speaks much about it, probably as nothing to speK much of. I likened it to WW2, but recall my older relatives talking about that a fair bit.

There does seem to be a sense of collective amnesia around what was, for many, a traumatic time.

It's not the first time this phenomena has happened, by any stretch of the imagination
https://academic.oup.com/book/27295/chapter-abstract/196949846?redirectedFrom=fulltext

The trauma of WW2 often seemed to be reframed around happy memories of community, blitz spirit and digging for victory - when the reality was so frequently sudden death, your home being destroyed, and food shortages. My grandmother was so traumatised by being a young adult during the war that she never spoke of it; she was a war widow but never wore a poppy.

I can see the same happening with the loudest voices coming from those who experienced lockdown in terms of furlough, time off and banana bread, not bereavement or (as happened to me) being banned from working but not being eligible for any financial help whatsoever.

It was fucking bizarre.

I don't think it would happen the same if something like it happened again. Especially after partygate.

I feel like a moron and a mug when I think about it.

It was a very strange time. The strangest thing for me was seeing how quickly people turned on one another, curtain twitching, over the top reactions & just general craziness. The endless debates about people not being vaccinated, how selfish everyone is, etc etc the threads on here were ridiculous.

I’m glad common sense has (mostly) come back. Now we are dealing with all the shit that came after it….but at least I can leave my house when I want, multiple times a day, without an overly invested neighbour spying on me.

Sort of. My life changed dramatically during covid (had a baby) so there is this very clear sense of Before and After, which I also feel about my parents’ deaths although obviously that’s personal to me!

I do think it is a bit like any major event though, there’s a before and there’s an after. But remember the after can be positive too.

I have a friend with long Covid who is still so ill, and gets no real medical help. So that's a constant reminder.

I remember it pretty well. I was just so amazed about how utterly insane everyone went that I don't think I will ever forget -people shouting at one another on the street, herding you down supermarket aisles with an idiotic arrow system, scotch eggs, closing playgrounds, the constant disruption to schooling, no GCSEs, no A Levels, the fucking clapping, the dictatorial nature of many people I knew, the censorship, the absolute herd mentality....

I sometimes think the amnesia that is reported is some form of defence mechanism against having to admit that it was all insane.

Totally agree op.
I just feel like it was a film or bad dream. Can't believe it actually happened. Although I KNOW it did.

I'd WFH since 2019 so being at home wasn't new to me - everyone else being at home was.

DH and I worked all the way through. (Neither of us key workers) but had the sort of job able to WFH, we were working hours and hours extra and trying to homeschool 2 DC.

Eldest has managed through ok. Youngest has some worries about dirt and germs that stem from covid times.

I have forgotten stuff. Lots of stuff. My sense of time over that period is all messed up too.

We'd had a family bereavement in July 2019 and my personal timeline goes to then, then there's a blip and it comes back to normal around July 2022

It does now feel like a bizarre bad dream. The number of people who morphed into nasty little stasi informants overnight, both on MN and in real life, was really disturbing. It revealed a sinister authoritarian streak running through our society, and I can’t now trust people in the same way as I did before. Too many of them were willing to sacrifice children’s needs and rights because they themselves were scared.

Yes. Particularly 2020 - I often think did that actually really happen?

It's also weird because our lives personally are unrecognisable from pre covid - DH and I are both now in different jobs, DD is now at secondary school and we've moved house. There's a definite separation of before and after with the weirdness in between and the weirdness feels like a bad dream.

Yes, it kinda doesn't feel real.

I loved nearly every minute of it.

I feel the same in that it is like some weird bad dream and I have very little memory of it really. I was actually talking to someone about this today, about how little I think of it. But, for me life did not change that dramatically. We already worked from home and nothing changed there, we were not furloughed, did not have to home school children and did not know anyone who was vulnerable.

I guess I was one of the "lucky" ones.. feel so sad for those who suffered.

I still cannot believe that they didn't let me DC bring home books from school or sing. Years of no singing is so awful.

Choral singing has been a big part of my life since childhood and it was unbearable not being able to do it during covid. The idea that the government could literally ban people from singing is still unbelievable to me.

I feel the same