AIBU to feel life has never felt quite the same since Covid

[Littlebearbutadog]

Looking even at memories that come up
on my Sm just before covid hit, it was all so happy. Life since then has had normal moments, but it doesn't feel right/genuine in my soul
Does this make sense? I look back on life pre covid and it's like a dream, people just aren't truly the same

Oh yes. I also miss cash!

Agree. I feel the moment restrictions were dropped, people went back to things and many didn’t learn anything from considering other people’s space.

Still don’t understand why some must be right behind other people when there is plenty of space to not be, especially the times of year when flu and respiratory illnesses are rampant.

I agree, though I appreciate a lot comes down to personal circumstances. If you’re living with long covid, or were bereaved because of it, or have teens whose mental health was impacted by lockdowns, then life continues to be very challenging. Add to it current world events, the economy, and a change in terms of how people relate to one another following that time then it feels pretty bleak! YANBU where I’m coming from.

It's not all.of them by any shade. We stuck to the (our) rules and my teens did great.

YANBU.

I remember 2022 as a happy year - just emerging from Covid restrictions, the Platinum Jubilee and, even though the death of Elizabeth II in September was the end of an era, there was a sense of people coming together and celebrating her long and successful reign, rather than being in mourning.

It feels as though it's been all downhill since then, though.

@usernamesaresohard ”Post Covid some of the social groups never started again. I feel that people are more family oriented and less likely to attend social groups and if planning more likely to cancel. So hard if it took a lot to just ask. I can understand the feeling of wanting to be with you direct family but hard for people who are single.”

yeah, it drove a truck through my life, but that’s to do with not really having family and being single.

Someone mentioned just making a change in your life, but it’s not possible to make those changes when the society you lived in has changed completely.

I think people are much more inclined to stay with their little family and it’s an incredibly lonely place to be for me.

I was happily single for years and years, ended up having a relationship in 2023 and frankly, I might have to do it again. It’s not my first choice. I was much happier having a family of friends, but I don’t have that anymore. It’s very strange to think you might have to start looking for a relationship that you actually don’t want.

I actually told one of my friends in 2019 “ things are too good, something awful must be about to happen”. I kind of know this from the death of friends in a terror attack. Sometimes when things are absolutely brilliant, you get stuck by that feeling that something awful is going to happen. And then it does. FFS.

also, broken social contract.

Couldn’t feel this more , as my mum died at the first lockdown. Hideous life changing time

I would say my life is so much better now than before Covid. I can work from home because my employer realised they didn’t need to spend loads of money on regional and local offices so we just have a national one now for meetings and training and corporate/admin staff. The rest of us wfh and I absolutely love it.

You're right. Some things literally did change and never went back, eg reduction in the use of cash, more QRs, more people staying in. Now whether that would have happened anyway, who knows.
But anyone who really thinks so much wfh/online schools would have happened that way is wrong; most businesses only changed because they had to, and online schools are now only available to the rich, in other words, those things would not have happened without Covid.
Also, for those who lost people, or are still seriously ill/getting ill with Long Covid, life has absolutely changed, and anger from some who lost people due to others not caring, and vaccine refusal, are real and observable things.

It surprises me to say this, but I almost forget Covid ever happened. But that's probably because I want and need to block it out. It almost broke one of my DC and it made my dad's last year on earth absolutely horrendous. I love that life feels as normal as ever - going to theatres, gigs, cafes, on holiday. Interacting with strangers without fear.

@HorseandHeron I block it out to a large extent

I normally get really annoyed when somebody raises it on here so it’s progress that I’ve been able to reply calmly!

But that’s predominantly due to Brexit

I developed a serious mental health condition during Covid. I have never really recovered. I am glad that life is back to normal for most people. Just not for me.

So sorry, was it due to covid

My theory about this is that before COVID all the major disasters didn’t affect us in the wealthy west very much. We’d watch the reports coming out of Africa and Asia and the Middle East and wring our hands and donate to the relief efforts and then just carry on living in our privileged bubble.

But COVID rocked our sense of security.

And then, Putin invaded Ukraine which is a bit close to home. And we can’t trust Trump’s US any more.

No wonder lots of us are feeling unsettled.

The past will always feel more comfortable to people because we know what happens next.

As for the now, we have no idea what the next minute may bring so it's much more scary than the past.

it's called nostalgia. A longing,in my opinion, for certainty

Maybe embracing uncertainty is the answer.

It was two years of life being suspended and disrupted... except life doesn't pause. Children keep developing, old people keep aging and dying and those natural transitions were disturbed and fractured.

Many older people struggled to revert back to previous routines and aged more rapidly than the two years of real time. People in carehomes often faced 2+ years of restrictions severely affecting quality of life, often until the end of their life.

Children's education, experience and socialisation was disrupted. People working with children and young people can still see cohort-wide traits from the way different age groups were affected. It opened a can of worms on screen time and breaking social contacts and connections. Health/ social care delays exacerbated problems by reducing early interventions, and it became harder to distinguish underlying problems from "Covid delays"

Because everyone was simultaneously disrupted, support networks broke down and people lost capacity to support each other because so many people were having their own struggles at the same time. That took a long time for people to get over.

For many, many people, those two years shifted the axis of their lives on different paths than the direction they were going in. Lives change, but rarely simultaneously like that.

A lot of people took a prolonged time to feel stable again. Many were changed completely. A lot of relationships and social connections fractured and drifted.

In society, some changes were abruptly fast tracked from the natural pace of change e.g. technology use and automation. Just as we were emerging from the legal restrictions in Feb 2022, the Ukraine invasion occured with its political and economical consequences. The financial consequences of Brexit were tangled up in the same era too. The restrictions of Covid did hit the economy dear in their own right though and we're still paying the price through other major events that have occurred since.

Society in 2026 was never going to be the same as 2019, but the impacts of 2020-22 were the greatest, most widespread social and economic disruption in the post-war era.

@user1471453601 that's the reason why I think people like historical dramas so much

Well, I like them anyway

But, if you try and apply that comment 2019 it doesn't make sense. I think of 2019 very fondly. But I know what happened next to me and that's fucking awful. I still remember it fondly though. Sometimes I remember good times because they were just really good times!

In my life/local area certain things stopped or changed due to COVID and have never been the same again. Before COVID you could swim at the local pool all day and evening and for as long as you want. The pool took years to open after covid and then when it did it was all lane swimming with only one or two general swimming sessions a day. And sessions were capped at 50 minutes. The local pool was a big attraction when we moved to our area and my two eldest children spent their childhoods in it. My youngest hardly ever goes.

Also a local church had a lovely vicar and did Messy Church once a month on a Friday after school plus lovely Nativity services that my children took part in. And my youngest loved the toddler group there. That vicar left during covid and all children’s activities stopped and have never restarted.

I find things much more difficult socially.

A lot of friends fell by the wayside because they weren't close enough to maintain contact through Covid. My youngest never really got a social group before starting school and we don't have family around so he's still quite isolated and behind. I've lost confidence in meeting new people probably because my dad had a psychotic break due to the isolation of lockdown, developed or hastened into dementia and died a couple of years later which meant I haven't worked.

I was doing a training course during those years to get back into the workplace after being a SAHM but I was an anxious wreck, pulled in all directions, and now I can't seem to climb out.

The country seems so much angrier and unpleasant. People seem much less generous to each other.

I appreciate life more now