Feeling sad about time passing and there still being in a pandemic

[SadAboutCovid]

I was going through the photographs on my phone earlier and I realised it has been six months since my birthday. I remember going out for a meal and discussing with friends the situation in China and we were talking about how if it spread to the UK maybe they would have increased hand sanitiser and move the tables in the restaurant further apart. It was a completely hypothetical conversation, we never really believed it would spread to the UK or if it did it would be easily contained. Even if it did spread, we never anticipated that restaurants would be forced to close along with schools, workplaces, shops etc.

I know it is silly but somehow realising that half of this year of my life has been wasted has just really upset me. It feels like life has been paused and yet time has still carried on passing. Soon Autumn will be on its way and it will be a painful reminder of the amount of time we have been under lockdown.

I have tried to embrace lockdown and at some points I did enjoy it. However gone is the sense of collective "national effort" and the Thursday night clapping with all of your neighbours in the street. Gone is the feeling of support from the government with their regular news conference briefings. Now it just feels sad, endless and hopeless. I have been more cautious than most due to an underlying health condition so I had not ventured out to the shops until last week. However just knowing that outside of my home there was a sense of normalcy with shops and restaurants back open I felt comforted. It wasn't until I stepped foot into a shop myself that I realise that whilst they are open it is in no way normal. What would have been a leisurely day spent looking around shops with a coffee afterwards has now turned into a mission of going into the shop and being as direct and quick as possible. No longer can you share a smile with the cashier or other strangers (or at least a visible smile), instead there is fear and frustration when someone gets too close when walking past. Other people aren't just people anymore, they are also potential hosts of a deadly virus.

I don't know, I am just really struggling with it. Yet I feel guilty for being worried about myself. I feel like I will be shamed for these thoughts and told to get over it, it's "over".

6 months and I've not written by novel yet. Not given up chocolate or crisps. But am having an amazing time teaching on zoom three evenings a week.
Embrace lockdown. It's not disappearing anytime soon.
Find the positive in it.

I agree, I just generally feel sad at the moment, it feels like nothing will ever be the way that it was. I also feel guilty because we have a lot to be thankful for.

Show a bit of empathy or at least courtesy, @runrabbitrunrunrun - it’s not misery top trumps

This thread is my spiritual home, I feel. I've spent the tail end of my probation period of a job with only half my staff available to me, when I should have been leading a team to a record year I've spent the last four months covering at least five peoples work.
Our first owned home that we got the keys to just before lockdown has had literally a handful of visitors over the four months when we should have been entertaining all our friends and family in a home we were finally proud of rather than endless rentals.
I took delivery of a car I've wanted for years just after the house completed, and theres been literally nowhere I could have gone in it.
Our lives basically got to exactly what we've been working our butts off for years, and then the world just seemed to implode. And now life is just starting to go back to normal for some, I'm too tired and overexposed to people to even get off the sofa
to everyone here feeling similar.

I am struggling because I have been ill for a long time (years) and I've finally turned a corner and felt I can start living again. I had so many plans and it's all fallen through. My life has been on hold and continues to be so. And I'm not getting any younger.

I feel the same, struggling with motivation and can’t find any purpose to my life anymore

Embrace lockdown. It's not disappearing anytime soon.
Find the positive in it
Honestly, for a lot of the time I have done. Despite not leaving the house (apart from a few walks up a back lane with my dds) between March and the end of July. I have counted my blessings, relished the time with my children, started an online Art Club, been creative etc etc. But sometimes life gives you a smack on the face (mum dying) and sometimes it just feels grindingly hard and sometimes I justyearn to be able to pop to the shops or go camping or a million and one little pleasurable things, without thinking about the fecking virus.
It's ok to feel a bit shit sometimes.

It's natural to feel like this OP and I'm only surprised if people don't feel that way. I've thought it's like a grieving process, the bit at the beginning where everyone pulls together a bit, then the anger and then the depression phase which I think the country is in now.

I've seriously thought about keeping my age the same next birthday so as not to have wasted this age

Try having been diagnosed with terminal cancer like my mum, then you’ll be feeling much worse. I’d say it’s not ideal, but most of us are still well, have loved ones around us and should appreciate it for that. Sorry I’m blunt, but there are people far worse.

I'm not quite getting a lot if the comments on this thread. Yes it is shit if you are higher risk or have lost a job or have an ill relative. But we can (if not in a temporary lock down zone) d9 so much stuff now - pop to the shops, going camping, go on day trips, see friends, sit in a pub garden, go to cinema, rent a cottage, swim in sea/river, go to zoo etc etc. I dont get the 'this is going on forever' thing...its so different from full lockdown now? Yes I appreciate it may get stricter again but right now make the most of it!!!

Honestly, i don't feel like this at all - we had some great times in lock down and now we are making the most of what we can. I don't want to go in a shop/coffee shop and we are making the most of the beach, gardens and pub gardens. As with everything in life, it's what you make of it. Buck the bugger up and thank the Lord that you aren't in Beirut.

There are rather a lot of emotion police around tonight!

to @Feelingnaff and your mum

Not sure why there are posters dismissing other posters genuine feelings of sadness and loss. Posters are here sharing their emotions and concerns so that other posters including OP don’t feel so alone.
Saying “well it could be worse”is really not helping it’s like telling a depressed person to “just pull yourself together”. Have any woman posters on here ever been cheered up by some random person (usually a man) saying “cheer up love it might never happen/ nothing’s that bad” NO? I didn’t think so.
I’m glad that lockdown was a positive experience for some people but why don’t you take your happy stories to another thread and let posters on here gain some comfort from other people sharing their less than positive feelings.

I also feel this way too.

labyrinthloafer posted:

"Please don't talk about herd immunity, we can't get there without awful impacts."

@labyrinthloafer We can get there quicker and with fewer deaths if a vaccine is found to provide that immunity - obviously that would be a better outcome than the alternative. You may dislike the term "herd immunity" but until it happens life will probably remain restricted, unless people want to take a riskier approach and let the virus pass through the population quicker, but that would in turn involve a higher death toll as the NHS would be unable to cope with the massive increase in patients requiring ventilators.

If you think life is tough here, spare a thought for those people living in countries where patients are getting turned away from hospitals in droves, and only the wealthy few are able to access medical care. Bolivia is one such country. I watched a report on YT where they revealed that death numbers are much higher than the official figures, hospitals are turning patients away, funeral directors are inundated and they have run out of coffins, so people are leaving their dead out on the streets. Apparently they are collecting around 70 bodies every day from the streets. It's like something from a horror film - can you imagine what it must be like there? I do understand why people are sad and depressed about the way this virus has impacted their lives, and I'm not negating the awful losses that some people have suffered, or the very real problems and issues that people are going through, but I am posting this account of what's happening in Bolivia, to give some perspective. The UK is paradise by comparison (although it doesn't feel that way right now).

But your alive !!!

I was alive before this crap. Why the hell should I be grateful for that? I've gained nothing and lost loads in this.

I'm really tired of being lectured by people during this pandemic, the implication is if I don't see it exactly the same way as them then I just need more information.

I can simultaneously feel sad something has happened and understand there are people worse off too. I have perspective.

There are many people so afraid of their own negative feelings they try to stop other people feeling theirs imo.

Reassuring to not feel alone - thank you OP.
This article someone posted on another thread helps me when I’m feeling low. It gives info about the vaccines being worked on ... www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html

If you think life is tough here, spare a thought for those people living in countries where patients are getting turned away from hospitals in droves

Like the 20,000 left to die in care homes?

(here - in England)

I suppose its out of sight out of mind here

Your name made me @JoeWicksSurvivor

@labyrinthloafer
I can simultaneously feel sad something has happened and understand there are people worse off too. I have perspective.
Yes to this.

I get you OP. This is shit and is stealing months of our lives from all of us - the children who are losing education and precious childhood memories, the teenagers losing out on the rights of passage, the young whose job prospects have shrunk, and everyone stuck at home. Not to mention the cancer patients whose treatment is postponed due to covid.

Unless a vaccine is found by the end of the year, it is highly likely that the amount of loves lost from trying to contain covid will far exceed the impact of the virus. Yes, I know all the elderly in care homes still had some more life to live, but so do our children and young people whose are losing time they will never get back for a virus that poses no risk to them.

I wish there was a reasonable antibody test so some of us could “tag out.”