How has covid affected your life?

[OhBrar]

I'll say straight up now that it's derailed mine. I have lost three people to it who I didn't expect to. No underlying conditions, all in their 40s and 50s it's really shocked me.

Then the restrictions have been really hard because I'm a single parent in a flat but I've had to keep working. I've been looking at social media posts about banana bread and that and they sound like a different world.

Plus because I'm working outside the home I've been constantly worried about getting the virus. And I miss my mum, who I haven't seen since early spring, and I love her dearly as do my kids. They've only seen their dad once also a he's in a different part of the country.

I just feel like it's been a monumental terrible thing and I'm not sure how to deal with it.

I'm so sorry for your losses.

Thank you. It's a weird thing, losing people now. When the second died, a very dear friend, I totally struggled. I was (fortunately) getting counselling for something else, and I brought up that sometimes when I was just doing other things like walking down the street or shopping or whatever that I'd feel this massive wave of grief that I would never see him again, like it really hurt, and I couldn't go to his funeral and it was just unbearable, and when I said to my counsellor I don't know what's wrong with me that I can't stop crying, and she reminded me that actually when you lose a dear friend who is important to you then it's normal to feel sad. But because it was all wrapped up in covid and the lack of treatment etc I'd lost sight of that.

I mean I'd got used to covid being something you just deal with, and put my very special friend in that same box, wrongly.