Has anyone else lost the will to care?

[whatToDoHerre]

I have. I barely care about anything anymore. I don't know what we are fighting for - if this is life then is it worth living? We are not living, we are only existing at this point.

We could be in for months and months of restrictions and there's even talk of a third lockdown. Because the first two worked so well?

In a few short months a whole year of our lives will have been restricted.

If there is light at the end of this tunnel it's a very long tunnel, and I don't think we've travelled very far.

My local council gyms are shut until January, same goes for swimming pools. Not allowed out of county either. County is basically a suburb so has sod all, we don't even have a Nandos in county.

If I didn't have kids to amuse/look after I'd be ok. I could go out on nice runs in the hills, exercise, do crochet, cross stitch watch TV. Problem is amusing increasingly bored kids who crave company of other children - there aren't many in the park when it's wet, 5 year old isn't skilled enough for bad conditions on the bike, she has weekly tennis lessons but lacks the skill to play with family (and we lack the skill to make it amusing for her as we're not trained tennis coaches...)
Walks involve 10 minutes of stropping before enjoyment starts for the kids and going out in shit weather isn't going to instill a lifelong love of hill walking. All the toddler groups clash with school pick up (thanks for that) or have massive waiting lists, I've been on several lists since June.

The things I really enjoy are an indoor "contact" sport (not "close" contact but within 1m) and running is much more fun if someone else plans the route and sets out arrows and people to show me the way (a race/parkrun). I'm not motivated by "virtual medals" so struggle to do the weeknight training...

Mostly we all spend too much time on top of each other because there's nowhere to go for long. I want a weekend alone to blitz the house without kids underfoot. Even better would be a weekend without kids (at grandparents') so DH and I could get properly organised.

I’m sure a walk is lovely if you don’t do it that often but by my reckoning I’ve already done 813 walks since the start of the first lockdown. I want to go to the cinema, sit in the warm and have a meal or coffee with my friends. I don’t want to sit in on my own day after day pretending everything is peachy when in all honesty life is absolutely shit at the moment.
The gym is my idea of hell and I can’t swim so then I’d be in trouble for overwhelming the NHS when I nearly drown.

People do live very different lives - We're in a poor area. Private gyms do not have swimming pools here. The nearest would be a good drive away, adding over an hour travel time to the time spent in the gym, so not feasible.

Yes I realise we’re incredibly lucky to be able to afford a private gym, as our local council ones haven’t reopened. A couple of DD’s classes have restarted too - one even continued throughout lockdown - but only the expensive private ones. Nothing casual or council run is available around here. DD is one of the fortunate ones, but this disparity is going to massively widen inequality for the next generation.

@Schonerlebnis

If lockdown doesn't work then what's the solution ? Presumably let the non vulnerable get on with life and the rest try to keep safe ? Bad luck if you get it but that's life, just got to get used to it like flu ? Is that what people are advocating ?

Yes, pretty much this.

Yep, pretty much. Except the vulnerable are being offered the vaccine so they don’t just have to ‘try to keep safe’.

I don't care any more. No one cares about teaching staff and it's really affected my compassion. I was truly outraged at the conditions the NHS was expected to work in and donated substantially to a PPE procurement crowdfunder. It has been a reall kick in the teeth that I therefore have to stand in front of 200 teenagers per day with no mitigation but no one is bothered enough to do anything about it.

I know two wrongs don't make a right, but no I don't care for that reason.

@Didyousaynutella

Fine whatever. Wallow in misery. Just trying to show how I am getting through this and maybe provide a bit of inspiration. If people want to be miserable then go for it and nasty about it then good for them. I didn’t choose to love like this anymore than anyone else. I just don’t want it to let it get me down. I have had periods where I have struggled myself. Three young normally very active kids stuck in lockdown was hell for me. This to me is a breeze by comparison so I am doing everything I can to make it better. Sorry not bloody sorry.

I can categorically state that you are not an inspiration

I go running, cycling, walking, meet up with friends....it’s like I can think of these things all on my own

So happy to read this thread as I feel like this is where all the sensible people have been hiding.

Morning all x just checking in as I sit behind the desk in my shop wondering if any brave soul will cross the threshold today.....

This thread has been great to dip into as I veer wildly from emotion to emotion.

It's the first year I'll be without my Mum, and call me daft but when I got into my taxi this morning (I may have over-indulged a tad last night and may not have dealt well with public transport) the taxi driver put on Classic FM, her permastation of choice, and it honestly felt like a nudge..... so now I'm sitting here with misty glasses and have put on an album of crooner Christmas songs just to try and keep the flicker of bittersweet nostalgia alive. My Mum loved Christmas, and by the Goddess we will make the best of it, even if it's through the bottom of a bottle and howling at the moon.

Still am feeling a bit in despair - the "crisis meetings over new strain" headlines just made me think FFS give us a break !!

I noted a comment upthread about wallowing in misery - I doubt even the most hardened pessimist would be enjoying this opportunity to do so now - looking for positives and counting blessings etc etc are all well and good, but when your feelings, your gut driven,instinctive feelings are being tossed in every direction the physical and mental effects cannot be easily over-ridden.Lurching from anxiety to numbness to hysteria makes it rather hard to manage everything.I'm genuinely glad for those managing all this better than some of us, and I hope the rest of us get some respite......

So, hope your Saturdays are bearable,with maybe a smattering of something nice (although maybe I'll forgo the Tequila Rose tonight, as my liver is threatening to report me for GBH).

But here's to coping mechanisms,safe spaces online, and solidarity.

A friend in Wales commented on a fb thread on the rise in cases, saying how scary it was, it was so many per 100,000 that week. I thought, hang on, that's only 1 in 2000! I really couldn't get worked up about that. And of those people, what fraction will get seriously ill or die? Awful for those who do, obviously, but statistically it's really not scary.

Good for you hamster. You are so much better than me. Apologies for saying what I was doing to get though this. I forgot that mumsnet was a nest of superior beings who can only be disparaging when someone dares to offer up a bit of help.

I was enjoying reading this thread, but now it's turned into an argument with the emotion-police. Another thread ruined

Just ignore them, don't leave the thread, please? If nobody responds then they will have to take their smug moralising elsewhere. There are lots of threads they can go and spaff their doom wankery on!

@Didyousaynutella

Good for you hamster. You are so much better than me. Apologies for saying what I was doing to get though this. I forgot that mumsnet was a nest of superior beings who can only be disparaging when someone dares to offer up a bit of help.

Read the room. This isn't the place for your 'be proactive comments'. Way to kick people when they're already down.

@Didyousaynutella

Good for you hamster. You are so much better than me. Apologies for saying what I was doing to get though this. I forgot that mumsnet was a nest of superior beings who can only be disparaging when someone dares to offer up a bit of help.

Oh dear

I am still not ruling out Bojo cancelling Christmas as he is making another announcement later. It's all this that doesn't help. Nicely timed a new strain with the vaccine eh? There have been so many strains of covid 19 already. Just proves the lockdowns don't work - look at those poor people in wales. Absolutely shambolic. We've been tier 3 since august and it's still not enough so what do you suggest? We all carry on like this? Do businesses and peoples sanity not matter or is it covid above all?

Makes me wonder what WW1 and WW2 would have been like with facebook
My grandparents were in both wars, the flu pandemic and the great depression, I am old enough to remember them very well and spent a lot of time there in the holidays.
They never spoke about the war or anything else from those days and the one time my mum asked my grandfather to show me his war injury he got the proper hump and spent the afternoon in his shed.
Ok covid is shit I agree but we aren't getting bombed out of our homes, we still have the NHS for emergencies and we are not losing our menfolk in the wars.
There is a lot for our generation to be grateful about and I'm sure this won't last for ever.

madcatlady That doesn't sound like they coped; the exact opposite in fact. It sounds like they were so traumatised that they blocked the memory.

I bore my kids witless with tales of what I got up to in the 90s. When my grandkids ask me about Covid, I expect I'll be hiding in the shed too, not reminiscing.

@MassiveSalad

I was enjoying reading this thread, but now it's turned into an argument with the emotion-police. Another thread ruined

Just ignore them, don't leave the thread, please? If nobody responds then they will have to take their smug moralising elsewhere. There are lots of threads they can go and spaff their doom wankery on!

Thank you. You're right

Ok covid is shit I agree but we aren't getting bombed out of our homes, we still have the NHS for emergencies and we are not losing our menfolk in the wars.
There is a lot for our generation to be grateful about and I'm sure this won't last for ever.

Do fuck off. Have you not seen the number of posters here who've said 'be grateful' and 'it could be worse' is the shittest, most patronising and unhelpful thing anyone can say right now.

Some posters really need to learn to read the room. I don't go onto threads of people terrified of dying of covid despite being young with no underlying health conditions and preach to them about how good their odds actually are, because it's not my bloody place to. They have their threads with likeminded people for support and we have ours. Leave us the fuck alone.

And we may not be being bombed out but plenty of people are being financially run out of their homes with nowhere to go. The NHS isn't open for anything other than emergencies meaning things don't get caught early enough and you only get treatment when you're on the edge of death (whatever happened to prevention is better than cure?). We're not losing menfolk in war but we are losing thousands of people to Suicide, MH issues and other preventable illnesses. It might not last forever but in my early twenties this is a massive chunk of what should be the best years of my life, and the repercussions (economic and such) will last far far longer and people like me will be the most affected by them, despite being the least affected by the virus. I have very little to be grateful for right now, as do many people. And we just want to vent and get support from like minded people without sanctimonious arseholes coming along with their shit advice from their positions of privilege and the idea that we should be 'thankful it's not worse' when actually we should all be furious it's not better.

Ok covid is shit I agree but we aren't getting bombed out of our homes, we still have the NHS for emergencies and we are not losing our menfolk in the wars.
There is a lot for our generation to be grateful about and I'm sure this won't last for ever.

Do fuck off. Have you not seen the number of posters here who've said 'be grateful' and 'it could be worse' is the shittest, most patronising and unhelpful thing anyone can say right now.

Some posters really need to learn to read the room. I don't go onto threads of people terrified of dying of covid despite being young with no underlying health conditions and preach to them about how good their odds actually are, because it's not my bloody place to. They have their threads with likeminded people for support and we have ours. Leave us the fuck alone.

And we may not be being bombed out but plenty of people are being financially run out of their homes with nowhere to go. The NHS isn't open for anything other than emergencies meaning things don't get caught early enough and you only get treatment when you're on the edge of death (whatever happened to prevention is better than cure?). We're not losing menfolk in war but we are losing thousands of people to Suicide, MH issues and other preventable illnesses. It might not last forever but in my early twenties this is a massive chunk of what should be the best years of my life, and the repercussions (economic and such) will last far far longer and people like me will be the most affected by them, despite being the least affected by the virus. I have very little to be grateful for right now, as do many people. And we just want to vent and get support from like minded people without sanctimonious arseholes coming along with their shit advice from their positions of privilege and the idea that we should be 'thankful it's not worse' when actually we should all be furious it's not better.

Honestly don’t know how some people will cope when the next pandemic comes along and actually does kill huge numbers of the population, probably something with antibiotic resistance.

I doubt very much it will be allowed to spread far. Partly because after this, the next time an interesting new bug appears all the flights and any other travel from the area will be shut down so fast it makes my head spin to think about it. Secondly, because a virus that killed huge numbers of people would cause such terror it would not be allowed to spread far for that reason also. COVID19 is in the awkward sweet spot because it causes just enough deaths/morbidity to be disruptive, but not enough to actually terrify most people.

Ok covid is shit I agree but we aren't getting bombed out of our homes, we still have the NHS for emergencies and we are not losing our menfolk in the wars. There is a lot for our generation to be grateful about and I'm sure this won't last for ever.

I’m with @arevioletsreallyblue - absolutely had enough of this sanctimonious, patronising twaddle now. War is shit. Covid is shit. The two situations are not remotely comparable. And all the ‘At least you’re not dead’ gratitude gumph is just a race to the bottom. Same as the insidious expectation to put the NHS on a pedestal and never complain about it, despite the litany of poor care people are receiving from it this year and in the past.

I’m not that young (40) but if I were a teen, student or twentysomething right now I’d be absolutely incandescent at the way I’ve been treated since March - patronised, demonised, belittled and overlooked in turn. I’m amazed that young people have been so compliant with all the restrictions up till now.

As it is I’m focusing on protecting toddler DD from the worst fallout from covid and a looming Brexit, ensuring her childhood remains as carefree and normal as possible - and yes, ignoring the guidelines where they threaten to affect her development and wellbeing.

I'm done with it all now. Have been for quite a few weeks. I don't accept that I have to wreck my life & the lives of my kids so a minority can cheat nature for a while longer.

@madcatladyforever

Makes me wonder what WW1 and WW2 would have been like with facebook My grandparents were in both wars, the flu pandemic and the great depression, I am old enough to remember them very well and spent a lot of time there in the holidays. They never spoke about the war or anything else from those days and the one time my mum asked my grandfather to show me his war injury he got the proper hump and spent the afternoon in his shed. Ok covid is shit I agree but we aren't getting bombed out of our homes, we still have the NHS for emergencies and we are not losing our menfolk in the wars. There is a lot for our generation to be grateful about and I'm sure this won't last for ever.

Can people stop with the fucking war comparisons

Highlight of my day seeing one of my closest friends in Asda having a catch up across 2 trolleys wearing a bloody mask. FML that's the most social interaction I'll get with someone outside my house until god knows when. Merry fucking Christmas