Emotionally 'lost'

[TheMildManneredMilitant]

Anyone else just feel a bit emotionally untethered at the moment?

I'm starting to feel like I've been through a trauma but one that is really difficult to define and may not even be over. When I've coped with death and other trauma before I could draw from guidance and other experiences to help me name my emotions and recognise triggers but it's like there's just no reference point to draw on.

Yesterday I saw my dad for the first time in months. Instead of just being happy it was almost like it triggered some kind of grief- even though he is very much alive and there is no reason I couldn't see him every week if I wanted.

I also wonder whether there are many of us who just gritted our teeth and got on with it but who will fall apart once we start to return to normal.

Not sure what I'm after posting here but thought I may not be the only one who is a bit emotionally lost at sea.

I think it's supposed to be funny.

Unfortunate conspiracy theorists (like that weird poster) are just expressing their distress and confusion in their own distorted, unprocessed way. Impact on MH takes many forms I guess.

I feel better at bedtime...like another day is over with.

I wake with dread.

Thank you all so, so much for posting, it has helped me hugely. I have felt so incredibly isolated and alone. This last year has taken a huge toll on me. I deal with CPTSD and had always been able to keep myself stable, but I’ve struggled a lot. Either detached zombie or full blown FEAR. I’ve also just understood that I’m married to a narcissist (pretty textbook pairing really...) who’s been having an(other) affair with someone 30 years his junior (his country walks were basically him meeting her for a shag in her car - he’s such a twat) so I’m dealing with that too. It’s all a bit gruesome. The most heartbreaking thing for me though is the realisation that I don’t have any friends and I’ve lost all trust that the powers that be have our best interests at heart. It’s all a bit dystopian. Thank god for art and the wealth of good online resources, I’d have gone under without that I think. I send 💚 to you all, and thank you again for being brave enough to share. It’s given me such strength. . We will get through this.

dissse support and regards. Bloody hell, eh. You will get through.

Alternista, my marriage is going the same way... DH has announced that we’d be better off without him. I don’t know how I feel, one way or the other.

I miss my mates, I’ve had nobody to chat with about this sort of thing. Only people I’ve seen since Christmas are Mum & Dad (and I only saw them at Christmas, really!)

We had a baby last summer, after the first Lockdown. DH lost his job at Christmas. I don’t know what’s normal for us anymore... Things could have been so different.

I'm just throwing myself into pure escapism. The DC's and I play video games much more than is reasonable, watch endless movies and we are constantly on YouTube looking up places for our first family holiday abroad and watching travel vlogs. It's helping.

Thanks so much @HeronLanyon :) All will be well!

@Diesse. God love you, what a time you are having. I think you are so right that things like art and literature and music and comedy can keep us hanging on in there as they remind us that the there is great beauty and meaning and empathy in the world, as well as pain of course. You sort of think, if someone can sing like that, or capture a feeling of love or longing in a painting, then the world is not so bad and we are a part of it.

I feel the exact same. Despite lockdown easing, I just feel totally lost and empty. It just feels like an endless stretch of nothingness with nothing to look forward to, and it's so depressing. I really lost the plot today after finding out something I'd been looking forward to next week has to be postponed; lots of shouting and sobbing. Totally over the top, but I just felt like I couldn't cope anymore. Terrible day.

For those of you thinking / dreaming a lot of the past, there is a lovely Welsh word that encapsulates this feeling:

Hiraeth is a Welsh word for longing or nostalgia, an earnest longing or desire, or a sense of regret. The feeling of longing for a home that no longer exists or never was. A deep and irrational bond felt with a time, era, place or person.

Hiraeth, great word / sentiment. I’ll be using it, Pump!

I feel like my son will never know the freedoms I had, growing up...

@SchmooobyDoo I completely understand. We have lost so much this last year with the pandemic and Brexit, and the young will be feeling the impact of that for quite some time, I don't have DCs but it does sadden me the world our young people are inheriting for all sorts of reasons.

I think we've all lost a certain amount of innocence this year as well...most of us in first world countries will never have lived through something like this, and I for one never even gave it a thought that I would, and took for granted the relatively free and easy way of life we had previously. I think even if covid disappeared tomorrow and life went back to 'normal' we'd never trust life in exactly the same way again...we've been shown now in no uncertain terms that we cannot take things for granted, and that knowledge will always stay with us and shape who we are. That's where the hiraeth comes in for me...we will forever remember how life was 'before' and I don't think that can be recaptured. Life will improve, things will change for the better and brighter days are ahead I have absolutely no doubt, but many of us will never be quite the same again.

@theleafandnotthetree This exactly! There’s a huge wealth of good out there. Thank you :)

Thanks for writing this.
I lost a relative yesterday and it's weird because, while we've lived in different places for a long while, there's a big generational gap, and we'd only met up perhaps once a year or two, they were around a lot when I was a child, and I can remember that time, and how it was, and how - while not necessarily happy - how much simpler things were, and how more 'normal' and less of a struggle. I know it's because I was a child, so obviously seeing the world so differently.

But the grief I'm feeling seems bigger than I would have expected. It's all-encompassing and is bringing up grief I have for other relations, one of my parents, and it's that dragging, heavy kind of feeling but beyond that my emotions are absolutely nameless. I'm feeling so numb and lost, just like so many here, and I wonder if it's connected with some kind of ptsd with this virus.
We've been at the cautious end of things, and we've not seen any family in over a year now, and I've been worried sick about school transmissions (we live in what has been an extremely high level area). And with jabs being postponed, it just feels unending right now, even though I should be feeling grateful that they have been created and that we will get them in the next few months.

Reading some people's experiences here has made me cry, as I recognise the disconnection and glass barrier feeling, which has actually relieved some of it a bit, just knowing I'm not totally losing it! Thanks, and all the best to anyone struggling right now. It's not easy, and perhaps admitting that helps a bit.

duffeldaisy I am so sorry about your relative. I think the fact we each have a before (‘normal’)
during (tough/blank/limited/worrying)
After (who knows really)

Means a lot of the linear links and relationships between past and future and memories and loss etc are really screwed up at mo.

Support

"I think the fact we each have a before (‘normal’)
during (tough/blank/limited/worrying)
After (who knows really)

Means a lot of the linear links and relationships between past and future and memories and loss etc are really screwed up at mo."

That sums it up brilliantly. Yes. And thanks ever so much.

Really sorry about your loss duffeldaisy .

I remembered spotting this in February on Twitter. Credit to the Kings Fund I think. Notice the huge dip around the anniversary. I know we are all individuals but to be honest the bit pre-anniversary looks spot on for me so I'm hoping the post but does too. Not sure if it factors in the ongoing nature of it all though.

@TheMildManneredMilitant that's a really excellent chart, sums up my feelings perfectly - although I'm waiting for the upturn .

Tuesday was particularly hard for me as second birthday in lockdown. I had as nice a day planned as possible- out with friends to newly opened garden centres and a nice if cold lunch outdoors- but bizarrely felt much more down than I did last year when I was working on my 50th and unable to meet a friend in person.

I think it's the realisation that we've had no "normal" for over a year now. I'm in Scotland so we had a brief few months of something approaching normality, but been restricted to local area since mid October.

I'm forcing myself to organise small things, but even a walk or a hair appointment all seem like huge big commitments. It's so weird as before this I was the organisation queen - coordinating group meet ups and holidays and get togethers. Now an eyebrow wax in a months time seems like an insurmountable task.

Thanks @TheMildManneredMilitant. And thanks for sharing that graph. It does look really accurate for the mental journey so far - and I like how if it is right, then we're all in a general reflective, healing stage now, but we're on the up.

And if anyone else has had counselling, the actual working through and coming to terms with things can make everything feel a bit muddy for a while, like disturbing all the silt at the bottom of a river to get out the gunk. But then it does get better and more organised again. So hopefully that's what this is. And then superimposing any other stresses or grief on top of that just makes it a bit worse for the moment, but it is temporary and kind of 'normal'.

That's a really helpful analogy duffeldaisy - I haven't had counselling before but I recognise the 'disturbing the silt' feeling.

Totally agree with you, Pump. I think in Europe / UK we haven’t known hardships (such that go on in developing / troubled countries) since war-time. There has been a shift now, into a different parallel.

In a funny way, I think that Prince Philip represented that war-time generation, who had gone before us. And his death is ushering in a new era, where the comfort that baby boomers / millennials knew has gone.

Sometimes I look in the mirror and surprised to see my normal face. I should look absolutely crazed.

The days are so long and lonely.

@LunaHeather - your last two posts sound like the beginning of a bloody good lockdown poem or song!