Does anyone else find it difficult to look back?

[MyBadHabitsLeadToYou]

I can’t sleep. Down a Facebook wormhole and come across lots of posts from March 2020 on the nursery Facebook page. They put the info up there about the closure and the page was used as a little way for the staff to see what the kids were up to. Parents uploaded photos and videos and comments etc. There is a wee video montage thing from all the staff holding up rainbows etc.

It makes me want to sob, looking back at it.

It’s funny. I’m not a crier. I am a generally pragmatic, practical person. March 2020 onwards - that first lockdown - was however a horrific time for us. Trying to work from home all of a sudden in stressful, full on jobs with 2 and 4 year old at home. My mental health still hasn’t recovered.

I kept a video diary of that first lockdown with the kids and all the stuff we did. Thought it would be interesting for them to look back on it one day (I just felt at the time I needed to document it) but I can’t watch it back now. It makes me feel..sad? Anxious? I can’t quite put my finger on it.

Can anyone relate to this at all?

Yes, totally. For me it’s songs I was listening to during the two long lockdowns. Can’t stand hearing them, they just bring back the pain, even though they’re beautiful songs.

Yes. My eldest and I would watch tiktok of an evening during the first lockdown and it was when everyone was doing those Blinded by the Lights dances. I can’t listen to that song just now. It gives me the same weird sad/anxious feeling.

And yet the kids were so bloody happy. They really were. And maybe we did ok, really.

Nope Because ive been looking further back and reliving my 2003 to 2008 life. A fucking sight better than it is now.

I had my second baby in that first lockdown. I think it will take a long time before I can process a lot of the stuff from around that time, I can’t really bear to think about some of it. I don’t know how you did the working with tiny children at home OP, what a toll it must have taken. The monumental effort that went into keeping things “normal” for my children was obviously worth it but it has taken a huge toll on me.

It was awful. Just awful. I try very hard to be positive and upbeat. I tried to keep it happy and normal for the kids and I feel I succeeded in that. But my life went to shit and I’m finding it hard to recover from it. We were so fortunate not to have lost anyone, or lost or jobs, or lost each other. I’m thankful for that every day. But there are other little things that I have lost and they add up.

Having a baby during lockdown must have been incredibly hard. New mums in that period were utterly robbed bet you did an excellent job.

The reality is that it was incredibly hard for everyone. Just in very different ways.

I can’t look back. Our life has been rubbish since the first lockdown.

We are a family of four and really only my youngest has ‘breezed through’ the pandemic.

My husband, my eldest, and myself have seriously negatively effected. Especially my eldest. I have no idea when or even if we’ll ‘get over it’.

I don’t look back because I can’t. It’s too painful.

I keep hoping one day I’ll wake up and it was just a nightmare.

My youngest has been effected, it’s not plain sailing. However, for them it’s mild and they will catch up.

Their personality and age is on their side.

My 3yo was obsessed with peter rabbit at the time and I'm allergic to it now. Also the places we'd go to play as we had so much time to burn and play parks were shut upset me when I pass them- little places with fallen trees/ inlets of the river - they set me off. It's the same weird sad feeling(, like wtf just happened.

On paper we've had an easy pandemic but wfh with a 1 and 3 yo was awful and DHs health anxiety has gone very bad.

Yes! I am the same, particularly with any songs that were around at the time (including blinding lights) - I can’t bear to listen to them. I hated last year so much - my business had to be closed, I lost loads of money, it was fucking shit. I’m still so angry about the whole thing. All those people dodging you on the street, acting like just going for a walk was murder. I haven’t got over it yet & not sure when I will.
It’s made me really hate the world, which is sad as I used to be a happy, positive person but the way people reacted (with suspicion, fear of everything, judging everyone, expecting everyone to be ok with their lives being trashed for the ‘greater good’) has made me very bitter.

I've never really thought about this before but if I reflect, this last 18 months has broken me.

Wfh with a 2 year old and a 3 year old- now 3 and 4. I feel I've been robbed of their preschool years.

I'm mentally and physically exhausted and really sad about it on a personal level (as well as global).

@Justanotherquestioner I feel the same, except I have a 1 yo & nearly 4 yo (born in first lockdown & 2.5 in first lockdown)

It absolutely broke me having a newborn and 2 yo in lockdown with no support. I was wishing time away for it all to be over which breaks my heart as it was my youngest baby year which I absolutely adored when my first was born. 😔😔

Yes my son was looking at a video he did of him doing his football training on the garden with all his equipment squeezed into our tiny garden. I couldn’t watch it.

I found the 2020 easier than this year.

Everything seemed so surreal I didn’t really connect with it emotionally. Just took it one day at a time. I even have some fairly happy memories from the first lockdown. Just little things like noticing tiny pansies in the grass at the back that I was never around we bought to notice before.

But this year, with things going back to “normal” but not really being normal has been more difficult. It’s shown me how much I was turning a blind eye to in the rest of my life.

I find it much harder to look further back, to pre pandemic life. How happy we were. How easy everything was. I mourn the life we had and I am so scared it will never return.

@SpringRainbow

I can’t look back. Our life has been rubbish since the first lockdown.

We are a family of four and really only my youngest has ‘breezed through’ the pandemic.

My husband, my eldest, and myself have seriously negatively effected. Especially my eldest. I have no idea when or even if we’ll ‘get over it’.

I don’t look back because I can’t. It’s too painful.

I keep hoping one day I’ll wake up and it was just a nightmare.

Older kids are definitely the ones who have been affected the most. I've seen a massive difference mentally in DD (17 now) and in the teens I teach. (not UK) But you know what? They are the ones who have behaved impeccably and could teach us all something. Hope yours gets life back on track soon.

I was allowed to enter dd2’s school grounds to drop her off for the first time since March 2020 on Monday. When I picked her up, walking back down the steps to leave the school I remember thinking about the last time I did and how I never imagined it would be 18 months before I did it again. It was so bittersweet

I always try to think positively. We did the whole home schooling, plus toddler, plus working full-time in very senior stressful jobs. Yes it was beyond difficult, but we saw the kids so much more than we ever would have done rushing out to the office every day, and I know in a strange way I will always treasure that unique time. And really, things could always be worse. Look at Afghanistan, or the chaos that happened in South Africa, or the poverty or dictatorship that some live with every day in other countries. We're very protected in the UK and really rather lucky. I think people learned a lot about themselves during lockdown, and have made changes to improve their lives as a result.

Well, no one here has likened their experience to living in a dictatorship or at war or anything. You’re the only one who has brought that up.

When I went to the GP (before I was diagnosed with PND), she said that one of the things that was compounding how I was feeling was always telling myself about how much worse other people had things in an effort to be positive, and not allowing myself to feel what I was feeling, or feeling like I was ungrateful and feeble for finding things hard.

Oh my goodness yes. I wondered if it was just me!
That first week right before lock down etc I can clearly remember pushing my two very small children in a trolly around a supermarket trying to smile as they faced me but looking behind them at the rows and rows of empty shelves and peopel arguing and feeling terrified. Waling past a single dad with a baby in a carrier on his chest asking the staff how he would feed his baby if they had absolutely no formula...
I just got into the car and sobbed and it still brings me to tears now. Not the actual lock down but the right before, before everything changed.

I try not to think about the past at all anymore. I had to shield the majority of last year and spent the greater part of it convinced I was going to die and leave my young DC's without a mother. I'm less worried about covid now but that constant stress has led to even more health issues and I think I may have PTSD.

I have this too. And worse for me (because I'm not normally like this) when anyone talks about loving lockdown or enjoying it in any way I want to scream at them WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU!!!
I never say anything like that of course, but I'm thinking it in my head. Rationally of course I know it was different for everyone.
I think that's a reason I still hate WFH (only doing that 2 days a week now thank goodness). I sit at my desk in my bedroom and still feel the same sense of anxiety and low level panic I felt back then. Can't relax and get into a good place mentally at all.

That’s how I feel with WFH!! It has great advantages but to be honest if they told us tomorrow everything was going back to normal as of next month I really don’t think I’d be sorry about that.

It was a horrible time, but I cried my tears back then. I was devastated and I'm still unconvinced that the non pharmaceutical interventions were worth it. So now I look back in anger.

We have alot of serious chronic illness in our family due to genetic bad luck. I find it a bit difficult to look at photos of my children before this was apparent and when ill health wasn't on my radar and regular hospital visits/ordering medication wasn't a thing.

As for covid and looking back, no I don't give it a second though. So far the pandemic has been a walk in the park in comparison.