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?

Everyone will be so much happier once they have resigned themselves to living the way that I enjoy. Either a windup, or an absolute weirdo with control issues. I know which I think it is.

@NannyAndJohn

There's no point reminiscing upon our pre-Covid lives. The world has changed now and we need to look forwards.

I've come to appreciate my new, slower lifestyle. Staying local. Finding things to do around the house. Virtual meet ups.

I do think the world will be a happier place once we've all accepted our new way of life.

Eh? I don’t have a ‘new way of life’. I don’t go virtual meet ups, I see my friends in person. I have travelled internationally this summer to visit family. I am going to a gig at the weekend and have 4 theatre trips booked between now and Christmas. I’m going out with friends for dinner on Friday. My children are both at birthday parties at the weekend. We’re all back at our hobbies. I’m back in the office. I have no need to embrace a ‘new way of life’, because I’m living my old one happily.

There’s no point replying to her/him. They won’t come back. There is a pleasure to them in twatplopping on a thread and changing the tone.

Of all the horrible, negative, damaging drivel you have spouted on here the last few months, this is the worst I have read. You have come on a thread in which posters are sharing in a heartfelt and honest way how lost and sad they are feeling and you somehow think that posting the above is an appropriate thing to do.

If you are real, you are horrifying.

I agree with this. All of it.

Everyone on this thread (myself included) is suffering some degree of lasting trauma from the past year and a half. @NannyAndJohn seems to identify threads like these and homes in on them, and exacerbates the anxieties of those who post on them with groundless and demonstrably false statements.

Absolutely no thoughts for the mental health of the people she targets - or maybe she does, but not in a good way, and that's quite the point.

@SMBH

There’s no point replying to her/him. They won’t come back. There is a pleasure to them in twatplopping on a thread and changing the tone.

Yes, I really hate how the direction of every single thread changes the minute he/she does a hit and run. We don't actually have to reply to them and allow that to happen. He/she must be loving every minute of this.

Sounds a bit sinister to me.

Actually wanting no real life - awful.

It is true re derailing every thread - I think it’s a sport see how much it can happen

My sister was saying this time last year that she looked back on the spring with something approaching trauma. Three kids under 10 at home, one of whom couldn't understand why he couldn't go back to nursery, go to the seaside, go to soft play or swimming. In the end he stopped asking, which was the saddest thing, she said. He just stayed in the garden becoming more and more feral. And they were the lucky ones, with a garden and two parents at home who were both in work.

The damage which has been deliberately wreaked on is horrifying. I will never forgive this, just as I will not forgive those keyboard warriors who spouted their bile all over the internet to try and belittle and shame anyone who was finding it difficult.

Everyone will be so much happier once they have resigned themselves to living the way that I enjoy.

Not what I was getting at in the slightest. I was hoping to encourage people to look for the light at the end of the tunnel.

I agree about the songs, even that sea shanty song makes me feel depressed! I remember driving and it came on the radio. I thought about how it would go down in the pubs I used to go to in my teens/ early 20s and then remembered it wouldn’t, because they were all shut.

Wanting no real life for herself is fine, if not a bit sad.
Wanting no real life for other people is vile.

Ignore the poisonous, joy-sucking, anxiety-fuelling emotional vampire. She/they feed off your negative emotion.

YANBU, OP. I can’t think of the lockdowns without feeling sad and anxious. My daughter’s mental health and emotional development were severely affected and we are still dealing with the effects now.

Funny how some posters disappeared when the 100,000 cases a day prediction didn't come to fruition.

Now back again, like a dementor sucking the life out of all threads!

@NannyAndJohn

Everyone will be so much happier once they have resigned themselves to living the way that I enjoy.

Not what I was getting at in the slightest. I was hoping to encourage people to look for the light at the end of the tunnel.

Oh bullshit.

@NannyAndJohn

Everyone will be so much happier once they have resigned themselves to living the way that I enjoy.

Not what I was getting at in the slightest. I was hoping to encourage people to look for the light at the end of the tunnel.

We saw the light at the end of the tunnel months ago. We've been well clear of the tunnel for almost as long.

I can't look back at 2020 or 2021 with any nostalgia and I can't promise my MH will survive any further lockdowns or school closures. I've had to keep everyone else in my family going and I've run out of steam. Kids are teenagers and I'm so upset about the milestones they've had to sacrifice.

I don’t understand people saying their life is the same, same eating out and theatres and holidays.

I can’t DO all of that planning now, alongside working. For me it all needs pre booking and testing and then someone seems to get ill or shows are cancelled and then it’s admin getting refunds and cancelling things around my plans. I don’t have the time.

Are those who say their lives are “back to normal” working as well? If so I don’t get it.

@Kevinishot wow, I’ve never read a post on here before where I’ve had to check it wasn’t my own post. You feel EXACTLY the same as I do and I hate the new bitter me but I feel like I’m just waiting for everyone else to catch up so we can finally move on and get normal life back!

Oh god yes. I thought it was just me. My second dc was born just before the first lockdown. Dh was very sick with covid and in isolation for 3 weeks when baby was 4 weeks old. Dc1 was so shaken by a new baby and her nursery closing. It was genuinely awful.
Both dc are amazing though and have coped well. Personally though I have nothing left. No reserves. Will take time to rebuild some resilience again.

@backoffice

I don’t understand people saying their life is the same, same eating out and theatres and holidays.

I can’t DO all of that planning now, alongside working. For me it all needs pre booking and testing and then someone seems to get ill or shows are cancelled and then it’s admin getting refunds and cancelling things around my plans. I don’t have the time.

Are those who say their lives are “back to normal” working as well? If so I don’t get it.

Yes I’m working as well. So far I haven’t had any significant admin difficulties (except when we went abroad, that was a ballache admin wise but hadn’t seen family for almost 2 years so was worth it). I imagine there will be cancellations etc as we go into winter but will cross that bridge when we come to it. At the moment I’m loving having things to look forward to again.

I feel deeply traumatised by 2020. I just remember sobbing on my husbands shoulder. I was terrified! I was sobbing for all the lost experiences and traditions my children weren't going to experience and that we were all hiding from death.

I remember sitting on my bed wfh, dealing with a case where a 10yo boy had jumped out of his first floor bedroom window to escape the abuse he was getting from his mum. He broke both legs and dragged himself on his elbows to his neighbours house. For him school was his safe place, home was the place he would rather risk jumping from a window than the beating and abuse his mum gave him.

I sat there, in these child protection meetings just numb. I couldn't, and still can't, understand how so many people wanted to schools closed as schools being closed had that outcome.

And that wasnt the only awful case I had. By november 2020 I had a mental breakdown. I couldn't keep up with all the hurt, pain and desperation i was dealing with daily whilst other people were on here panicking about touching gates and someone stopping to eat crisps on a bench.

Even typing this my stomach is flip-flopping and I feel sick. If they replay Boris telling us all to stay at home on tv, I have to turn over. I just cant.

Now, here we are. Trying to rebuild our lives but I have this sense of it not being allowed. I can't settle into my life now for fear of it all being ripped away again.

Sure I've been out, we've been to pubs and restaurants, clubs and parties. But this nervousness wont leave, I dont know if it will ever leave. And this is what I feel when I look back. Loss, pain, heartbreak, terror, frustration, annoyance, desperation.

Lockdown was horrendous for me- stuck home with an autistic toddler slightly older child. Small, cramped mid-terrace house with tiny garden, trying to deal with screaming meltdowns daily whilst worrying about the neighbours (who were thankfully lovely but many would not have been). It was dreadful and there really was no ‘positive to take from it’. The people who talk about enjoying the slower pace of life in lockdown or how they made the best of it are talking from a very privileged position.

@SpnBaby1967

I feel deeply traumatised by 2020. I just remember sobbing on my husbands shoulder. I was terrified! I was sobbing for all the lost experiences and traditions my children weren't going to experience and that we were all hiding from death.

I remember sitting on my bed wfh, dealing with a case where a 10yo boy had jumped out of his first floor bedroom window to escape the abuse he was getting from his mum. He broke both legs and dragged himself on his elbows to his neighbours house. For him school was his safe place, home was the place he would rather risk jumping from a window than the beating and abuse his mum gave him.

I sat there, in these child protection meetings just numb. I couldn't, and still can't, understand how so many people wanted to schools closed as schools being closed had that outcome.

And that wasnt the only awful case I had. By november 2020 I had a mental breakdown. I couldn't keep up with all the hurt, pain and desperation i was dealing with daily whilst other people were on here panicking about touching gates and someone stopping to eat crisps on a bench.

Even typing this my stomach is flip-flopping and I feel sick. If they replay Boris telling us all to stay at home on tv, I have to turn over. I just cant.

Now, here we are. Trying to rebuild our lives but I have this sense of it not being allowed. I can't settle into my life now for fear of it all being ripped away again.

Sure I've been out, we've been to pubs and restaurants, clubs and parties. But this nervousness wont leave, I dont know if it will ever leave. And this is what I feel when I look back. Loss, pain, heartbreak, terror, frustration, annoyance, desperation.

This made me so sad that poor boy

Also for you, a nightmare

@FfrothiCoffi I think perhaps I have a lot of disabled friends/family and as we’ve been working in the NHS they don’t want to meet with us - even now - if we are feeling at all unwell or have been near positive cases (all the time). So much has been cancelled at the last minute because of this, that’s put me off.

Restaurants and bars we have to book now and I can’t organise so far in advance. Theatre has been cancelled twice and as it’s another city, that means hotels and travel cancelled or just money down the drain.

I’ve given up tbh.

Yes, it's really weird. As you say, there were some happy moments, there was a freedom from some of the more onerous obligations and burdens of normal life, but it was so messed up.
Many of the court cases of people who ventured more than e.g. 5 miles from their house in January this year are currently reaching court in my area and that brings back horrible memories. How bloody messed up not to be able to go for a country walk. What a total waste of police time (when they should have been enforcing mask wearing in indoor spaces) and now what a total waste of time in an overburdened court system to be criminalising outdoor walks or simply sitting down on a hill.
If this government's recklessness means we have to go back into lockdown I very much hope they have finally learnt that nobody catches Covid-19 on a country walk or sitting down outside, and that people won't be stopped from doing this harmless activities that greatly help mental health while in lockdown. Not everyone lives within walking distance of an outdoor space that improves mood.
I am very bitter about the role of the police in this and about the stupidity of the government in stopping people getting out into nature over actual laws such as mask wearing.

I know nurses with PTSD after the vast amount of dreadful deaths, so I don't want to suggest the country walk/sitting down issue is worse, but just so bloody ridiculous and damaging to mental health. I still worry when walking in the country that I will return to my car to find the police waiting or marvel that I can drive to a walk without fear of getting stopped.

I think the criminal cases should be stopped because the aim of the criminal justice system is mostly to protect the public, and no-one needs protecting from someone who took a walk or sat down during lockdown.