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?

@Lostinacloud

Fucking hear hear!!

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

🤯 this is exactly it. I think this is why I fear things won’t return to normal. I feel like it’s

I’m in Scotland. We still have masks. We have Sturgeon with her threats. Rumours (which admittedly I have avoided reading) that the SG will retain the powers that they had to lock us down as and when they see fit etc.

Travel restrictions. Uncertainty about going away - what happens if the destination country is put on the read list? What happens if I test (or someone close to me) tears positive two weeks before an event I’m looking forward to. Having to book everything. Can’t even pop to the pub for a drink unplanned.

It’s better than it was for sure but it’s still hanging there like the sword of Damocles isn’t it.

The best I can manage is, 'I wouldn't want to do it again'...

I know DD and I had grown closer in adversity.

Perhaps one day she will be able to look back and think, 'whatever experience in life, I got through that and so I'll get through this'

As they say you don't go to hell and come bank empty handed?

I do too. I had my first baby during the first lockdown after years of infertility and IVF treatments and feel so sad that nobody could meet her. I used to dream of my parents excitedly coming to the hospital to meet her and having my husband there with me. They didn't meet her until she was 2 months old and I feel so robbed of everything. We won't be having more children so I'm finding it very hard thinking back to just being at home, overwhelmed with no support, no health visitors, no baby classes.
The whole thing is making me really sad and I wish we could go back to pre covid times with all the freedoms we enjoyed.

@HesterShaw1

OP I completely get it. I find it so so sad looking back over the last 18 months, and I can't believe what has happened. There are so many things I am shocked by, but from a completely personal point of view, it was the way in which people living alone were so entirely disregarded those first few months. The government seized this "nothing matters but the NHS" and fed it wholesale to the public, who lapped it up. I want to cry when I remember going for yet another lonely walk on my birthday in April 2020, and trying to smile at people and engage with them, just to have human contact on any level. And people were looking the other way, and drawing their children closer, as though I was unclean and would give them diseases by smiling. One other lonely walk I did in the open countryside, there as a couple I passed in a field who turned away and put masks on as I approached. If I live to 100, I won't forget the way people turned on each other, all encouraged by the government and social media.

The irony is of course, is that during that time here in the far south west, there was virtually no Covid. It was all pointless.

Couldn't agree more.

I remember seeing some dc walking happily to school whilst the same dc as before were stuck in front of screens again without contact.

Felt so unreal to be denied education amongst peers, for some

Yeah I saw DDs friend walking to school past our front window whilst my DD was stuck behind a screen for yet another day! Awful.

@flipflop76 I really feel this too.

My DD is slightly older but we’re unlikely to have any more, and I feel totally ROBBED of so much. For some reason it’s only just hitting me now, I know I need to “make peace” with it somehow but I just can’t! If she’d been a newborn during this I’d have have had a breakdown, truly. You’ve done so well.

Definitely agreeing with the PPs on memories attached to certain Cbeebies music - for me it’s “Yes my name is Iggle Piggle..” - I love most of Cbeebies but that song just makes me feel so maudlin 🥴😂 I remember it rolling round every evening and this feeling of sadness and also weird relief at another lockdown day drawing to a close.

Also agree with the whole “struggling to look forward” thing some PPs have mentioned. I am desperate to look ahead and start planning some joyful things again but it all feels so precarious still.

It feels oddly like that's not a huge amount to look back on.

Obviosusly we did things - and I do have mixed memories - good working our way thorugh Marvel films - BBQ cooking and bonfire night - and bad not leaving house at all for over a month then how odd it felt when we did - first time back on trains how odd that felt.

Without covid we'd have packed so much more in these last 18 + months - it does feel like the kids have aged out of a lot in the time. Big end of holdiay trip they did without us and with their friends this year.

It also feel odd because things are supposed to be back to normal but somehow aren't still - finding places to go feel harder now.

I'm hoping they start putting on some decent films in cinermas so we can start going back there - though nearest one isn't opening back up so more travel to go. It feel like we lost precious time - my eldest went from 14 at start to a now independent 16 year old and we're very aware she'll probably be off in other couple of years which seems very soon.

Things could have been so much worse for us - but there does feel like a before during and after time and the after time isn't back to before environment in so may little ways.

@MarshaBradyo

I remember seeing some dc walking happily to school whilst the same dc as before were stuck in front of screens again without contact.

Felt so unreal to be denied education amongst peers, for some

Yes. So many of my children’s friends were in school. We live in a smallish village and they’d sit and watch their friends walk past the window to go to school while they were stuck with me (working full time) for another day. One of my DD’s would cry and ask why she didn’t deserve to go to school like her friends. They’d then have to sit and watch their friends chatting together in the classroom on their zoom classes while it was illegal for them to socialise. Hard for 6 and 4 year olds to understand.

Living through Covid brought positive things to our family - life before was hard and will continue to be.

Covid actually brought us some respite.

Absolutely. Like you say it was a strange, fuzzy (but not of the warm kind), anxious, lonely, sad time that I don’t want to ever go to again. Yes, we had fun times, special moments and the monotony of the weekly zoom quizzes we did with friends and family brought us together but only reinforced how far apart we were. My DH continued to work and I felt so isolated at home with a then 5 month baby and 2.5 yo. We were so lucky in some ways- lots of space at home, beautiful places to exercise on our doorstep, no real financial impact but it’s such a chunk of life we will never get back.

The April onwards was the worst for me. I fell pregnancy very unexpectedly and some serious complications were found. We had to make such a heartbreaking decision and going through that, through the medical procedure, the loss and the grief with no family or friends around was a very dark time. Although sadly, I don’t think I would’ve been in the right headspace to give birth and survive with a newborn and two other little ones in that third lockdown, with all the restrictions in place and not being able to have the support from loved ones.

It’s all such a blur now. I really hope we’re not heading in that directions again…

Lockdown was incredibly stressful. I can't bear to look at photos from that time.

A 1yo and a 2yo, a husband WFH, all in a flat with no outside space. It was actual hell. I cried most nights.

@MyBadHabitsLeadToYou

I feel like it won’t return. I know people think that’s doom mongering etc and I can’t stand that sort of outlook generally, but there are certain things that I just don’t think ever will go back.

I think you're right. It's horrible.

@nc8766

Lockdown was incredibly stressful. I can't bear to look at photos from that time.

A 1yo and a 2yo, a husband WFH, all in a flat with no outside space. It was actual hell. I cried most nights.

A big gap between those who could relax in nice gardens and spacious houses and those trapped in flats.

I started doing a weird thing and staying up really late, like unwilling to go to bed because I couldn't face the fact that tomorrow was just going to be another shitty day.
Then I'd feel even worse the next day because of it.
I can understand how the in the night Garden/cbeebies bedtime song would make you feel that way.

Ive had so many periods much more personally difficult that I think it has been easier for me than others. I have had extremely poor health episodes where I lost everything and think that made me know that the pandemic was a passing thing that won't last forever. I fucking hated lockdown two but knew it would end. I won't get over losing a close family relative though and cannot fathom how hard some people had it (those that couldn't be with dying loved ones/tiny funerals etc etc)

Fortunately I don't have associations of music/ TV. I turned them off quite quickly as the narrative became very repetitive, and radio frankly sounded funerial. Not that I could listen to what I wanted while pathetically attempting home learning with a 6yo (as he still was at the start) and a 9yo with SENs. As an ex-teacher, my professional pride was wounded by months of groundhog day failiure, compounded by the way my purposes in life were just stripped away in days (that is still only just resuming towards normality this week) . It felt very much like something Margaret Attwood could have written.

The sound I loathed was in June when from the conservatory, I could hear the chorus of play carrying on the wind from my DC's school from the special chosen children. I'm now trying not to think too much of the way that DS1's teacher dropped the class to pick up another bubble because they are now teaching DS2 and I don't want to taint this year with old baggage.

I could go on and on, and so many posts resonate. I knew all along that materially I was bloody lucky and that millions were suffering so much more, but the past 18m have stripped away so much of what nourishes my soul.

It's only the past month that I feel like I'm healing, fed by things like parkrun and finally getting the kids into some splash swimming sessions. But there is still that fragility. You have to pre-book at a time when plans can so easily be shattered. I struggle to look more than 2 weeks ahead. I've got races to train for, but don't really believe in them.

This Bogroll is less optomistic and far more cynical than she was 18m ago and I miss her.

I've kept a daily journal since the end of February 2020. I tried to read it back the other day but couldn't. I am going to continue writing in it but not read it. Maybe one day I might be able to read it. When I die I am going to donate it to my local history museum.

A big gap between those who could relax in nice gardens and spacious houses and those trapped in flats

Exactly. We live in a very small second floor flat with no outside space, not even a balcony. There's three of us - me, DH and 24yo DD. Three adults cramped together in a tiny space, almost 24/7, DH wfh in a very stressful job for up to 12 hours a day in the main room which is also the main thoroughfare (you have to walk through it to get to any other room in the flat). Consequently me and DD had to creep about (he was usually on calls/in meetings), no TV or anything slightly noisy in other rooms either. I spent most of the lockdowns in my bedroom, reading, because the WiFi is shit. Heavenly - for about two days.

Added to that I have RA and usually rely on buses to do shopping but none were running - we don't drive. There were no delivery slots (I managed to get a 'vulnerable' slot twice), so me and DD had to carry all the shopping home three times a week, a three mile round trip which is no fun when you have mobility issues.

I bet all the 'I love my new slow way of life' lockdown fans have gardens, cars, home offices... And are perfectly happy to shift their perceived risk onto others in crappy low paid, zero hour contract jobs.

And talking of work - wfh isn't the banana bread and daytime TV middle class idyll many on here think it is, either.

Lockdown essentially shifted the Covid risk from the rich (able to stay at home) to the poor (who predominantly couldn’t). At the same time, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Anyone who goes on about how lovely lockdown was needs to remember that.

I know this thread is a bit sad, but I'm really appreciating it.
And what's most refreshing is that we haven't had anyone come on and tell us we're wrong.

@RubyFowler

I know this thread is a bit sad, but I'm really appreciating it. And what's most refreshing is that we haven't had anyone come on and tell us we're wrong.

Except @NannyAndJohn.

I just remembered how all the play parks were locked up and forbidden as well :(

Especially cruel for those children in flats or with no outside space.

I hope if there’s ever a future lockdown it is never again to that level.

I remember posters on here calling people selfish for going out more than once for daily exercise. I hope it never goes back to those days.

@FfrothiCoffi

Lockdown essentially shifted the Covid risk from the rich (able to stay at home) to the poor (who predominantly couldn’t). At the same time, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Anyone who goes on about how lovely lockdown was needs to remember that.

This may be true at a population level, but having a family member who works in the NHS and had to treat Covid-19 patients for the past 18 months and was initially exposed to so much virus that they had to move into rented accommodation away from their family for months to avoid making the family ill, and yet they are not 'poor' but were exposed to far more virus than any minimum wage delivery driver or supermarket grocery picker, bin collector, postie etc. I know personally know 2 doctors who died. It isn't a simple as a sweeping generalisation at an individual level. Plenty of non-poor in the NHS didn't stay home and were the most exposed to the virus in the entire population, some died, but not because they were poor.

Yes, looking back at the time when healthcare worker family member had to stay in rented accommodation only waving to family through a window for months is very difficult.