Someone somewhere needs to articulate the lost quality of life

[Gguin]

Firstly, I am not saying I think there shouldn't be restrictions as needed, masks, reduced social contact. I do. Just to reemphasise that, to prevent people misreading the title, I support and abide and have abided by restrictions, both statutory and advised.
I also hated every single second of the lockdown. I hated what it did to friends. I hated the disregard of single people. I hated the criminalisation of social lives. I hated the lost opportunities for young and not so young people to build or change their lives. I hated the paranoia and judgmentalism. I hated the NHS worship and everyone else can go hang.
And yes I hate this feeling, somewhere between anxiety, depression and a grinding underlying fear of future regret on all that has been lost. I drove past a pub in rural Ireland where I live today and it was shut, boarded up and probably will never reopen. The sign "craic agus ceoil" (laughter and music) was worn and frayed, like a relic of the times when we were able to enjoy themselves with abandon.
All I would like as the latest chapter of shit unfolds is for someone, somewhere to actually articulate the sadness of all the lost opportunities. The friends that have never been made, the months and years spent indoors, the catastrophic toll on mental health and above all this awful feeling that the many of the very things that make life worth living are so expendable and in some quarters, not even mourned.

I agree with so much on this thread. Does anyone else feel lockdown sort of numbed them to the cruelty of all of this? I remember hearing and reading about saying goodbye to loved ones over ipads etc and feeling all this was so so wrong, but the anger was muffled somehow because the days were just relentlessly the same and I was just feeling...numb.

It's only in the past 6 months or so that the complete absurdity of putting covid restrictions above everything else has hit home. Two close friends have told me they feel the same and that there is no way they will be going back into not seeing anyone outside of their families again even if another lockdown is announced.

@Helocariad

I agree with so much on this thread. Does anyone else feel lockdown sort of numbed them to the cruelty of all of this? I remember hearing and reading about saying goodbye to loved ones over ipads etc and feeling all this was so so wrong, but the anger was muffled somehow because the days were just relentlessly the same and I was just feeling...numb.

It's only in the past 6 months or so that the complete absurdity of putting covid restrictions above everything else has hit home. Two close friends have told me they feel the same and that there is no way they will be going back into not seeing anyone outside of their families again even if another lockdown is announced.

It hit me in a different order. Much of 2020 I was angry. What became the first AD thread started 25/4/2020 as a discussion about people who suck joy and doom all over other people and on those threads, the wider impacts of lockdowns have been discussed throughout, as well as personal experiences. As May went on and none of the minor changes eased anything for my family (no practical bubbles for us) there was a kind of lethargy. Anger kicked in in early June when it became clear that my children had another 3 months before setting foot in school. Work was then set centrally and while DS2's teacher kept on a weekly zoom quiz to check in with the y2's, DS1's teacher walked away to her new class. School had no personal contact regarding DS1 from May... he has autism and other SENs and submitted no work. Some days I could extort a little Bitesize from him if I was lucky.

Anger became despondency and numbness over the winter and my numbness didn't really shift until August when a bit more normality crept back and I began to feel a more normal emotional range again. Excitement and anticipation are still thin on the ground.

It was only clinging on to the thought that life would improve from April that stopped me resorting to trying to get anti-depressants to get through this. Maybe I should have done as I thought there would be a quicker emotional response. In summer 2020, while my personal connections were still shot, we did get out and do a holiday and days out. I found that much harder to do this summer.

Having an autistic 11yo happy to do not-much at home, it's now so draining trying to get him to do things beyond the home and unlike a teenager, he's too young to leave him to it.

I feel differently now about numbers / stats. I know they are used to push emotive reactions but I don’t care.

I like this thread as generally you get posters pushing the fear pedal as I like to think of it.

Yes I'm watching the news now. Over 100,000 "cases"?

Ok.

The inhumanity of it all is why I now feel that I can't see life as anything other than positive and joyful - things are so much better now than they were in 2020, when the world became such a truly frightening, callous place. My present attitude of apparent 'toxic positivity' isn't about denying or discounting how horrific it's all been - it's more about gratitude for no longer having to live like we did in 2020.

The government's attitude that nothing was more important than saving hospitals from getting overwhelmed, and the absolute fear and terror they encouraged through their policies, aided and abetted largely by the left wing media, was criminal.

I was a secondary school teacher during the pandemic. I taught for six months over zoom, six hours a day. It was awful. And it was awful seeing my gorgeous students, usually so full of cheek and laughter and life become reduced to shadows of themselves, with nothing I could do to help them.

I was so furious with my union's insistence that schools do NOTHING to provide online provision for students and their focus on protecting teachers over providing an education for students that I left and stopped paying my subs after a decade of loyalty. Their attitude was disgusting. Schools should never have been shut. There was no justification for it whatsoever and it has destroyed many young people's educational progress, social skills and mental health. For some of those children and young people, they will never recover or catch up.

The list of horrific policies is too long to list.

Expecting people who lived alone to not see another human being for three months.
Denying people the right to fresh air and exercise.
Denying people the right to see their friends and families.
Denying people the right to visit sick loved ones.
Denying people the right to marry.
Denying people the right to have a funeral.
Forcing people to die alone.
Forcing people to give birth alone.
Expecting people to home school children while working full time.
Padlocking playgrounds.
Prosecuting people for sitting down in the park.

So much more I can't list.

It was horrific and so unnecessary. And yet if you voiced any of this at the time, the vilification by self righteous, smug lockdown police meant you were silenced.

I was criticised numerous times for going to the supermarket more than once a week during the first lockdown. How could I be so SELFISH?! How could I put so many people AT RISK of DEATH?!?! All from people who had huge houses, huge cars, etc. I live in a tiny central London flat with 3 kitchen cupboards. It takes me 20 minutes to walk to the supermarket. I don't have a car. I live alone, and I wasn't allowed to meet anyone else. So I could only buy what I could physically carry, and what I could store in my flat. When the government said we could only go to the supermarket once per week, they didn't think about people like me with no car and no cupboards, because obviously no one in the government is like me.

Same with working from home. How many people have spare rooms? Computer desks and comfortable chairs? I've still got back pain from hunching over my laptop on the sofa for six months - I don't have a space for a desk in my flat, or a dining room table!

My only exercise for months was walking through the streets of a desolate central London. It took me half an hour to walk to any kind of green space, and when I got there, I wasn't even allowed to sit down and enjoy it.

I realised one day I hadn't been touched by anyone for three months.

I survived because I am incredibly resilient, and I knew it wouldn't last forever. But I can understand completely how the lockdowns pushed other people in my position into depression. I have never been so lonely in my life. And the government gave zero shits about people like me. They gave no thought to how it would be for people who live alone. No thought at all.

In the early days of the pandemic I genuinely thought this experience would serve to make people kinder, more gentle, more empathetic, more inclusive. I thought it would bring people together. But the saddest legacy for me has been to see the growing division and distrust. And that is also the government's fault, because they encouraged people to turn on one another rather than turn on them for their own colossal failures. We are not led by kind people. We are led by selfish people. And that selfishness has ultimately been what has dominated the discourse of the pandemic. This has fractured my faith in the essential goodness of human nature, and I can now understand how the Holocaust happened.

BUT if I focus on all that I wouldn't be able to get up in the morning. Hence my attitude that a life where I can do pretty much everything I used to do with only minimal hassle is a pretty good life, and I choose to be grateful for it. However, I fully understand how many people can't be, because we have all been horrifically traumatised by what we have been through. And for me, most of that trauma doesn't lie in what happened, it lies in the fact that we let it happen and so many people enjoyed the process of enforcing it. That still strikes fear into my heart.

Enid

Absolutely spot on and beautifully expressed too.

What wonderful words Enid. Thank you for sharing.

Fwiw, I don't think toxic positivity is what happens when you're simply privately grateful for what you personally have. I think it's things like "I'm sure the children in Syria would be grateful to have a sofa to sit on to work from home." It's a pattern of speech which includes constant "at least..." or "chin up" or "oh well". It is sarcastic comments about surviving the war. It's the Government making us feel pathetically grateful that we have been given social contact ("bubbles" ffs) as a reward.

@BogRollBOGOF that sounds so tough, particularly with an autistic son. We need community to function as civilised human beings.

We are not led by kind people. We are led by selfish people. And that selfishness has ultimately been what has dominated the discourse of the pandemic. This has fractured my faith in the essential goodness of human nature, and I can now understand how the Holocaust happened.

And for me, most of that trauma doesn't lie in what happened, it lies in the fact that we let it happen and so many people enjoyed the process of enforcing it. That still strikes fear into my heart.

This is spot on I think @EnidSpyton .

I feel I have let things happen I shouldn't have, like standing outside a padlocked playground and not just jumping over the fence, lifting DC over and let them play. Or not meeting up with friends outside, socially distanced. There would have been near zero risk, yet I didn't. Though we were all lonely. Bonkers.

My one true positive that I carry from this, is that I don't think many of us would allow our DCs or ourselves to be as deprived ever again, unless there was literally bodies stacking up on the streets.

I don't mean the things over which we have no control like schools or restaurants being open, but rather DCs playing together or meeting other people inside.

It's so obvious now that we - the little people - were being played, whilst the rich and powerful went on with their lives not much altered from before. I couldn't even bring myself to be worked up by the latest leaks of the Downing Street parties and "works" meet ups, it's been obvious throughout the whole damn thing that the rules were meant for us, not for them, as evidenced through British and Scottish parliament ( sorry no idea what happens in Wales) continuing to sit in person throughout all of it.

They'll struggle to get much compliance if they impose any future lockdowns. That's one of the main reasons they haven't tried to impose any limitations on Christmas.

I've read this thread over a number of days and want to add my story

I've not got children of my own but have a step son which is how I first used Mumsnet

I am single, I left my husband around my 50th birthday, lost my mum and dad years ago and am not close to my remaining family who don't live in this country. I spent a couple of years getting used to being single, having an on/off type thing with someone, buying & doing up a house. I had a job I wasn't keen on but in a company I loved. I hoped to move to another role in 2020

I had a house warming party at the end of February 2020, it was supposed to be the start of the year when I sorted out my job, my life, got on the path for the future.

Suddenly I lost all my support systems.. the people I used to see every day..gone
the friends I had ,who had families but had found time to meet me for lunch & catch ups...gone
The people in other teams in the company I worked for outside of my role...gone

I lasted till May 2020 when I was crying every day at my ktichen table and begged to be allowed in the office. I was allowed back 2 days a week, firstly on my own then gradually a few of us mentally inept people were regulars.

But the ups & downs & in/outs of lockdowns affected me greatly. I worked for a company who liked to trumpet about their mental health policies and how they were looking after people. All very well to talk about until someone is suffering in front of you. I have never spent this much time in isolation, not speaking or seeing to more than a handful of people regularly.

I wasn't allowed to move to a role that would suit me better and the impact of continued lockdowns impacted on my work. I eventually got pushed out of my job. I've since found a role that is better than my old job but I miss my old company and workmates. In reality they aren't there any more because we gave up 50% of the office space and most people don't want to come into the office any more

In Febuary 2021 I listened to David Nabarro from the WHO talk about how we would need social distancing and reduced contacts into 2022 and it tipped me over the edge. I actually felt suicidal that this was how I had to accept my life was going to be. I had to start anti depressants (which I stopped taking once lockdown eased)

I think I was actually grieving for the life I've lost and the life I thought I was going to have.

My friendships have all changed. My friends with families only seem to want to see other families and I see them only every few months. The closest friends I now have are the childless married women that live near me. The one/off thing man I've seen 3 times in a year because we don't live near each other.
The people who I spent time in the office with during lockdowns were people I was already friends with but now we seem united by virtue of surviving covid and are probably life long friends.

My whole friendship landscape has changed and I miss my old way of life. I've never spent this much time on my own and WFH doesn't suit me at all. The isolation has been terrible at times.

How are young people (and people like me) supposed to live like this? How can you meet new people, start a relationship, when you're told to reduce unneccessary contact, don't mix with strangers, prioritise family. It's inhuman and the impacts are brushed under the carpet I think.

I try not to dwell on it all but my life now is massively different to my life in 2019. I think we have to get on with how life is now but equally there needs to be some kind of acknowledgement of what we have lost.

@FakeFruitShoot

What wonderful words Enid. Thank you for sharing.

Fwiw, I don't think toxic positivity is what happens when you're simply privately grateful for what you personally have. I think it's things like "I'm sure the children in Syria would be grateful to have a sofa to sit on to work from home." It's a pattern of speech which includes constant "at least..." or "chin up" or "oh well". It is sarcastic comments about surviving the war. It's the Government making us feel pathetically grateful that we have been given social contact ("bubbles" ffs) as a reward.

I agree. I also felt the point about trauma from the enjoyment of enforcing rules was very thought provoking.

@rookiemere

My one true positive that I carry from this, is that I don't think many of us would allow our DCs or ourselves to be as deprived ever again, unless there was literally bodies stacking up on the streets.

I don't mean the things over which we have no control like schools or restaurants being open, but rather DCs playing together or meeting other people inside.

It's so obvious now that we - the little people - were being played, whilst the rich and powerful went on with their lives not much altered from before. I couldn't even bring myself to be worked up by the latest leaks of the Downing Street parties and "works" meet ups, it's been obvious throughout the whole damn thing that the rules were meant for us, not for them, as evidenced through British and Scottish parliament ( sorry no idea what happens in Wales) continuing to sit in person throughout all of it.

They'll struggle to get much compliance if they impose any future lockdowns. That's one of the main reasons they haven't tried to impose any limitations on Christmas.

100 percent

I was a secondary school teacher during the pandemic. I taught for six months over zoom, six hours a day. It was awful. And it was awful seeing my gorgeous students, usually so full of cheek and laughter and life become reduced to shadows of themselves, with nothing I could do to help them.

I was so furious with my union's insistence that schools do NOTHING to provide online provision for students and their focus on protecting teachers over providing an education for students that I left and stopped paying my subs after a decade of loyalty. Their attitude was disgusting. Schools should never have been shut. There was no justification for it whatsoever and it has destroyed many young people's educational progress, social skills and mental health. For some of those children and young people, they will never recover or catch up.

Many of my friends are still teachers (one reason why my social life is struggling to recover, they're exhausted, as are my NHS friends), I know what classroom life is like, and there is a core of vocal self-interested MN teachers that give the profession a bad name (and do not represent the majority). Access to education has not been equitible and while many schools/ teachers have gone above and beyond, others haven't and in spring/ summer 2020, got away with the bare minimum and that deserved to be called out without a shower of .

While our home learning was a failure in terms of meeting the curriculum set and submitting any work, my children were bloody lucky that I'd already given up teaching for them and had the time, skills and patience to try get something out of them and to keep trying day after day, month after month. So many days were write-offs but some days we managed something. We also focused on basics like their letter formation that are harder for school to focus on when everyone else has cracked it. Most children in the position that mine were in would not have had that input.

I know from the work set for us that it nowhere near replicated a normal day's planning load, and there was a big discrepency in standard between our two teachers. The better teacher maintained contact with the class when there was re-deploying in June 2020, the other was not heard from again. For a child with SENs who submitted no work, we recieved one phonecall in 4 months. Then my plea for a school place in January was ignored.
But some MN teachers will (and have) me for teacher bashing.

I appreciate that other teachers have done everything that they could to serve their children and communities. It's a shame for so, so many children that there was not a universal standard as things dragged out for nearly half a school year.

This is beautifully put. Life feels as though it's on a dimmer switch. The fun, adventure, spontaneity gone. Every plan tinged with potential disappointment. We are collectively weary of living like this.

I've had people virtually begging for reassurance to be allowed to work from the office even if we lock down. The cost to their well-being is too high to deny them this. I hate full time wfh too. It's a real narrowing of worlds and social contact that I think is going unrecognised for some because it brings an element of domestic convenience.

This post and list I found amazing

Expecting people who lived alone to not see another human being for three months.
Denying people the right to fresh air and exercise.
Denying people the right to see their friends and families.
Denying people the right to visit sick loved ones.
Denying people the right to marry.
Denying people the right to have a funeral.
Forcing people to die alone.
Forcing people to give birth alone.
Expecting people to home school children while working full time.
Padlocking playgrounds.
Prosecuting people for sitting down in the park.

Incredible. This all happened. And yet it seems to be taboo to mention it.

@Gguin

This post and list I found amazing

Expecting people who lived alone to not see another human being for three months.
Denying people the right to fresh air and exercise.
Denying people the right to see their friends and families.
Denying people the right to visit sick loved ones.
Denying people the right to marry.
Denying people the right to have a funeral.
Forcing people to die alone.
Forcing people to give birth alone.
Expecting people to home school children while working full time.
Padlocking playgrounds.
Prosecuting people for sitting down in the park.

Incredible. This all happened. And yet it seems to be taboo to mention it.

Yes it makes truly sobering reading. How many of us actually questioned it at the time?

The ridiculous hot, sunny Easter weekend dp and I both spent alone and separately a few miles apart because we didn't live together and were worried my neighbours would report us.. we'd been working from home and hadn't seen anyone.

Access to education has not been equitible and while many schools/ teachers have gone above and beyond, others haven't and in spring/ summer 2020, got away with the bare minimum and that deserved to be called out without a shower of daffodil .

I found it so hard that we basically weren't able to discuss concerns about our children's educations on here. It was awful especially as it was/is one of my main sources of worry.

LookslovelyinSpringtime
Yes it makes truly sobering reading. How many of us actually questioned it at the time?

It was impossible to question things on here without people talking about "the greater good" and "being selfish".
And IRL people just didn't seem to see how awful it was going to be.

WRT the first thing on the list - people who live alone not being allowed to see anyone for months - I couldn't believe they'd actually do it. When the first lockdown appeared imminent, I briefly panicked about this but then found out New Zealand had bubbles for single people, so I assumed we'd do the same. Because making it illegal to see another human would be the sort of thing a cruel regime in a far-flung country would do. Not us, not here.

Then... We did. They actually fucking isolated us.
Fuck. Actually typing this, my mind is starting to swim and the panic rise in my chest.

It was so surreal, so horrendous. Realising I was about to go through something that would traumatise me, and being totally unable to stop it.

The rule about not hugging was actually unbelievable. I couldn’t compute it.

Reading some of the sad stories on here probably makes this sound a bit lame but pre covid I liked my life and had lots of friends and went to lots of social events. Live on my own and am single so spent first 3 months of pandemic not seeing anyone and even when restrictions started to ease found people were reluctant to meet up still. Also live in GM so had more restrictions than most the country for a lot longer. Still today don’t feel I’ve got some of those friendships back, dating is so much harder and probably too old now to have kids (by time I’ve met someone and got to know them etc).

@Beowulfa

The rules have changed so many times at my local library, which I desparately want to ensure stays open, that I got confused one time and browsed the shelves when at that point it was "not allowed". I got shouted at, properly school teacher shouted at, by a member of staff. And then shouted at again when I instinctively started putting the books I'd selected back in their correct places. I felt like an 8 year old who'd been caught writing "bum" in a poetry anthology with a felt tip.

Now I know this is trite compared to some of the horror stories on this thread, but it felt so wrong that someone was shouting in a library. Like civilisation was really starting to slip.

I had a similar experience when the bank reopened. It had been dd's birthday and she had received a few cheques I needed to pay in. I remember queuing outside for ages. There was a frail elderly man in front of me who was clearly struggling. There are chairs in the bank but they were covered in tape like a crime scene. They wouldn't let him in to sit down whilst he waited. On entering the bank a member of staff literally screamed at me because I wasn't stood on the sticker in the floor. I was more than 3 meters away from anyone. I remember wondering what on earth things had come to. I avoided going to many places after that because I just found all the rules too stressful!

If we had a competent government and Prime Minister, who had acted promptly in March and September 2020, and who understood business, the periods of restrictions would have been much shorter, and the impact on our quality of life much less. At least eight weeks more of schools being at least open part-time for children, so instead of about 30 weeks closed, 22.

@Fashionista1995

Reading some of the sad stories on here probably makes this sound a bit lame but pre covid I liked my life and had lots of friends and went to lots of social events. Live on my own and am single so spent first 3 months of pandemic not seeing anyone and even when restrictions started to ease found people were reluctant to meet up still. Also live in GM so had more restrictions than most the country for a lot longer. Still today don’t feel I’ve got some of those friendships back, dating is so much harder and probably too old now to have kids (by time I’ve met someone and got to know them etc).

Not at all, it sounds very hard.

Stories in here make me so sad. But its good to see people sharing their real feelings about it now. The damage done to us has been colossal and will take years to come back from it.
I havent really thought about my own exoerience much til i read these posts. I feel, weirdly numb, at the moment. Trying to get everything sorted for christmas and make it magical for dc but theres an undercurrent of fear and dread for what the new year brings.
Watching films from 90s/00s i find triggering. Makes me want to be back there when life was so much easier.
God that sounds so trivial and silly compared to others here.