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 ask again of the OP What do they want and who should do it?

From the OP:

“for someone, somewhere to actually articulate the sadness of all the lost opportunities”

hth.

And now the NHS has become a covid 19 health service.
GP appointments are damn near impossible to get, cancer treatment postponed.
Many people will die of non covid health conditions over the next few year, but we won’t hear much about that.
No wonder people are now turning to private GPS, just to see a doctor.
Maybe that was the plan all along...

Thank you @EnidSpyton @Norugratsatall @4pmwinetimebebeh @devildeepbluesea

It's hard to read other people's experiences that to me feel completely incomparable. The manta "life is for living" is trite and ignores those who simply aren't thriving or living. Some because they aren't coping with the restrictions and others because the lifting of restrictions prevents them from participating in life. I know it's a not a race to the bottom, but having the joy sucked out of life is all relative.

I don't know what the answer is, so for now we're just carrying on as we are and focussing only on what we can control. I'm acutely aware that we have no exit plan for how our family is living at the moment and every time a new strain comes along it seems less and less likely that there will be one.

I ask again of the OP What do they want and who should do it?

But isn't it ok to express sadness, disappointment, loss etc without there being anyone or anything to blame? Or expecting there to be an obvious or immediate answer or solution?

There is a heart-felt and eye opening little documentary on iPlayer at the moment about this called 'The Cost of Covid: A Year on the Frontline'

@Exhausteddog

I ask again of the OP What do they want and who should do it?

But isn't it ok to express sadness, disappointment, loss etc without there being anyone or anything to blame? Or expecting there to be an obvious or immediate answer or solution?

It absolutely is...but it was the OP who said "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"

Yes. I can't plan anything. Almost every time I've planned drinks out with friends this year its been cancelled because someone is waiting on pcr results or has a child with covid or was isolating as a contact.
We've just cancelled Christmas on France with parents in law due to new French rules and our rules just being all too much and too costly and complex. The previous 3 sets of flights were cancelled by the airline due to lockdowns.
Kids are devastated at not seeing their grandparents yet again.
Kids have missed so so many days of school due to needing a pcr evry time they clear their throat. So many cancelled playdates, school trips, birthday parties, nativity plays.
My DS has a birthday after Christmas and I dare not book his party as I see an incoming lockdown before too long.
I am so so bloody sick of it. I am awaiting NHS treatment and it might be years on the waiting list.
My mental health has taken an absolute battering. Several days every week I find myself close to tears.

@GoldenOmber

I ask again of the OP What do they want and who should do it?

From the OP:

“for someone, somewhere to actually articulate the sadness of all the lost opportunities”

hth.

and as i said, i think people have

@godmum56

but I think the damage HAS been acknowledged. I have seen plenty on TV about people's sufferings during lockdown. Only yesterday Chris Whitty talked about the high cost of shielding. I remember in lockdown, many media items about the issues of people with children going through lockdown in flats in cities. Has there been enough action to mitigate this? of course notand some people may have minimised the effect. I ask again of the OP What do they want and who should do it?

There are so many threads talking about what should be done

This is a different type of thread where people can just express how they feel without the usual arguments over restrictions etc

I couldn't agree more.

I've watched my lively (if slightly quirky) then-18 year old shrink into himself and retreat into his bedroom where he is now a paranoid, sceptical 20 year old who is suspicious of everything he reads and has no social skills. It's heart breaking. The toll on the next generation is unmeasurable and will be long lasting.

I think you articulate the whole sad thing perfectly OP.

I don't know what the answer is.
I don't know how we get out of this mess.
I am infinitely grateful for the NHS, the teachers and other services who have worked throughout.
I am sad for all the families who have lost a loved one.
I don't have any answers but I have still had enough and I still feel completely and utterly done with it all most of the time.

and as i said, i think people have

Okay well great, if you feel it’s been articulated to a level that resonated with you then that’s spiffing.

The OP does not feel like it has been, for her. Many other people don’t either.

@IcedPurple no, I'm not. I am fully aware of that.

But what I'm saying is, it's a state of mind.

You can choose to be upset at every closed shop, or you can choose to see it as an opportunity to change your old routines and discover somewhere new instead. I love travelling and have hated not being able to leave the country for two years. Am I sad I had to cancel my trips to China, the US, and South Africa I booked for 2019? Yes, of course I am. But I'm not sad that not going to those places led me to go to Skye for the first time, and Wales, and Cornwall, which were beautiful and glorious in their own ways. I still got something out of the experience - it wasn't what I wanted or expected, but it was worthwhile anyway. It's how you frame it.

Change is part of life. As someone said upthread, these sorts of crises happen at regular points during history and it's part of the ebb and flow of human existence. I remember as a child during the recession of the early nineties how I suddenly couldn't go to violin lessons or ballet lessons anymore and we had to move house because my dad's business went bust. Every conversation at home was about how much things cost and what we could and couldn't have to eat, or wear, or do at the weekend/after school. It was sad and upsetting but we survived. I remember the 2008 recession when loads of shops and bars and places we loved shut overnight, loads of my friends got made redundant, and none of us could find jobs. We'd all recently graduated and this was supposed to be the time of our lives. Instead none of us could afford to go anywhere and I remember having to choose between heating and dinner. It was a bleak time. But we got through it and made the best of it. Shit happens but vodka is always cheap, and where there's life there's hope.

If you want to mourn, then mourn. But I do wonder what the point of it is. You can't change what's happening, so why make yourself more miserable?

@Ionlydomassiveones

I’m sorry op, I can’t relate to what you’re saying although I know many people feel it including my dd20 who nearly lost her mind and will to live during the first lockdown. That was awful to watch.

Life has changed but not so much for those of us not privileged to have enjoyed fantastic social lives, going out, foreign holidays etc. life is pretty much still the same pattern of work/tea and bed as it was before.

I don’t dwell on the mask wearing or the 5pm press conferences or wallow in the doom and gloom. I think about my aged father who soiled himself as a child as his house was being bombed in the Blitz. His school friends died. What me and my family is going through is nothing compared to him and his family back then. He came through it, so will we.

Totally agree with this. I remember getting the train home from work right before the first lockdown and everyone was discussing what they'd had to cancel. I'd nothing to cancel. Holidays, big ticket events, weekends away etcetc. I cant afford them. The only thing i miss is not worrying as much.

@hearwego that is absolutely untrue. My cancer treatment is only possible because the NHS has been protected to some extent.

@BonnesVacances

Thank you *@EnidSpyton* *@Norugratsatall* *@4pmwinetimebebeh* *@devildeepbluesea*

It's hard to read other people's experiences that to me feel completely incomparable. The manta "life is for living" is trite and ignores those who simply aren't thriving or living. Some because they aren't coping with the restrictions and others because the lifting of restrictions prevents them from participating in life. I know it's a not a race to the bottom, but having the joy sucked out of life is all relative.

I don't know what the answer is, so for now we're just carrying on as we are and focussing only on what we can control. I'm acutely aware that we have no exit plan for how our family is living at the moment and every time a new strain comes along it seems less and less likely that there will be one.

Sending you hugs.

I wish every selfish person I see on the tube without a mask would read your post. No matter how much risk you know the virus poses to you as an individual, I don't understand why you wouldn't want to try and protect other people too.

I have a very glass half full attitude but I'm sure if I were in your shoes I wouldn't be coping at all. I'm truly sorry for what this has done to your family.

Sorry @Hearwego some of what you've listed may be right, but it has to be the covid19 service to protect the other services. The covid stuff is what is protecting my cancer treatment. It's that or they have go turn covid patients away to keep cancer and other services going

Yes. It has affected a generation. In my own family, it has heavily contributed to a person taking their life and a rapid onset of dementia. Devastating.

You have articulated my feelings perfectly. I agree with everything that you say, and it breaks my heart that this half life we are living is becoming our every day normality.

Thank you for expressing exactly how I feel. I am so utterly depressed at these new developments. I cannot even hope for the future at this point

Completely agree. It all feels so relentless.

Its just heartbreaking.
My DD is 18 in March and all she has known since her 16th birthday is restrictions/lockdowns/uncertainty!
I feel it like crazy myself but during the week she broke down....really just sobbed for an hour solid where she just feels nothing will ever be the same. She's in her final year of school, leaving cert and has changed so much with all of this.
The fall out to our mental health will last so much longer!

OP your post was so articulate and well written it's a shame the usual twats have arrived to tell everyone they're not allowed to feel anything other than the urge to bake fucking banana bread.

In 2019 - my youngest had a wonderful class teacher, well set up SEN provision and was flying. I had a uni course I loved and was doing amazingly well in which could lead to a good career. My mental health, which had always been wobbly, was the best it had ever been.

Now my eldest child talks about suicide constantly and is waiting for CAHMS (and she is FUCKING NINE), my youngest struggles so much with uncertainty and never got much of that school year where she was doing so well with her SEN, and I have no mental health left, tanked grades and the career path from the course is fucked for me. I have fucked mobility now as well to add into it.

So don't fucking well sit there and tell me I have no right to feel the loss of what my kids have missed out on. I'll take the hit myself - my life's pretty much fucked by now - but my beautiful, wonderful, kind and sweet girls don't deserve to have to live with this continued shit existence and none of us deserves to have to put up with this silencing and bullying into submission of anyone who dares raise a word of the other toll of the pandemic rather than the figures and charts.

The war comments are just so frustrating, you know that their are children in this world that are starving and dont live the same lives that our children do. That doesnt mean we dont feed them or enrich their lives. It's just not comparable and pointless to do it. It's like saying you have a shit boyfriend but because some people have actual abusive boyfriends you should think themselves lucky. No if something is shit then it is. It's not competitive misery.
I am ok in all honesty we are coping my kids dont seem to unhappy now. They are swimming at school doing their hobbies. I am praying none of that ends again, it might all be what some people consider non essential but to me it is. To them it is.I can do everyday on the work and no play merry go round as long as they dont suffer mentally. To me that's the most important thing. I do get though that not everyone has kids so its important to me but my single neighbour who works frontline NHS will have much different ideas and priorities of what she wants to happen and what is important. So I am just trying really really hard to be kind considerate and understand how differently everyone feels and copes.