I hate what the last year has done to the village I live in

[Raindown]

I relocated back to the small town I left aged 18 in rural Ireland after many years working abroad in 2019. I know only a handful of mainly distant relatives here now and a couple of new acquaintances. Obviously nobody knew what was coming then in terms of the pandemic. I am grateful before anybody says for having some work and a degree of financial security and my physical if not mental health. I used to love the place I now live in, but since February last year and the first of the lockdowns I have started to hate it. I feel so isolated and alone and as if nobody thinks like me. There are 2 local Facebook groups which are full of curtain-twitchers, people complaining about others, starting feuds about nothing. Then there are this group of educated, middle class people who are horribly patronising and carry on like they run the place, and who have made me feel so unwelcome. These lockdowns and the mentality of rural Ireland where nobody ever wants to call anyone else out on anything, and where you are just supposed to shrug your shoulders and say "shut what can you do?", have just ruined the feeling of the place. There is nothing to do and nowhere to go, you're supposed to fall down on a prayer mat and worship anyone who works anywhere near the HSE and I just hate the place. It is so sad, I feel like I will explode soon before I get to leave. I wonder if anyone else had had this experience?

A lot of what you describe can be found anywhere and everywhere at the moment. Hating where you are, isolation, curtain-twitching and complaining, unwelcoming people, patronising people, despondency and "sure what can you do?". You'll find that everywhere, but not in everyone.

Maybe you had an idealised idea about what you were coming back to? Or maybe the pandemic makes everywhere a bit worse than it normally is? I'm sorry you're having such a horrible time at the moment. For the last year I have heard of people moving (here and away) and always thought it must be so hard to settle in these circumstances.

You sound like there is an option to leave at some point. Maybe you can start planning that and it might make the present more bearable? Whatever about your chances of leaving, the next few months should get better and give you a chance to meet more people and also improve everyone's outlook and attitudes as lives to get back to normal. None of us are at our best right now.

I came back in late 2019 as well, @Raindown, and it’s been pretty challenging, as for various reasons a house purchase, a rental and my job fell thorough and we ended up living in slightly precarious conditions in the country during the first lockdown — though we came back to the city when DS’s school year started. We’d been out of Ireland for a long time, and DS was born abroad.

Someone who moved back a year or two before us said, I think wisely, ‘Don’t think about anything too much for the first two years’, so I’m not.

I should say too that friends from the English village and old friends elsewhere in England we had been living in report the opposite problem — everyone was reporting one another for breaches, the parish council was strutting about in hi-vis with a whistle, neighbours were timing the exercise periods of the people next door!

I live in NI. The people living opposite us have broken the rules continually, having loads of people over to their house all through lockdown. But thankfully no one has reported them. It's their own business, no one else's. There has been zero police presence all this time. Thank God.

My relatives who live in ROI have had a much tougher time with a harsher lockdown, and yet there is almost full compliance with no questioning. I would find that really hard.

OP I feel for you

Before lockdown, I was desperate to leave London. Now I feel that living in a crowded, reasonably anonymous place has massive benefits.

I'm not on social media so if there are idiots in the block being sanctimonious, I wouldn't know. But there are lots of people here who do the jobs you can't do from home, there are comings and goings all day and night.

It has totally made me rethink where I might live in future. Turns out a crowded place has advantages.

We have been horribly unlucky with policing though, driving round the park with megaphones.

OP your post sounds exactly like the urban area I used to live in the UK, right down to the curtain-twitching moany fuckers on the neighbourhood FB group (everything was always going to the dogs) and the middle class layer that most regarded as snobby (somewhat unduly - it was really only 2-3 queen bees that were horrible but whole streets suffered by association).

Friends who still live there tell me nothing has changed during Covid, except that the moany fuckers were out monitoring who turned up for the NHS clap every week and who didn't

But the thing is, I still loved living in that neighbourhood, largely because I eyerolled at those I didn't like and ignored them. There were plenty of other nice people there and I made some very good friends through work who happened to live in the same neighbourhood.

Is it possible the isolation of lockdown is really the issue here rather than the particular place you live? If you've been working from home and not meeting people via work (for example), and not able to meet up with new people for book clubs or golf or whatever you like to do in your free time, plus being stuck in a 5km radius most of the year where you don't already have a support base... that would be really tough on anyone. You have my sympathies

the mentality of rural Ireland where nobody ever wants to call anyone else out on anything
It's called minding your own business and I'm glad of it.

Why would you move to rural anywhere and be surprised that there's nothing to do and nowhere to go? My idea of hell - but isn't that the whole point of living in the back of beyond?
I haven't a clue if Facebook groups exist in my neighbourhood. I daresay they do but I have no interest in being part of them, and wouldn't have a clue what neighbours think of me/each other. Just mind your own business and let other people mind theirs! It sounds like you bought into a nostalgic fantasy of rural life that doesn't really exist.