Lockdown has me feeling like I’m the only passenger on a plane that’s in a holding pattern waiting to land, except the pilot has lost sight of the airport and can’t hear the tower.
I feel like I have nothing to look forward to, nowhere to go, no reason to do anything. Everything that was planned is cancelled, every future event uncertain. I’m surrounded all day every day, but I’m the loneliest I’ve ever been. I feel unloved, unappreciated and unwanted. Even when I fill my time with things to do, everyday chores like emptying the dishwasher or putting the washing out, going for long walks, popping to the shop for essential items, these are just temporary levees that hold back the flood of sadness and uncertainty for a moment and I know as I set them up these levees will break and eventually overflow again.
And when the inevitable wave of depression hits it is like a tsunami of emotion coming over me and enveloping me. It’s a feeling of both mental and physical exhaustion, my brain starts to shut down and my body gets tired and achy and weary, I just want to collapse, curl up into a ball and not move. The slightest thing becomes too much to cope with, noises, emotions, actions. Anything that involves my brain being used in any capacity. It’s like someone has turned up the volume on life and it’s overwhelming, a sensory overload. I’m irritable, angry, irrational. I try to shut myself away from my already compressed world, to hide, to escape.
When I’m at my lowest point I feel completely lost. Like I don’t know what I’m doing any more. Like I’m in the middle of a vast flat field with all the visible landmarks an impossibly long way off in the distance. Everywhere I turn seems too far, unreachable.
It’s at times like this that I desperately need someone to pick me up and hold my hand, guide me and walk with me and talk to me. I feel like a child who needs their mother. I want to be cuddled and have my head stroked and soothing words spoken in my ear. But at the same time I don’t want to be mothered, I want to be loved and appreciated and wanted and desired. I want to be given purpose and meaning and worth. And I want all of those things all of the time, all day, everyday just to feel normal again, like a human being and not a caged animal.
Eventually, after a time, my higher-brain kicks back into gear and I realise that this is an impossible situation and that it’s selfish and emotionally immature of me to think this way. That of course I’m not unloved or unwanted and that there is plenty to look forward to and to work towards. But more importantly, that this is not just about me. That there are millions of people feeling the same way I’m feeling. That this situation has a purpose and that it will lead to a better future.
So I try to focus on things that can be improved, I mend and I paint, I improve my surroundings. I learn new skills like making bread and baking cakes for my family to enjoy. I find things around the house that are unloved or unused and I try and give them purpose. When my washing machine dies, I can’t call an engineer to fix it, so instead of buying a new one, I buy a secondhand machine off someone who no longer needs it. Then, as I have no way to dispose of the old one anyway, I watch videos and read articles on how to identify and fix the problem on the dead machine to get it working again, so that I can pass it on to someone else in need. I plant vegetables and fruits so that at some point in the future I will have my own fresh produce to eat, reducing the burden on the supply chain, as well as just for the beauty of watching something I’ve planted grow, flower and fruit.
And with each thing, each task complete, each incremental step, the storm begins to subside and the waves stop crashing and I stop feeling like I’m collapsing under the weight of it all. And I write this all down, so that if someone out there is feeling the same, they know they are not alone.
But I know these feelings will return, and I know the cycle will happen over and over again many times before this is all over, but I continue to find new ways to cope and hope that I can be a guide to others and together we can feel less lost.
