When I was initially coming up with ideas for this post I had intended to write a sort of lifestyle piece on how to cope with having your plans completely overhauled by the coronavirus outbreak and lockdown. But in reality I'm not sure I am in any position to tell people how they should be dealing with this, because I'm not sure I am coping. Busying myself with baking and scrapbooking, starting a new job suddenly, pouring over travel guides and planning where to go once this is over - compared to many I seem to be ploughing through. And then I find myself in the middle of my shift wanting to scream at everyone in the shop. I snap at my family for stupid reasons. I break down crying at midnight on a Thursday.
Let me explain my situation a little better. Last September I completed 5 years at university, the last one spent living in London doing my masters. I moved back at home to do a gap year, supposedly spending half working and saving money, before going travelling and coming back to the love of my life - London town - to kickstart my career. Simple. But then corona happened and I was forced to postpone my trip to Australia; my hopes and dreams of freedom from the sleepy Norfolk backwater (my parents' house) I had been banished to were crushed. Given that I had already been struggling with being back home after 5 years of relative independence, I felt like a prisoner who has had extra time randomly added to their sentence. Yet I know I am one of the privileged ones. Rather than being made redundant I actually managed to find a job as a merchandising display representative in local supermarkets (organising shelves of books and DVDs still counts as essential work when people have this much free time on their hands) and I don't have to pay rent, nor do I have any dependents. It's boring and I can't go out with my friends, but surely it isn't so bad really? So why do I feel this dark cloud hanging over me so often?
Scientifically speaking human beings are social creatures. We simply are not designed to live in these conditions, separated and stifled. Modern technology has made contact with friends and family accessible, as well as allowing some people to continue with working from home. And yet I miss being with people, even though they are only on the other side of a screen. It may as well be an insurmountable wall, keeping us apart from everyone and everything we love. I don't even just mean being with friends - I miss the crowds of partygoers on a Friday night, the throng of the city streets, the energy and possibility that filled the air. That physical closeness we just took for granted, even pressed up against a stuffy looking business person in a packed rush hour train. But now I spend my time walking my dog through country fields painted in every shade of green, exhausting our family's literary vaults in a way I told myself I never had time to before, driving down relatively empty roads going about a very everyday life and I wonder - will I miss this when everything eventually returns to normal?
Probably not so much. But this is when my guilt pushes past my anger and frustration to the forefront of my mind. I'm ungrateful and unappreciative of virtually everything in my extremely cushy life. I semm to be standing at a crossroads, with one road leading back into the past and all the things I miss most, cursing how I did not make more of my former freedom, and the other stretching into the future and the vast array of things I can do once this ends, enough plans to basically fill up the remaining 6 years of my twenties - at what point do I consider the present in this metaphor? This is admittedly something I have always struggled with. Perhaps the universe is trying to tell me something. More than likely this is a collective problem that has finally caught up with us, as we have to remind ourselves that Apple products cannot actually make us indestructible masters of nature. I am never going to apologise for my ambition or for wanting more from my life than this, however right now this attitude is making me miserable more than anything. My own personal dark cloud is not only made up of boredom and irritation, she's also carrying around a severe lack of contentment with my apparent lack of achievements and a serious helping of a failure complex as I question whether my views on anything or everything are not in fact based on pure selfishness and unadulterated entitlement. It's a major headfuck.
I want to end on a positive note, as I hope this pandemic will at some point. Ultimately it is my hopes of a better future that drive me forward and I know that I will appreciate social freedoms again in a way I never did before, even if only temporarily. But I think it's ok to feel shit about the world outside your control right now no matter who you are. It might even be ok to be sneakily enjoying a break from the rat race - although if I hear or read about one more person saying they wish it would stay like this I think I will have a breakdown in the middle of Tesco. You have been warned.
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