As I sit and write this post, I cannot quite believe the year that we have all had. Never in a million years could I have imagined that I would live through a global pandemic. That been said, I am incredibly grateful that my family and I came out of the coronavirus relatively unscathed when it comes to our health. We did have a couple of people that had to go and get tested because of the track and trace system. Fortunately, they all had negative results. I know that not all families have been so lucky.
Just because out lives were not affected by the devastating news of losing somebody to the virus, our lives still changed hugely. For my husband and I, we were quickly thrown into a new and incredibly bizarre way of life and in this post I am going to break down some of the small ways that out lives were altered.
Our holidays.
The first thing for me that COVID changed was our holidays. Like so many people out there, we had three holidays booked between April and July, all of which got cancelled. It is just one of those things and so many of us were in the same boat, so you can’t get angry and moan about it. The thing for me was that I wanted my money back for everything, not just vouchers or well wishes from your cheaper Airline brands that were laying it on thick about laying off their staff. I work super hard for my money and if my holiday is cancelled indefinitely, I don’t want a voucher, I want to see the money back in my bank account. Most travel companies were unwilling, but luckily, we booked via credit cards, and we were able to speak to the bank and get our money back!
My OCD and structure.
The other thing for me was that I am a creature of habit and my routine was entirely thrown. I know that to most people this is probably quite a small thing, but to somebody with OCD like myself, it is something that is super important to me and I need to have structure to my daily life to come out of the other side of the day in a good frame of mind. The whole working-from-home thing was really the straw that broke the camel’s back. Like I said, I still feel lucky that I did not contract the Coronavirus, but it did affect my mental health and I know that it was a similar story for so many other people out there who have issues with mental health disorders and been trapped in the house for so long really wasn’t good for me.
My family.
Seeing my family, I think really was the main kicker for me in the midst of everything. As you may know from other blog posts that I have written, I help look after my grandma. My grandma is a wonderful and strong woman, but she lost her husband, my grandad, a couple of years back and she is just incredibly lonely. Before the lockdown happened, I was going to see her a minimum of 5 days a week, but obviously, when the harsh lockdown happened, I was told that I could no longer go to see her.
Even though I knew that I should not be seeing her because of the lockdown. For her mental well-being she could not be on her own for 12 weeks. I asked her if she wanted to move in with me and the answer was a resounding no. I then had to directly ask her a question, if she wanted to isolate alone and be completely safe, or would she still want me to visit her and risk her getting the virus (and she understood the implications with her ill health that she would probably pass away if she caught it). She elected for me to visit. The thing with my nan is that she is sound of mind and mentally strong, she would rather see people for potentially the last few years of her life than live them alone.
My work.
With work, I am grateful that I am back in the office and my full-time job is still thriving. Fortunately for me, I worked the entire way through the lockdown process. I was never furloughed, which is great for me. It allowed me to maintain some structure in my day. I will say though that there have been huge changes in my workplace in general. Through the lockdown process, we had around half of our staff on furlough. It needed to be done, but it meant that it was harder on those still working. Plus, a couple of months back there were redundancies at our place. Our company has never done anything like that before and it really did create a shift in the atmosphere.
As I said, I know that we came out of the lockdown process, and the first peak pretty unscathed. Many families and individuals out there were not so lucky. Let’s just all remember to wear our masks. Wash our hands and not be nob-heads at the pubs on a weekend!
