Two years ago we went into lockdown, but not before I had already set off for work and discovered on arrival that I had to go home again and isolate because of potential contact with people with symptoms. There was no testing back then so who knows if any of us actually had it or not.
On the way home I made a decision that would change my life. It sounds like such a small thing but as I got to my home station I asked the guy in the ticket office to find and add me on Facebook. It wasn’t like he was a random stranger, by the way, we’d been talking for months, okay a couple of years, every morning as I bought my ticket. I guess I didn’t come across as some kind of weirdo because Stuart did find me and added me.
I spent two months locked in the house. My anxiety grew while my mental health deteriorated severely. The catalyst for eventually leaving the house was Stuart. He had a significant birthday coming up and I was determined to go and see him in order to deliver a gift I had bought before the pandemic had taken hold. This turned into a walk to the station every day, once I’d bought a decent pair of walking shoes that is.
While the walking helped a lot, my mental health was still pretty bad. It wasn’t great before the pandemic and it got much much worse during the first lockdown and the initial easing of restrictions which led to going back to work. I was hurting myself, punishments for not meeting some exacting standards which I finally came to realise were other people’s not my own. Years of mild self-loathing that festered and grew every time I was made to feel like I wasn’t good enough had already begun to manifest as violent behaviour towards myself and during the lockdown, it became explosive to a point that something had to give. When you are filled with rage, the last thing you need to hear is that you aren’t angry enough about things.
I found that the daily walks centred me, I would give myself a bloody good talking to as I walked rather than let it all build up in my head. It also got me away from “doom-scrolling” through social media. I was gaining an insight into people that I’d rather not see, my perceptions were changing and stepping back from it became a necessary course of action to get through the situation. Even now I feel that I have to extensively self-edit because I don’t want to trigger a relapse to the way I was.
Relapses have happened. I have punched a wall in frustration at work, gripped my keys too tightly while I try to stay in control of my thoughts and yanked at my hair as things have triggered the crappy thoughts. I get angry that it happens too, but I can talk myself out of it most of the time. I now realise that I am not responsible for other people’s happiness, attitudes or problems, and certainly not at the detriment to my own well being.
For the times that I can’t talk myself down, I have Stuart. The friendship we had grew over the months, and last year we realised we were pretty much a couple anyway so we should see each other in that way. Having someone so supportive who is also distanced from the things that affect me in an adverse way is amazing. I’m not great at explaining why I feel the way I do but I can tell him more than I can tell other people. That alone helps more than I ever realised it would. And it’s a two-way street, we are good for each other.
Two years on I am learning to leave these thoughts behind me and move on with just being content with myself, with who I am and how I feel or don’t feel. I am choosing positivity over anger, calm over rage and trying to be at peace with myself. This means leaving some stuff behind, dropping some of the mental weight I have been carrying for far too long, and realising that I should stop worrying about a past I can’t change and a future I can’t know and just be here in the now and make the most of it. The events, and losses, over the last two years, should have taught us that we really don’t know how long we’ve got on this plane of existence and life is too short to be flipping miserable and angry all the time.
“You’re doing just fine…keep on keeping on”
