There’s definitely an element of be careful what you wish for about the current situation.
Who amongst us hasn’t at some point longed for the pace of modern life to slow down a bit, to spend more time with their family, for a few more quiet nights in? And now we’ve got it.
People also often wish they could go back to their carefree, responsibility-lite childhoods, as well. The best days of your life and all that. Well, great news – we’ve got that, too.
Thanks to lockdown, we are now kids again.
We’ve been transported back to when someone else made our decisions for us and we had no say about anything. We have to do what we’re told, relinquish control, and put all our trust in those looking after us.
Feeling like we’ve regressed to being five years old does at least make sense of why so many of us have been acting like it recently.
Sulking, throwing tantrums, not playing nicely with the others, particularly those who stand less than two metres away. Having puppy fat.
Who hasn’t ranted and wailed about the rules – even just in our heads – despite them being for our own good, ie saving lives?
We’re going to bed early, doing jigsaws, walking around looking like our mums cut our hair with kitchen scissors.
And then – maybe it’s just me – there’s the crying.
If coronavirus hasn’t utterly devastated us – emotionally, financially, or both – yet – we are grateful. Trying to keep busy, being positive, looking ahead.
But every now and then I can’t help but wobble. And then come the Covid Tears.
Some mornings, despite my best efforts, I wake up completely flooded with hopelessness, and then I just wait for them to come.
They’re a short, melodramatic flash of depression.
There’s probably a psychological term for them, and an explanation about how they happen in times of exceptional stress, when the reality of what is going on is, in the very truest sense of the word, overwhelming.
It’s like a volcano of feelings, which has been bubbling away for a while, suddenly erupting.
The way to deal with Covid Tears – and the fact we’re all scared, all the time – is to embrace the childhood we have been forced to revert to.
Make like a five year old.
Let the Covid Tears come, without judgement or self-consciousness. Allow the release. No matter who you are, how unlikely you were to, BC (Before Coronavirus), or how stoic you normally pride yourself on being.
Act exactly like a five year old, who, three minutes later, has moved on to something else entirely and forgotten they were ever upset. The best way out is always through.
After crying Covid Tears you feel oddly cleansed.
They’re like a mental reset, where your mind has forced you to stop for a moment.
And then you go on, because we have to.
