Love, Hate, Grief, Loss, Relief...

Like a mortgage break, we need an emotional COVID-clemency between ourselves and our loved ones right now. Continuing to try and be normal is just not reasonable.

Of all the strange, unexpected side-effects that experiencing a pandemic has given rise to, for me, the sudden and palpable removing of any emotional middle ground or even keel has been one of most disorientating. As human beings, we are always so proud of our ability to regulate ourselves, to be cogent, rational, temperate – that we prize these things so highly, from the prism of a pandemic, seems almost laughable.

The kind of dismantling of our regular lives that has taken place, has for many of us, taken away an ability to operate within what is deemed regular emotional parameters. Perhaps the funnier part is that, in such a global, overwhelming experience, we have been even trying to hang on to it at all. In a way, the British example of the last few months, with it’s “keep calm and carry on” mentality, the attempt to coerce people into digging into a buried, hackneyed WWII spirit has demonstrated just how dangerous denial can be. But they are not alone. While we have all been at various points losing it, with mini-meltdowns behind closed doors, there has been very little exercising of emotion collectively anywhere.

Certainly, from my own personal experience, smooth sailing was never really likely. Almost from week one of COVID life, my families interactions quickly began to resemble Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf, just with emotional eating instead of drinking. By week two, it was a full love-hate dynamic. I have vacillated between either wanting to hug the life out of my kids or open the door and just walk away. The relationship between my seven and four-year-old has either been joyous or intensely fractious, punctuated by some TV.

The intense isolation of this experience has for all of us has pushed us back on our individual domestic circumstances. Which in my own situation has meant that the only other I have had most contact with is the one I have the most difficult relationship with, their dad. It has been unbelievably hard. Every day I have had the daily reminder of the painful place we have gotten to, and are coming through. And with all normal supports and distractions, all normal purpose and perspective gone, it has been constant wrangling to keep a handle on my emotions about it.

But possibly central to it all is that I have been having a pretty active love-hate relationship with myself. After all, why turn on others when you’re right there? It has been a real struggle to not disappear down the cul-de-sac of rehash, evaluate, regret, reproach and repeat. Some of it has just been the hot-housing of my own thoughts with the complete retraction in a purpose outside of the home compounded by the seemingly endless daily grind of cleaning and cooking. But essentially, I have just seen too much of myself, too much of my face on Zoom, Skype and Facetime, heard too much of my own voice, saying the same things.

So, I think in the same way there has been mortgage breaks and a total pause on all normal commerce, I think everyone should be granted a kind of emotional Covid-clemency, for ourselves, and towards those most intimately connected to us. Because ultimately, what is really not rational, what is really unreasonable, is to have expected us all to carry on regardless. For while we have continually counted the toll in deaths as each day has gone by, but soon we need to take stock of the survivors too.

This has been a time when all our guts have been on the outside, it has been a time of real grief. Wresting it to the ground with rationale, smothering it with placations is not the cure. And as I watch various pundits, governments, advisory bodies discuss what our post-COVID 19 future will look like, I hear very few talking about how it’s going to feel. We need to think about that. For if there is one truth about grief, it is that you need to experience it as much as possible at the time of the loss. Not later. Later is for picking up those parts, stitching them in, marbling them into the present, so that it is not forgotten, and we never have to relive it again.

Jessie Collins, May 2020.