The Great Emerging

There was a while when all was quiet, and we were struck by the silence. It was as though it had been years since quietude had been visited upon us properly. All of a sudden, we heard birds (were they always so loud?), we noticed flowers and walked in our neighbourhoods like never before - albeit in circles. We shopped weekly, for ourselves and our vulnerable loved ones. And, released from the bustle, we settled into a rhythm that felt almost nostalgic; something reminiscent of a time in the past where community mattered, and when the local village was the only epicentre.

The cities were closed, the bustle was gone and foxes roamed the shopping streets.

So quiet. So quaint. But just so bizarre.

HOME LIVES

Homelife went under the microscope. Adults and kids alike, craving control and routine, were swiftly denied by circumstance. Days fell into a weird sequence of weekly shopping lists, meal plans, video calls and daily numbers on the news. We bought masks and sanitiser, and new rules of work time, home-school and exercise were decreed.

All great in theory. Like new year resolutions, the very best of intentions were set. Like new year resolutions too, though, they didn’t last very long, as an entirely unnatural new rhythm and the resulting mental overload overrode our days.

Yoga mats rolled out on Instagram Lives, leisurewear was purchased, weights were lifted and bicycles bought. Those near the sea swam for the first time in years.

We slowed and fell into the silence.

The mental and emotional toll totting up quietly all the while.

WORK LIVES

When the lockdown was announced, the shift in our work lives can only be compared to being dropped off a cliff. It was that fast, that violent…it’s amazing how little time it takes for life to become unrecognisable.

Those who lost work immediately found themselves in housebound limbo, on social welfare for possibly the first time ever, despite having a robust career, now paused.

Those whose day morphed into a mesh of kitchen table Zoom calls and cries for silence as they worked from their bed, tried to draw on reserves of patience previously unknown to them. Sometimes it worked. Mostly it didn’t.

Productivity dropped. Focus suffered. Creativity soared for some but felt hard to access for most. Ambition was annihilated - feeling intensely irrelevant; distasteful almost.

We learnt that we are social animals, that collaboration is a human need, and that FaceTime will never ever be ‘the same’.

Initiatives to bring colleagues together worked for some. Others just bowed out - too overwhelmed with it all. HR departments learnt the real meaning of ‘exceptional circumstances’ as they became both counsel and companion for many confused employees at home playing office.

People who live alone felt more alone than ever watching the scary reports on the news.

pandemic Parenting

Or shall we just call it The Great Pandemic Parenting Test 2020? Because that is what it feels like, right? Kids of all ages from teeny to huge are right here with us, all day and all night, looking for entertainment, more time on devices - but mainly for snacks. The amount of catering is overwhelming. As are the requests for information on future dinners as yet unbought (my child feels secure if she knows what’s for dinner - at breakfast time)

Siblings fought like never before - pushing and pulling like magnets repelling. Shouting, crying, teasing, snatching, bossing and bitching…

Until they kind of didn’t anymore. A weird peacetime occurred from time to time. Was this a mercurial a co-existence of sorts? I can’t say for sure - it didn’t stick around long enough for me to really revel in it. But I saw flashes of it and it was glorious.

Homeschooling

Here’s a home truth: parents are not supposed to be teachers. We give our kids life and we send them to school. That is the natural order of things. Anything else is an anathema to me. I declared school holidays three weeks ago.

And I think we all have PTSD.

WOMEN

Lockdown wasn’t kind to women. There’s a saying, ‘women hold up half the sky’, well it felt like women had direct responsibility for a good 85% of that great blue weight in recent times. We’d come a long way in calling out the disproportionate emotional load in a pre-pandemic world, but it seemed to shift back to something a bit more 1950’s in rhetoric lately. The house, the bills, the kids, the home-school, the shopping, the cooking, the masking/sanitising/exercising of others.

And then, your work. Your career. Right down there at the bottom of that list.

Sound familiar?

Now, not for all, of course, there are many hands-on, engaged partners around (I count myself lucky in this regard). But for single mums, it’s a different story - I was one for 6 years; there ain’t no load like that emotional load! Think also of mums whose partner has a ‘big job’ - they take precedence - like they often do. There’s too much to tackle right here, right now, but think on this: if schools go back just once per week in September, whose job will be the one to take the required back seat in order to ‘educate’ the kids in ‘the new normal’??

Pour me a gin.

lockdown Relationships

The right relationship can make you feel calm and that you can take things (you know, small things like pandemics) in your stride. The wrong relationship or indeed no relationship can make you panicky - trapped, alone and suffocated - it’s hard to cope.

The thing about relationships is that it’s not just you in it. And therein lies the work.

Times of great stress (you know, pandemics), test us to our mettle. It tests whether we communicate or bottle things up, or whether we truly see the other person and can acknowledge and accept the stress they are experiencing too. And more importantly, if we can love them throughout it. And if they can love us back.

Nobody has been their ‘best self’ since March.

The past few months were a sort of holiday-like bliss for some, but sheer hell for others. Crowded on top of each other, with all small things magnified, even the strongest couples suffered.

And those alone held it all by themselves. There is nothing as lonely as worries not shared or the solitude of days spent as quiet and dark as the nights that book-end them…

We thrive on companionship, let’s just hope our memories are blurry.

SOCIAL LIVES

Like work, when our social lives fell off the cliff a new kind of loneliness was bred. As though we didn’t know the positive effect on our mental health that pub banter afforded us. As an introverted extrovert (yes, I know, confusing), it’s the mingling and the people watching I miss most. I love the buzz of the city and the fact that sitting outside a cafe could result in bumping into a friend who suggests a pint, where you meet other people, who suggest going for food, which results in an entire night out…

That randomness, that spontaneity, that sense of potential - I miss that.

The new normal; turning pubs to restaurants with time limits and adequate space between people, doesn’t feel appealing. Where’s the banter? The flirting? the “one for the road/miss the train and get a cab/back to mine house party” vibe we used to know?

I don’t do that a lot anymore.

But I miss that I can’t.

Emerging

I don’t know about you, but as we now collectively move towards a freer sort of freedom - towards strangers and cafes, shops and restaurants -I am feeling quite out of touch with it all. I missed it then, but I don’t miss it now.

I feel anti-social. In a sort of Stockholm syndrome, I have gotten used to our small bubble, our house, our road and local shops. I met a friend of a friend on the street the other day and we did the awkward “How have you been? Isn’t it all so strange? Has your work stayed ok?” dance for a few minutes and we both felt odd. It felt unnatural.

Until I said it out loud, “I’m sorry, I feel really shy, it’s quite strange talking to anyone outside of my household now”, to which he said, “Yes! Me too, I’m so glad you said that!”. And we laughed. And it felt normal suddenly.

I think there is a learning needed to reinforce the emerging: that we all feel strange, that none of us knows how to be, that we all feel worried still, and that the future is so unknown it invades our dreams regularly.

The take away must be tolerance, for nobody is untouched by this. Everybody bears wounds now, you just can’t see them, but they are definitely there.

Perhaps we will be ok if we can accept each other’s self-conscious, faltering steps as steps of progress nonetheless, emerging forward into the light, still hoping to hear the birds.

Go easy. And good luck with it.

Ellie Balfe, June 2020.