Covid-19 in the community

But yeah it’s very difficult and then to come out of it the other side and think it’s over, but then you, it’s over, there’s no more Covid, you know there’s no Covid, but your mental health is very affected, is very affected by it so much like, I’ve been through so much in the last year that I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do. You know I’ve come, I’ve recently been diagnosed with depression. My anxiety levels are really high at the minute because even though it’s gone, even though we are allowed to do things, normal things now within reason, it’s still very hard to go out and think “well you know, somebody, I could still catch it”.

I think it hit me about halfway through my period of confinement, that this is a disease that many people are dying from. And I felt very mortal, is that the word, what do they call it? Confronting your mortality, which has all kinds of both psychological and religious implications. I think it’s probably one of the few times in my life I’ve really felt quite afraid. I only told my wife this afterwards, but I contacted my sister and said, you know, in case you ever need it, here’s where my life insurance policies are. So, I was really like, because I thought, you know we’re hearing of people who are dying from Covid who are young and healthy so thank, thankfully that wasn’t the case and I bounced back from it.

And you know, what we were aware was the awful things that were happening to other people really at that point, you know, the disease, the hospitalisations, the, people in ICU and the news was very full of individual stories of people either suffering a lot or having lost loved ones or people dying, you know, there was an awful lot of that during that and that was very difficult and hard to take.

You know having the kids stay at home they need I think you think about unfairness of it. You know they’re at home, they can’t see their friends they are… I am not about the education bit of it, part of it at all, they are kids. At least that’s my take on it. They are sponges, they will just take it up. Well the whole world is going through it. So I am not worried or tense about how it’s going to affect their education but I am more worried about that they don’t see their friends, you know they need that kind of you know social interaction.

As a parent I was worried about the children being so behind so much so for my older son who is on his final year of secondary school, he’s doing GCSEs this year. So not only that he was struggling with, with the focus with work, he’s so behind in performance-wise, also his emotions, emotions were at the high end so I was worried about what was going to happen for him.

So I was just worried for my mum because I knew she was out going but the only excuse she had to go out was to the supermarket. We knew she would wear her mask and that. We just used to be scared like we don’t know, we know about our family but the other people at the supermarket, how do we not know that they’re sick or if they’re not sick.

I’m used to going on holiday every year, I’m used to going to London, I’m used to this time we’d normally, we’d have gone to London and do the theatres and the show. I’ve been really happy walking around Oxford Circus and all those places and you know but, I’m not doing any of that you know. I’m just not doing any of that. It felt like I’ve, I felt like I’ve sat in my house for 18 months.

I mean I think for almost a couple of weeks after lockdown we were I wouldn’t say like a depression now that would be very… very, very harsh but you know we were very down because we were really looking forward to going to India to the point where we had booked the, we had booked the venue and you do, do everything for the ritual and then… you know, just to be, it felt just like the carpet had been pulled from under your feet and then you know a week before you are supposed to fly and then the lockdown hits you.

Yeah, that’s how that’s how we’re passing time, some time we have movie time. We see like the movie on YouTube, “what do you want to watch?” Then we do altogether. Switch off light, night time, movie time, just like we have to pass our time otherwise how the day and night is the same. We can’t go out. Just by the alarm, you see the morning and then it’s by the dark you see the night.

I was just at so much peace. I had no outside world stress. I was just praying, doing what I was meant to do. When you are doing what God tells you what you’re meant to do, my face literally used to glow and I used to have shiny eyes and everything. I was just glowing with happiness.

So I think it does help, you know, faith does help to for you to, you know, try and recover for it to have a positive outlook in life and otherwise if yeah then it’s just a bit more difficult because I think faith makes you understand why things happen and you just have to be strong and get on with life.

We made the whole experience of lockdown as positive as it could be by making sure that, you know, we went, first lockdown we went out on bike rides every day. You know, food became really important; we all did our, all shared the cooking, we did a sort of international day once, once a week where we sort of spun the globe, chose the food and then cooked from it, you know, so we sort of started some family traditions which we wouldn’t have done otherwise. So I see that as being kind of quite positive overall.