It’s been a testing one and a half year since the beginning of the pandemic, but with restrictions on the rise, it’s also a test on our mental health.
Well, we’ve been under restrictions since March last year. Restrictions are gradually beginning to ease, and with that happening, we were able to go out and enjoy our lives again. For many of us, our mental health began to improve as our homes felt less like prisons and more like actual homes again. Some of us were able to return to work again, in varying capacities that is, giving us some sense of pride. Basically, a huge big sense of normality was returning.
Since local and regional lockdowns came into effect a couple of months ago our mental health and, in some cases, our resilience is being put to the test yet again. It’s a bit like being in a long queue in the rush hour; you sit there patiently waiting but you’re there so long you begin to feel yourself lose any form of patience. Basically, you find yourself thinking do you either be patient and hang on in there, hoping that things get moving very soon, or saying to yourself ‘S*d it, I’ve had enough and go back home.
It’s like being in the waiting room at the doctor’s surgery; you are there for your appointment and the queue just seems to be getting longer as does the waiting time. You find yourself hitting that crunch moment in your mind and you just say to yourself ‘forget it, I’ve had enough, this is doing my bloody head in’
Or when you have to take a different route to work in the morning which has added time onto your journey and you are already late as it is. Then of course you get a mouthful from your boss about turning up late when the trip itself has already got you going towards a mental crisis.
And basically, with what is going on now with the seemingly ever-increasing restrictions we find ourselves being mentally tested, this is the mentally a great many of us are probably no doubt feeling. In other words, how to find ourselves asking much of this can we take both emotionally and mentally.
There are quite a few people I know, some quite closely, who this is now getting tiresome for and simply want it to end. Sadly, and annoyingly though, this is where we don’t have much choice with other than to hold our nerve and be patient and ride it out for as long as we can.
In other words, we’ve got to be patient and wait for that line of cars to move; we’ve got to be patient and wait for our name to be called out at the doctor’s surgery. Preferably without lamping the first person who comes towards us.
