Part of me hates talking about the coronavirus. It took away my exams – my chance to prove myself, my summer, the opportunity to meet new people, to spend time with my friends, and so much more. But at the same time, I still recognise it’s something we can’t ignore.
When my teachers first began to mention corona and what actions we should take if the worst came to the worst and the school got closed down, all I wanted to do was escape from it all. However, with this pandemic being global and everything… that wasn’t so easy.
The closest I’ve got to escapism from the disease which has taken over our lives is when I’m safe at home, doing tasks I might have done in a normal weekend between schoolwork. Only then do I begin to feel slightly distanced from everything that is happening around us.
Most of my frustration has subsided now. Quarantine isn’t this new and shocking thing anymore; it’s just become our norm. I confess, on the occasion that I go out to the shops with my mum, the almost military style in which the shops are run with bouncers at the door demanding we sanitise when we enter and when we leave thank you very much, unsettles me and makes me feel uncomfortable, but it’s something I’m forcing myself to become accustomed to.
This is the third time I’ve sat down and looked at this document. I want to say something about the state of the world right now as a result of the virus because you can’t really get more relevant than that, and some way or other I want to put into words how I feel about it all. But it’s not easy.
Covid-19 is something we can all relate to, but I suppose that also makes it rather tedious.
I’ve been really keen to watch Russell Howard’s Home Time on YouTube, but often when I suggest after dinner that we settle down on the sofa and watch a few of the 20 minute episodes, my requests aren’t met with much enthusiasm. My family are put off, simply because Russell talks about the virus and that’s depressing. Better to watch Friends or The Durrells because it’s so totally unrelated to how we’re all having to live right now.
I know in so many ways I am extremely fortunate. I don’t live alone. I have a big garden. I have space to be alone when I need it, and a family who recognise when I need that extra hug.
But there are low points, and some days I feel so exhausted just having to bear the knowledge that I can’t get on a train and go into town, I can’t get coffee and a huge slab of cake in a cafe, I can’t go to the gym, I can’t try on reams of clothes which I’m never going to buy, I can’t stay over at my friend’s houses, I can’t go to school and be late for physics - something I always managed to do, without ever really intending to, promise.
Instead I can make the journey from my kitchen to my mum’s office in the garden, in an attempt to feel like I’m making some sort of commute, and sit at my computer researching how the heck you put together a blog.
Instead I can increase my screen time even more as I scroll through my time, waiting for some correspondence from the friends I haven’t hugged in two months who more often than not, aren’t online when I am.
More than anything I find I just feel exhausted. When I go out for my essential shop and see the people outside Tesco monitoring exactly how many people can enter at any one time, all I want is to go back home where I feel safest.
How exactly, Mr Johnson, do you suggest we go about recovering our confidence to go out again?
I don’t want to be afraid at the thought of hugging my grandparents anymore. But how exactly do we ease that back into our lives?
I have no vaccine; I have no resolution to all of our problems but what I do know is that as a society we depend on contact with other people. Primarily that’s how we function. So one way or another we have to return to a time when we can go to festivals and have garden parties for our relatives 95th birthdays.
And for now, thank goodness for Zoom. My limited knowledge on Disney movies has been tested more than I ever thought it would be in our most recent quizzes and I’ve even learnt, thanks to a true of false round, that to be president of the USA you have to be 35 years old.
You really do learn something new every day.
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