I don't wanna......talk about it

I was awake in the early hours of this morning after receiving a message from my daughter at her Dad’s saying she felt unwell.  We FaceTimed in a whisper and she carried me downstairs as she took paracetamol, made a hot water bottle and had a wee (sound effects and everything).  We chatted for a while about her tummy pain until I was satisfied she wasn’t in any danger (she had googled all sorts of horrendous things such as burst appendix etc) and I told her to take me back upstairs so she could settle back into bed and try and calm her racing heart by controlling her breathing and clearing her mind. I heard from her Dad at 6am she was still awake although she went to sleep shortly after.

It’s in those silent early hours of the morning when fear can strike us.  Those breathless seconds upon waking from a nightmare before you realise it was a dream. When the sky is very dark you can feel a very deep isolation, which you wouldn’t necessarily feel at dawn.

NHS Top Tips on How to Manage During Covid19

Lack of sleep is affecting millions of people globally as they wrestle with scenarios about their lives.  Will I catch Coronavirus, have I already had it, am I asymptomatic, could I infect my family, can I get tested, is my job safe, what happens after furlough, can I book a holiday abroad, who sits where on the plane, will my temperature be checked at the airport, when will children go back to school, will that be safe for them, will colleges reopen in September, when will football resume, is my company following social distancing procedures, should I wear a mask, does my life insurance cover Coronavirus, what happens during a recession, will I default on my mortgage, will my business go bust, will crops go to waste without pickers, will I be refunded for the wedding, how many more will die, will there be food at the foodbank, will my landlord evict me, is there any truth in Trump’s claim the virus was made in a Wuhan laboratory?  It’s not surprising people are suffering from sleep deprivation.

I once listened to a radio interview with a sleep expert who said, ‘you wouldn’t sit at the table for hours waiting to get hungry’, in other words, rather than staying in bed, get up and do something, even if it’s just reading, until such a time as you feel yourself starting to nod off or get tired. Easier said than done right now, I guess.

It’s also tricky when the teenage body clock is all over the place right now. And my daughter is a born worrier.  She keeps everything in.  I try my best to coax these anxious feelings out of her, telling her I could help her better if she explained more to me about her inner thoughts.  I mentioned this to her brother who shrugged his shoulders saying, ‘I was the same Mum, it’s just age’, how I chuckled to myself having come full circle with him.  Coming of age. What a cruel and wonderful thing.

Once I had said goodnight to my daughter, I lay awake thinking about feeling unwell when I was younger. I can remember periods of time when I suffered with abdominal pain and I can always hear my grandma’s voice in my head as she used to rub my tummy.  She used to say, ‘let’s just see if we can move it a bit’, (the pain) and whilst I’m sure it probably wasn’t possible to rub it away completely, it still felt like magic to me and I always felt so much better afterwards. She used to also tell me to try and lay still and these words resonate now when I coach my daughter in the early hours, through growing pains and mental anxieties.  Words of reassurance and comfort were all I could offer over the phone, although thank goodness we have the facility to do this.  It is more important than ever as we somehow accept the world which we once knew is unlikely to return any time soon.

People Pulled Together During WWII

I think of my grandma a lot at this time, who lived through the first and second world wars.  What would she make of this now?  I was chatting with my Mum about this recently who told me that whilst her Mum said everyone pulled together during the war years and everyone was civil to one another and helped their neighbours out and did as much as they could to contribute to the war effort, once the war was over, people reverted to type. The truth being that people were so fed up by the time it was over they simply couldn’t cope with the joint effort any longer and went back to their own lives.

I have thought about this often over the last few weeks and wonder whether this will be the case for us in the life after Covid19.  I really want to believe we will be there for one another as we have been although I wonder if mentally this will be possible.  In the same way people tire of newspaper headlines which rumble on, the public appetite for talking about this, once it’s all over will surely be like the most painful of break-ups.  We won’t want to talk about it.  We will think of it, but not wish to dwell on it with others. There will be songs which remind us of this period in our lives, which bring back the anguish (I can tell by your eyes that you've probably been crying forever). That sickening feeling when you look back on a period of time where you battled through something, but when you reflect, you’re glad the time has passed and you have moved on. It’s like a grief. There will be smells associated with it too, whether it’s the recipe you learned during lockdown which you kept making and never want to eat again to the alternative body spray you ordered online when buying your usual at Tesco was banned under non-essential rules.  These will only serve as a reminder to a time in life you don’t want to revisit.  Why would you want to go back there?

Will Joe Wicks have the same appeal after Covid19?

There is always, of course, the other side of the coin.  The millions of positives we can take from this period. Those deeper relationships we have formed with our neighbours who used to be virtual strangers to us, the renewed relationships with friends we haven’t spoken to as much, the things which we once took for granted we know we cannot afford to in the future, having time to do those jobs we have always put off (did you though?), deciding on a career change – one of my friends has signed up to a course having decided her current job is no longer for her, hearing birdsong, appreciating the beauty of where we live, enjoying nature, reducing our carbon footprint, breathing cleaner air, revisiting our old record collection, raising millions for charity, encouraging each other to do well, being kind, appreciating every meal etc. 

From a social perspective I am eager to see how this plays out in the future.  Will we revert to type as they did after the war years, according to my grandma at least, or will we learn the lessons in order to realise that something’s got to give; our planet has housed us without complaint for billions of years but perhaps its reached the end of its patience with us and we need to start treating it and each other with a bit more respect.  Only time will tell - although one thing’s for sure, Joe Wicks may need to self-hibernate for a while once we’re through with this.