Covid-19 has definitely taken on a life of it’s own. Such a powerful, unseen force that has turned our lives upside down. This unprecedented, unplanned, unwelcomed virus brought destruction – changing our lives in a way that we could not have expected or predicted. But does that mean we have to let it control our lives, our beings or the essence of who we are? Yes there will be a new normal, an unknown that brings with it its own sense of uncertainty but we can stop and look at the here and now.

There are on-line posts where childless women are reflecting on their status and what this lockdown have brought – the quietness of their homes, weather it’s, the lack of children or the lack of a partner (as well as the lack of a child), for me it’s the place where I’ve felt my most unsettled. I couldn’t quite decide how I felt about what this virus brought into my life, all I could see were the things that were supposed to make my life better come to a sudden halt; my hysterectomy, my divorce, things at work that “will not be going ahead right now” – these things in my life, the things that would make a change when they ended were all, suddenly, put on hold with no ending in sight. I lost control of the future that I had been dreaming of and all at once I felt empty – sound familiar?

I also lost a part of my present, I lost a friend. No they didn’t die (my heart does go out to all those who have lost someone during this time) but their presence was suddenly removed from my life and that presence is one that I will miss. It’s like the un-written rules that we’ve lived by were changed without our consent, without us being able to agree or even negotiate what this change would look like. Human touch; a handshake, a hug, 1 on 1 interactions replaced with Zoom calls and unspoken needs urging me to give up even more of the little time that I have for myself.  It felt like I was losing my privacy with the insistence to connect on a weekly basis when prior to lockdown we barely spoke at all with the exception of WhatsApp, text messages and/or email. It felt like I’d lost the ability to live my life how I wanted to live it, it felt like if I said “No” that there was something wrong with me. It’s funny, I actually thought that I’d have time on my hands to catch up on my to-do list, to do the stuff I’d been meaning to do for ages but was not finding the time to dedicate to it. Post lockdown I felt like I had less time for me than I had before.

On reflection I guess our world is grieving. We are grieving the loss of a life we once knew – we had hopes and dreams for this life; if we did A then B would happen. Ok I know it’s not that simple but the point is we were secure in a certain belief. Now that belief has been shaken and replaced with a ‘who knows what will happen next’? I’m pretty sure that we can all agree that there will be a new normal but what will that new normal look like? When will we get to that place, how will we even know when we are there?

I guess what I am trying to say here is that instead of rushing to find a different meaning to our existence, a new place of security or creating a new sense of security, maybe this is a time for us to stop and find some peace in the here and now. Maybe this is our time for reflection to review what really is important in our lives or even to simply clear out the things that do not serve a purpose anymore. Maybe it’s time to see what we need for ourselves. For me, until I allowed myself to stop getting swept up in what everyone around me needed I wasn’t able to put my needs first, I wasn’t able to feel the hurt or even deal with what had changed. When that friend left my life I kind of felt like this shouldn’t be happening at this time (people are dying at an accelerated rate for crying out loud we should be valuing the people in our lives shouldn’t we???). Again it was something that wasn’t allowed but the reality is, we were always allowed to make choices that suites us, the choice for me to be happy may mean that someone else is left feeling unhappy and at this time it seems like the wrong choice to make (because that person may be on their own and feeling lonely) but the one thing that Covid-19 has shown me is that life is to short not to look after ourselves and put us first. Life if too short for me to stop once in a while and ask myself what do I need now???