Covid#3

I’m taken aback by how quickly I’ve become quite miserable and depressed this week.  It’s not been just moments or spells that have passed; a solid gloominess has set in.  It’s not like me.  I think I’m usually upbeat and I handle trying times and challenges optimistically and positively, so how have I become so very glum so suddenly?

This past week’s been tough on teachers and school staff.  Personally, I’ve watched the anxiety rise in the boys I teach to the point where one hid under his desk, afraid to touch anything.  We’ve watched as pupils have tried and often failed to understand why their friends have stayed at home and won’t come back.  Children in the last year at their school who were looking forward to the important milestone that is leaving and all the celebration that goes with it are devastated that it’s been snatched from them.  One five year old I know was having nightmares and thought his school was closing because all his teachers were dying.  Now, we’ve said goodbye to our classes without knowing when we’ll all be together again.  My own class had effectively shut itself down by Wednesday, and I miss them already.  Teachers and school staff have stood by these children throughout this whirlwind.  We’ve also endured the uncertainty that closing so suddenly has brought.  It’s all strained emotions and has been exhausting.

It also doesn’t help that coronavirus is all anyone is talking about, the news comes thick and fast, and it is all so bleak.  The death toll in the UK rose to 220 today and the trend is scarily like Italy’s, where 800 died today.  It could be a couple of weeks before the calamitous scenes we see from there are repeated here.  That sense of what could well be coming adds to the gloom.  That and the fear.  I really admire the stoicism of everyone on social media who is posting uplifting messages, jokes and pictures, but the constant bombardment of all these posts seems to emphasise the dread of the virus – a sort of grin and bear it denial that it’s coming for you.  I want to tell everyone to pace themselves with all this positivity.  It needs to last a long, long time.

There’s a sort of desolation I’m feeling that’s like getting a coldsore when you’re supposed to be going on a hot date or catching the flu on Christmas Eve.  It’s a disappointment that seems desperate and hopeless.  Obviously, it’s not that bad; it just feels that way at the time.  It’s being deprived of something you were really looking forward to.  That’s certainly true now – we’ve all had to cancel things – but it’s more than that because we’ve been deprived of so much that we usually take for granted: visiting the gym, having a swim, indulging in hot chocolate and a slab of cake in a café, dinner out, mooching around the shops; sharing a bottle of wine with friends.  Boris optimistically reckons we’ll ‘turn the tide’ in twelve weeks, but if it takes twelve weeks to just turn the tide, will it take another twelve weeks to get back to some sort of ‘normal’?  The seeming endlessness of all this makes it hard to keep things in perspective.

I suppose death and disease are bound to have this effect on me.  To take my mind off it, I’ve been reading about the horsemen of the apocalypse!  “The horseman on the white horse was clad in a showy and barbarous attire … While his horse continued galloping, he was bending his bow in order to spread pestilence abroad.  At his back swung the brass quiver filled with poisoned arrows, containing the germs of all diseases.”  In these circumstances it doesn’t take the personification of pestilence to get you down and I admit that reading about him hasn’t done much to improve my mood, although I did manage a wry smile as I imagined him crossing paths with Santa somewhere over China back in December.

I’m usually good at taking a challenge in my stride but I’m finding that it’s much harder when it comes so suddenly without any time to prepare and builds so rapidly; when there’s no way of knowing how big it will get, how long it will last or how great the impact will be and when there’s no end in sight.