My 2020 Pandemic Experience
This post could go in so many directions, so let me provide a disclaimer, this is my experience and opinions only. I know others suffered and still are suffering much more than I could imagine. This is a personal account of how I dealt with my mental health. Buckle up, this is a long and not so happy one, so I give you a picture of Xena to make up for it.
I started off going into lockdown at a real low with my depression and anxiety. I was in the middle of working through a lot of trauma from my past with my therapist. We were working through resentments*, which was tough because it involved me writing down every resentment I have had throughout my lifetime. These reflections were bringing up memories I had suppressed and it was affecting me deeply. I was helping my mom finish up chemo and surgery from battling stage 4 cancer. My husband and I were in the middle of closing on our first home. Work was particularly stressful which was not the norm. I was using my mom, the house, and work to hide my personal mental struggles from myself and ignore them. We closed on our house Friday, I went back to work on Monday and was sent home immediately because I was on the high-risk list. That began my being pretty much home alone for the next 18 months because my husband was still essential.
At the start of lockdown, what was the first thing that any woman who scrolls Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook do when they’ve been handed an endless amount of free me-time? Apparently, they make a list of all of the things they can accomplish in their free time and then brag about it on social media. So, I used this to replace the previous stressors that were no longer available, to continue running from my mental strife from past trauma. Here was my instagramable pandemic to-do list:
create an inventory for knotty things designs (my macrame business)
build up a backlog of blog posts for this blog
learn calligraphy
learn how to use my sewing machine
clean out my closet
paint my bathroom, game room, and exterior of my house
read 52 books
learn to do a cut crease and contour
Alright, so, how many of those things did I actually accomplish in reality? 2.5 items. What really happened was that by the second week of being quite visible on social media and planning my sweet lil heart out…I burnt out. It was the quickest I have burnt out. I was getting up every morning and doing full face makeup, getting dressed in jeans and work-appropriate blouses, and wearing shoes. That slowly turned to stretchy pants and big t-shirts. I had a manic episode where I did clean out my closet and every other closet, nook, and cranny in the house. Considering we had just moved in, there was not much to cleanout. In between purging everything I was manic buying things on the internet, anything to feel like I was doing something other than sitting here and subconsciously re-hoarding what I had thrown out. I bought rollerskates that I have used once justifying it by saying I always wanted a pair. I followed “The Curated Closet”, a book that teaches you to build a closet of clothes you will actually wear. This was beneficial for me because I was able to finally remove items that caused me great anxiety and donate 5 bags of clothes. The bad news is, I manic bought more clothes to replace them. I spent 2 months painting a small bathroom black and white that should have taken a few hours. The one thing I did learn how to do was a cut crease and how to contour. I watched Bailey Sarian’s entire library of videos. I also bought 117 items on amazon. Yes, I counted them for transparency, granted there were quite a few gifts sprinkled in there.
After all of that, is when the work-from-home fatigue and loneliness set in. My husband is an essential worker so he was going to work for 10 hours a day still. Work was getting amped up because quite frankly companies think since we’re just sitting at home they can take advantage of that by piling on the projects. My days revolved around what new show I could binge-watch on the couch. I woke up at 7:30 every morning, let the dog outside and fed her, made coffee, got dressed (changed out of the pjs from the day before into a different pair), watered my plants, opened the blinds, logged in for work. Lunch was some pasta side and doing the dishes. After work, I just closed my laptop and kept watching whatever show I had started that morning. At 10 pm, I would close the blinds, put the dog to bed, take my vitamin and go to bed myself. Rinse and repeat.
Slowly my routine fell into me waking up moments before I was supposed to log in for work, I would only change my shirt and fix my smeared makeup or just stay off-camera. I started to lose track of days. I would lose track of when I showered last. Honestly, I’m still losing track some days. There were times that I couldn’t remember the last time i went outside of the house. There were points where I was just a ghost in my house floating around not remembering what I did hours prior. All of this while telling my therapist every two weeks that I was thriving.
There was a moment in July that was both positive and highly negative for me. I was listening to a podcast that was sponsored by Modern Fertility. I got curious and ordered one of their blood tests to do at home. I learned that I have hypothyroidism*. This was a tough realization because I’ve struggled for a long time with various symptoms that my doctor had not been able to resolve. So, the positive was finding out the cause, if it were not for the pandemic I would not have had the free time (or boredom) to do this test. The negative was trying to figure out how I was going to heal my body through this while also trying to heal my mind and during a global pandemic.
On the social front, before the lockdown, my friends had finally broken me of my social anxiety. They were getting me to go out at night to bars, shopping, brunches, and other places. Within months of being in the lockdown, I was terrified of going outside again worse than it had ever been. I was worried I would get COVID and pass it to my mom. People were posting videos of others yelling at each other over toilet paper or masks at the grocery stores. I didn’t own a mask for the first few months so I stayed home and my husband would go out for us. Once I did get a mask I still would not leave unless my husband was with me. I struggled to keep some friendships because I refused to leave the house.
One of the most positive aspects of the pandemic was the husky puppy I adopted in April 2020. Xena helped me focus on something other than myself. After I gave up the unrealistic expectations I had of myself to accomplish, my main priority became taking care of Xena, my cats, and all the house plants to help me keep focus and motivated.
We’re now at a year and a half of the pandemic, I’m vaccinated and some of the state is as well. I can go to the store alone now but only if it’s a quick run-in and out trip. I shower regularly, I promise I’m not gross. I’ve run out of things to watch. I only read 3/4 of the goal for 2020 but I’m far ahead for 2021. I have gotten in touch with what is going on in my head so I’ve pulled myself out of the depression I experienced. I realized that doing nothing was the remedy I needed to feel better and that doing nothing is okay, that becoming a ghost was okay. it took a lot for me to realize that it was okay to not accomplish that list in order to do the most during the pandemic as social media would have liked for people to believe.
love,
B
*a lot of topics I mention in this blog post and do not provide any detail on I will touch on in their own posts