For those of us living in fear of another lockdown (pretty much everyone, then), this week has felt like a case of deja-vu as stories about a ‘winter crisis,’ begin to intensify amid rising Covid-19 numbers. Today NHS chiefs called on the government to reinstate the work from home order that was only lifted in July and, along with enforced mask-wearing in crowded or enclosed spaces, they are urging ministers to take action now to avoid disaster later down the line.
Matthew Taylor, head of the NHS Confederation, told BBC’s Radio 4 that, ‘The health service is right at the edge.’ And while Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has said that he doesn’t want another lockdown to jeopardise the ‘hard-won gains,’ of opening the economy, even as a layman it is difficult to understand how the NHS will get through without divisive action being taken.
The numbers are sobering. With over 40,000 cases a day for the last week, and 223 deaths reported on Tuesday, people are beginning to question whether another lockdown might be needed to see us through the winter months. But for all the glib social media comments about how we should just do it now, for those of us – like me - who live alone, the idea of enforced isolation for the third time is nothing short of terrifying.
It would be accurate to say that the last 18 months have had the single worst impact on my mental health in over a decade. I have suffered deep depression, anxiety and feelings of hopelessness that are impossible to shift when we are living in a limbo dictated by a government who have failed at every turn to protect anyone but themselves.
In the first lockdown I saw two people in three months, illegal half-hour long meet ups, without which I wouldn’t have survived. Outside of this every meal was eaten alone, every walk taken alone, nobody touched me in six months, I drank too much, I didn’t sleep enough and sometimes if I think about how hard it was it’s all I can do not to cry. Despite there being 7.9million of us, people who live alone were forgotten.
Support bubbles came later but they negated to forget that many people don’t live an easily travelable distance from their friends and family. Studies have since shown that two thirds of people living in alone felt lonelier and, if we are going to face another lockdown, the government needs to make the mental health of those who are – and will be - truly isolated, a top priority.
Of course that is not to say that life during the pandemic didn’t come with its own set of issues no matter who you were; whether you were trapped in a loveless or unkind relationship, trying to juggle home schooling alongside your job, struggling for work or suffering from health anxiety. Whatever your circumstances if is ok to feel concerned about the prospect that we’re going backwards… again. But there is a special kind of loneliness that came from living alone in a time of such huge uncertainty and death that people will never fully understand unless they went through it.
There is talk of collective PTSD, and how far off that is from the truth is impossible to know while we’re still living through potential rounds of restrictions. The full impact of the last 18 months on our mental health may take much longer to uncover, for all of us. But what we do know now is that earlier this year the Office for National Statistics found that rates of depression in the UK had doubled since the pandemic began.
Candid conversations with friends tell me a lot of people are not ok; they’re burnt out, exhausted, anxious and unable to enjoy life when it feels like our future could be ripped out from under our feet at any moment. Under-appreciated teachers are struggling to get back into the classroom after a year of home-schooling, freelancers are scrambling around for work, some friends say they feel flat all the time, unable to remember what is like to allow yourself to feel normal.
The only solace we can take is that whatever happens we will collectively have to face it together and remember that however you’re feeling, you don’t need to have a stiff upper lip, the last year has been fucking awful and it’s ok not to be ok.