An emotional week with signs of some pandemic fatigue. Is anyone else feeling tired of this now?

Last week I officially fell out with the pandemic.  I am not feeling any sort of calm acceptance right now and I am totally fed up with adjusting to our "new normal".  I have moaned, cried and used the word "ridiculous" many times.  I don't want to be waiting on Boris Johnson's latest briefing before I can confirm if I can travel for a very rare weekend away to visit a close friend.  I am tired of looking at scientists' graphs about worst outcomes.  Why should I have to be constricted again in what I can do, when I've followed every single rule for six months?  "It's not fair" I moan, as I stomp about.  If everyone followed the rules correctly and we had a tracking and testing system that worked properly, we would be seeing less case numbers.  This pandemic sucks and I do not want to hang out with it any longer.  It is ruining things and some of these things we can't get back.  

Apparently it is quite normal at the six month point in the pandemic, to be just fed up with the whole thing.  We want to be starting the re-adjusting phase and getting back to some kind of routine and normality at exactly the same time we are being asked to follow yet more new rules.  I am sick of guidelines, face masks, plastic screens, rules of six, temperature testing, hand-washing and uncertainty.  I don't want to be reading the latest reports and statistics still, trying to find out if we are heading for a mini lockdown anytime soon.  When I started to hear the term "circuit breaker" last week, I moaned further because until now, I had never heard of such a thing and secondly, I would like to have some warning, a date in my diary that I can plan around.  Making plans and then changing them all is part of this "new normal" seemingly, yet to me this is stressful.  Are we supposed to live like this for the next six months?  I don't want to be prepared for a second wave because I am already exhausted from the first.  And this is the problem.  It has a name, "pandemic fatigue".  

Pandemic fatigue has been written about already but interestingly, there aren't many articles on ways to cope with it.  It can show up in different ways for people, but includes feeling more impatient and irritable and being less careful about practical issues such as social distancing and mask wearing.  I'm not about to abandon all these sensible measures that protect myself and others and I totally understand the importance.  But I just feel more irritable at the on-going uncertainty, sudden changes to rules and the impact this pandemic continues to have.  The first time round felt essential, co-operative and unquestionable in the middle of such a devastating first wave.  We could literally see the harrowing number of cases rise and we were locking down alongside most other countries.  The problem with a potential second wave is that no matter how large or small it turns out to be, the last six months already feel like enough.  

My recent flare up of pandemic fatigue has been compounded by some sad news that I received last week about the passing of my god-mother, Janet.  Her husband kindly phoned me to tell me that she had died very suddenly at home in the Lake District, totally unexpectedly.  She was in her early 80s, but lived fully and actively, always off on trips and busy in the community.  I had only seen Janet a few times as an adult and the last time was over a decade ago.  But she remembered every birthday and always sent a card with a note, the same at Christmas. I always wrote in the same way once or twice each year to her.  And the last letter I wrote to her was around the day she died (unknowingly), so that her husband opened it instead.

Why would the pandemic have anything to do with this natural, painful life event?  Because I was in the middle of finally arranging a long overdue visit to see her when the pandemic took hold.  I had found a yoga retreat due to run in June this year, at the Quaker House coincidentally near to her home which would make a perfect trip.  I literally had the train time-tables, bus-timetables, maps and had just written to book my place on the retreat when lockdown was announced.  For some reason, I had thought travel within the UK would be unaffected by the pandemic.  The yoga retreat was cancelled, my visit never happened and now my plans to try again are too late.  I didn't get to see her and I feel so unbelievably sad about that.  

And it has left my emotions and mind whirling with all the thoughts and regrets... why didn't I go before, we nearly went a couple of different times, why didn't we just go then?  I know the twists and knots that grief can do, the endless loops of regret and pain.  But one thing I am learning to recognise is my intuition, I knew that it was time to visit this year and without the pandemic, I would have had that day with my god-mother in Ambleside.  It was as if there wasn't a decision to make, it was a knowing that I must see her.  Janet would have shown me their breathtaking view that I always pictured from her house and we would have sipped cups of herbal tea and had cake together.  She would have asked about my dad in his care home as she always did and I would have told her about yoga, life by the sea, teaching...

In normal times, I would be heading up to the funeral and planning a few days in the Lake District to have space to walk and reflect.  Even if I had missed my day with her, I could at least share in some of the memories with her family.  I could still get my cup of herbal tea and a slice of cake but with a great tinge of sadness attached to it.  So, my second upset about the pandemic is that of course I can attend the funeral by video but not in person.  And while that is still important and something I would not miss, it is without the real human connection.  So while I feel like wrapping up in snuggly blankets and sipping warm tea, I will tell the pandemic that I just need some space for a while.  

Just in case that wasn't enough for the week, I then felt waves of sadness outside the care home of my father on Sunday after our visit.  I had been enjoying my visits "over the wall" at the end of the garden of the care home for the last few months .  We could chat with social distance and be surrounded by trees, fresh air and the bird life that we both enjoy watching.  On Sunday, we were told it was too cold for him to be outdoors so we had to sit in a room with face masks, behind a screen for the set twenty minutes.  It was the first time my father had ever seen the plastic screens and family members in face masks, so it was a bit of a surprise for him.  "It's like this everywhere, in shops, cafes, buses" we reassured him.  But at the end of the visit, the nurse said the rules were changing the next day.  Only one relative can now visit and it has to be the same relative.  Which means my sister who lives much nearer and can pop to see him more often without getting regularly stuck for hours on the M25 as I do.

It feels as if my heart and my head are being pulled in opposite ways.  My heart yearns to keep seeing him, to build the tender connection that we have been forming during his later years.  I want to visit regularly because if something happens to him, I will have been there recently.  My head understands the need for extra caution in relation to care homes as we start the long road towards winter.  But while our case numbers remain relatively low in both of our areas, it feels too soon to be pausing my visits.  Yet my head knows that the seriousness of our first wave was in part due to lack of preparation and acting too late.  So here we are, once again in that turbulent tension between preparing for the worst and dealing with the difficult impact of some restrictions.  Nothing feels easy right now.

The first step of finding a way through pandemic fatigue is to simply acknowledge and name how we are feeling and realise that we are probably not alone in this.  If you met me on the beach, I would be unlikely to share with you any of these difficult emotions that I often tuck away.  I would most likely tell you what an amazing swim I've just had in the sea.  Yet even when I'd rather not talk about the harder feelings such as irritability, exhaustion, frustration and grief, they may still be present at times in the months ahead.  Pandemic fatigue plus some grief mixed in with perimenopause could well be a perfect reason for ranting just a little more than normal.  

This too shall pass.  Eventually.