Locked Down Locked Up This Is Life Now!

It has to be one of the most surreal feelings in the world. Being locked up in our homes for twenty three hours a day.

The routine of our lives is dictated by our next meal or waking up in the morning or going to bed at night, and the damage this will do to our lives in the long term is yet to be seen on our mental health and wellbeing. We will probably be affected for the rest of our lives. Only time will tell how we as adults and our children are affected by this time in the history of the human race.

As we move into our fourth week of lockdown, I have started to wonder how easily we will readjust to the normality of our lives before Covid-19.

My worries are really simple and blatantly obvious to me. Why? Because it won’t be easy returning to our lives without any fuss. Because everyday the number of people dying of Covid-19 is growing and accelerating and the longer we stay in lockdown the fear factor grows amongst us all that when we are given some of freedom back will we take them with open arms and embrace the fact that we can go as a family to the park, the beach or a trip to town shopping? No, we won’t because once we are in a crowd of people we will be looking over our shoulders or looking at other people and wondering do you have Covid-19 or they could easily be looking at me with the same thoughts. It will feel like walking around on eggshells. We will be avoiding big groups of people for fear that you could get Covid-19 and that’s the fear that we will have to get used too until of course they find a vaccine, but that could be 12-18 months away and that is a long time to live under the cloud of Covid-19 with a fear of contracting it.

The people in power say that possibly the first places to open will be schools. When I think about that, my initial thoughts are how does that work?

We will be hoping that children practice social distancing, but who are we kidding? Children won’t be able to do that in a month of Sunday’s. If the schools reopen too soon it will take one child to have it and before you know it the entire school will have an outbreak and that will find its way back home to us. The school run is a recipe for disaster because as parents congregate at the school gates to collect their children it will take just one parent that has Covid-19 to spread it among other parents.

When I hear government minsters and medical experts say that once we are past the peak of this pandemic we can start to re-live our lives as we did before. The reality is until a vaccine is found and we can immunise the population nothing is going to return to anything similar to before this year began. We are destined to live our lives under some sort of lockdown for months and months. Whether we like it or not, this is our normal now. A life that will have restrictions placed upon us for a long time.

Every decision we make about simple everyday things we’re used to make with ease, we will now question. We will ask ourselves how many people will be there? Will it be safe? These fears and questions will be in our minds for a very long time and this will fundamentally change the way of our lives forever.

What do you think? How easy will it be to live our lives as before? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.