Lockdown Fatigue

The first lockdown was a break, bringing the onslaught of Life to a temporary standstill just as we hit the first gloriously warm spell of the year. The children were in the same class at school and did most of their homeschooling together. The rest of the day was ours to spend as we wanted.

The second lockdown almost seemed to pass us by. The schools (and many other businesses) stayed open and I had just started my placement for my postgrad. All three of us left the house every day, interacted with other people and learned new things--save for the two week blip when my son had to self-isolate, but we managed to adapt.

This third lockdown has been harder.

The children are at two different schools with very different homeschooling systems. My son has to log into the relevant classroom for every period, while my daughter requires a fair amount of attention if she's to do her work properly. While the schools are more prepared for homeschooling now, teachers are still struggling to teach via a medium they've not been trained for and one that renders almost all their training invalid. They can't engage their students with hands on activities or group projects. School is, inevitably, boring.

The weather's terrible too and with the government finally getting firmer about travel restrictions, we're reluctant to venture too far afield. But it's hard to muster interest for the umpteenth visit to the beach in the wind and rain, or for a walk through rain and mud. Even when I dredge up the motivation to drag the kids out, at least one of them will be groaning the whole time, and then I start snapping. Fresh air and exercise are no relief.

It's taken a toll on our mental health. At first, I assumed I was doing all right, because I was staying productive with house stuff—until I noticed I was losing weight. I'd all but given up on self-care. House-productivity was just escapism—a constructive form of escapism, doing stuff that needed to be done anyway, but it was a way of procrastinating on everything else because I didn't want to face up to it.

The mental health issues are even worse for the kids. They've had a rough go of it the last few years: Dad left, Mum was an emotionally volatile mess for two years straight, and they got uprooted from everything they knew and plopped down in a new country to start over. Now, just when things are supposed to be getting better, we have this interminable pandemic.

Supporting them is what's taking its toll on me. Sometimes it's fine, because I can see the breakdowns coming and I can head it off. Sometimes, I don't see them coming, and I realise too late that I picked the wrong time to get insistent about doing a chore. Then all my plans are wiped out for a few hours as I try to defuse everything. Usually badly, as my brain isn't good at switching tracks from whatever project I was on to focus on human interaction.

A few weeks back, I posted to Facebook about how I wanted to be something other than Mum for a little while. Some friends offered to video chat with the kids so I could have a break, but that wasn't what I meant. It's not difficult to get time away from the kids; what I miss is being Sarah. 

Our family doesn't have our support bubble this time around, and we sorely miss that... I miss being a girlfriend as well as a Mum, I miss having somebody who wants to go out for a walk, we all miss having a fresh face to talk to and a different meal to eat. Something that isn't the same as every other day!

Socialising in general is something we're badly in need of. They chat with their Dad most days, but that's not getting them out of the parent-child dynamic. My daughter's got a few online friends on various games (she's allowed to be on game-chats on the understanding that I may glance at her screen at any time to check everything's OK), but my son isn't into net-chat, and I'm not active in any online community lately... probably the first time in my adult life that that's been the case. We don't do many video calls either. 

We should do. There's no excuse. I have family and friends who'd be willing, and there's no end of virtual events to try, if we want something other than a basic chat. It would do all of us the world of good to talk regularly to other people. But it only happens every now and then, even with me thinking about how good it would be for us.

(One friend, a mother herself, understood my afore-mentioned Facebook post exactly, and the two of us have occasional video-chats, mostly framed around watching an episode or two of Bridgerton and then discussing it, letting me live another side of myself for a while. But, because we're both parents and Life is a Thing, these happen infrequently and often get postponed. They don't benefit the children either.)

My vague theory is that as the lone adult of the household, I get tired of being the one to set everything up, to always be the one encouraging others to participate in my choice of activity—often with very poor returns of enthusiasm.

At any rate, I'm doing a bad job of keeping up my end of the social network, and the whole household is suffering as a result.

As gloomy as this is, our life-rollercoaster isn't a white knuckle ride. We're not getting the high highs, but nor are the lows too low. Thankfully, this is just a part of our lives it will pass. In another few weeks, the kids at least will be back in school (I haven't figured out yet whether it makes the most sense to return to my course before or after Easter). The weather will have improved. We can meet up with my parents again. By the end of the year, we should be able to hug, to travel, to make more friends...

Of course, it's easy for me, with 43 years of living through difficult periods, to have confidence in this being temporary. It's less easy for children, and in the case of my two, I've been saying: "We've just got to get through this difficult bit and then things will get better!" since we came to England in summer 2019.

Small wonder they're getting a bit suspicious of the whole Hope concept. All I can do is keep trying to find the patience for all three of us.