Dear Future Me...When This is All Over

Dear Future Me...When This is All Over,

I'm writing to you from strange times.

Just over 4 years since being diagnosed with, and medicated for, Generalised Anxiety Disorder, and a gradual introduction to what it is to live without constant nerves filling the everyday, and my brain learning to run marathons rather than sprints, the butterflies have returned in their droves. While spring edges closer to summer, the physical butterflies dart around the garden before my eyes, making me smile, while internally, their psychological twin darts around my tummy. These are not driven by the onset of warm months full of time in the sun, but by the madness COVID-19 has brought to the world I knew.

A pretty butterfly...not a psychological one

The world is so strange right now. New vocabulary has entered every household. Words like Furlough and Social Distancing, and new meanings for 'isolation' and 'stay at home'. New party games are developing everywhere, drinking at the sound of 'flatten the curve', 'unprecedented' and 'right thing at the right time'. My mum's Oxford degree in PPE is not what the world is short of...If anything, everyone could now claim to be experts in PPE from the amount of times we hear it mentioned on the TV and the radio.

Social Distancing has brought queues stretching for miles from shop windows - because that's the safest way to now receive your bread from the baker or prescriptions from the pharmacy. People hop around pavements as they try and stay 2 metres from the person in front, the person behind, the person next to you in the queue for the shop next door, while also avoiding getting too close to those simply trying to walk by as normal. Meanwhile, for us in the countryside, this has provided a perfect opportunity for fresh supplies to be made available in cardboard boxes, delivered to your door or to the door of a friend. Fruit and vegetables are no longer brought from the shelves in the shop but found sheltering, labelled, out of the sun, in a friend's driveway, ready for collection from those who ordered them. Egg boxes are left outside the front door by an unseen friendly hand. At the butcher, having ordered in advance, we now drive into the car-park out the back, give our name and wait for a helpful assistant to bring out our supplies and place them - no touching the car please - in the opened boot. As we walk through the village I grew up in, we cross the road when we see people and no longer hold open gates to wait for others to pass. We see friends in the distance but stay at a distance to say hello. As we pass the neighbours houses, we count rainbows in the windows and note the lack of children out playing despite the emptiness of the school playground.

A photo I sent to mum of the queue to the bakery...
before it had even opened

It's a strange time and yet I often find myself worrying about wasting it. I worry it will come to an end and I won't have "achieved" things that I won't have the chance to try to achieve for a long time to come...if ever. Although working from home doesn't always look too ideal - the blurred lines that now exist between relaxing at home, and the need to be productive, the questions of 'do I have time to nap on the sofa before my next meeting?' and 'do I need to take my pyjamas off at all...ever?' - I sometimes wish I could, just to give each day purpose.

Yet, I'm trying to remember what all this is about: It's a pandemic. I've seen it said across lots of my social media that this is not a time where you need to beat yourself up about getting things done, make long to-do lists and learn how to speak a new language. This is a time of crisis and confusion across the world. Economies struggling, jobs disappearing, and people ill and dying. If you haven't got out of your pyjamas one day since this all began, it doesn't matter. We need to be kind to ourselves and do what is right for our own mental health.

What's that for me? Well, I personally like routine. I like a sense of order and knowing vaguely what's coming next. Without the daily structure of my job, after a day or so of wallowing in my sadness and confusion when my Furlough began, I created my own timetable. It's not strict, as such, but there are key elements: there's tea in bed followed by a couple of hours at the table on my laptop doing a course of some kind each morning. At around midday, the studying ends, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays I head to the living room for Yoga. After lunch, I fill my time with anything I fancy: reading, cross-stitch, colouring, baking? Between 4 and 5pm the kettle goes on for tea, and perhaps a cake is cut. At 5pm, I settle down, with mum and perhaps the boyfriend and dad (until he is too angry at the tv he has to leave) to watch the daily press conference. On weekends and bank holidays, I don't study...because even in a pandemic and without a job, it's still important to have proper breaks to relax.

Zoom Yoga...I promise I stopped just for the photo

Talking of which, the irony regarding some work-centred conversations with my boss about holiday entitlement before all this has not passed me by. In February, I was worrying that my current annual time-table left me with no holiday or break from work, beyond a weekend, until mid-August. I was concerned about getting burned out and we discussed adding some holiday time to the Easter weekend. Little did we know that by the time the Easter weekend rolled around, I would have already been off work for 2 weeks and that beyond that chocolate egg celebration, this 'holiday' would continue for another 4 weeks to bring me to today - the day I sit here writing my blog.

Giant Chocolate Easter Bunny delivered to my door

As of yesterday, my boss emailed me to confirm a continuation of my furlough 'holiday' for another 3 weeks...so it continues. Replying to a WhatsApp from our work group chat - a group consisting of me, and the mum and dad of the hilarious and adorable 2 year old I look after - I shared my anxieties. I told them I'm worried about what happens once the government are no longer providing support. I am so incredibly grateful to my bosses for keeping me safe. I am so lucky to have been off work for nearly 2 months and yet provided for financially. I am lucky that while my monthly pay is less, I am supported and currently spending far less than I would normally, from the comfort of my parents home. And yet I worry each time I get that message about not going to work, that one day that will become permanent. I worry that as long as they have questions about their own job security, that I of course will have concerns for my own. When our communications last night evolved into updates of the little one, and photos besides, I found myself tearing up - not for the first time may I add. While they keep me away as long as it's safest to do so, and as long as financially it makes the most sense, what if, eventually, they decide it makes most sense to not have me back at all. I worry I'll lose a job, and a family, that I love.

And while my brain spirals on contemplating the future of my job, it can't help but panic about what happens when - or if - I do get back to the London life. What happens then? I miss my job but when it's there, will I be able to visit my family at weekends? What happens at Christmas? I guess what I really struggle with most, is the fact that the answer to all of these questions and worries is that nobody knows. We are told daily, "we will do the right thing at the right time".....So I guess we just keep waiting and wondering until then.

Not much social distancing in our annual Christmas family photo...

And yet, what to do with the time while I have it? Some say take advantage - It's probably the only time ever the government will pay me not to work...and yet, it's not a holiday. It's too long for that and I didn't have any choice in the matter. So, I am using it to do things. It turns out if there's one thing about myself that I'm learning right now, it's that as long as education is not compulsory, and as long as no one is tracking my progress but me, I can (sometimes) enjoy it. I choose what I am interested in, and what skills or knowledge I want to learn and develop. And for a couple of hours each morning, Monday to Friday, I focus my attention on those. My pile of printed certificates is growing...although now when I look at them, I barely remember what I learned. I've got certificates about child psychology, fire safety and food hygiene. I have learned about safe sleeping for babies and the impact technology may have on children growing up in the digital world. My favourite so far though, is the one I've been doing for a couple of weeks now: British Sign Language (BSL). I'm finding myself practising beyond my self-allotted study time as well as enthusiastically forcing my family to let me practice on them. Don't worry, they're loving it. My boyfriend approaches me at my laptop each morning to ask what 'toast' is in BSL...I am consistently disappointing him since I haven't got to the food and drink section yet. He'll be so thrilled when I do.

Speaking of toast...Home-made Sourdough anyone?

When I'm not signing, I'm using my time to cook more and experiment with recipes and ingredients. I have aided in the production of thrice weekly sourdoughs, I have picked endless Wild Garlic to add to my creations, and got back into cake baking. I have felt the frustration build as I watch social media advertise lockdown as a time to watch our weight, and work on our fitness. Lockdown is, in reality, whatever you need it to be, in order to be ok. For me, Lockdown meant a giant Chocolate Lindt bunny got delivered to my door for Easter and also that I have discovered the best chocolate cake recipe in existence. As mentioned above, I occasionally hit my yoga mat. Alternatively, I gain my movement from walks in the woods or hunting every dandelion to de-head in the garden. I did try Joe Wicks once...it lasted approximately 5 minutes before I resorted to dance parties with my choir over Zoom.

Evidence of bluebell walk...

Why torture myself with attempts at working out to videos on YouTube when I can use my time to find a comfy spot to delve into my reading pile? At first, my anxiety told me to try and alternate relaxing, enjoyable fiction with educational books...then my mum pointed out that this was ridiculous and to read what I enjoy. Since that conversation I have stopped 2 books early doors. I want to be reading for pleasure. Forcing myself through stories I'm struggling with is just not worth it.
I am also dedicating this time to developing my new cross-stitching skills but now with added motivation. While before, I did it simply as a post-work relaxation activity, now I have decided to direct it towards a particular home. Each time I progress further on it, I get closer to seeing its' framed conclusion, positioned somewhere in the bedroom of a little girl who I haven't been able to hug in months. Each time I look at it, I am hopeful of one day returning to normal life, and seeing my work family again. I look at the little girl silhouetted at one end of a rainbow and am reminded that there is always an end somewhere, even if right now, in this moment, I can't see it...beyond the curve.

A rainbow curve is my type of curve

So for now, just keep going.