The Pandemic Chewed Me Up And Spat Me Out
And I’m not sure I’m better for it
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Do you remember when the lockdowns began?
We were all baking bread and singing “toss a coin to your Witcher,” whilst making glib remarks on Twitter.com?
Then they dragged on.
Ever deeper lockdowns descended upon us, a heavy cloud rumbling across the sky like a dark blanket. We all got tired. So tired. Tired of the endless news briefings, tired of the daily statistics, tired of the alarmist headlines, of closed churches, missing friends, cancelled weddings, and of the painstainking way we now had to shop for groceries.
The past two years have been the hardest of my life, and yet, I feel guilty for not making them good. For not making more of them. Why would they be good? There was a literal plague occurring. There’s no reason they would be good. There’s no rational reason anyone would have enjoyed them. They were objectively harder for everyone apart from a particular class of parvenu.
I didn’t learn how to bake bread, or knit, or redecorate my house. I caught up on some reading, podcasts and movies and that’s about it. In the first half of 2020, I found myself pregnant with my ex-boyfriend’s baby. My son must have been conceived two weeks before we split up (despite using preventative measures). Almost every woman my age told me to get an abortion. Even my sister hinted at it.
I didn’t.
Then I had to contend with the devastation that hit the journalism industry. I was pregnant and newly qualified. I was told by email that the jobs I had applied for no longer existed. By the middle of the summer I couldn’t even read the news or do nightshifts, I was too anxious and too tired. A journalist who can’t cope with the news is no good to anyone.
I got so large, I couldn’t walk. I slept thirteen hours during the day. I was in no position to be entrepreneurial, to pivot dynamically to another industry, job, or project. I was enveloped in jealousy as I saw my clever friends and colleagues use the time they usually spent commuting to set up new businesses, augment their side-hustles, and landscape their gardens.
In the Autumn, I underwent an emergency caesarean-section under general anesthetic after both my life and the life of my son were imperilled during childbirth. I remember the obstetrician telling me that after twelve hours of Labour I was no closer to giving birth than I was when my waters had broken that morning. My child was suffocating in my womb.
I remember yelling at a doctor: “Why am I still awake?” They’d taken away my gas and air to wheel me into the theatre, and the contractions were now ripping through me unmitigated by any pain relief. Like an angel of mercy, he placed the mask over my face. I remember waking up. A health care assistant was beside me. I asked for my glasses to be put back on my face.
My mother arrived at the hospital, they hadn’t called her until after the surgery was over. Another health care assistant, a stranger, had been holding my brand new son for the two-hours it took them to stitch up my abdomen, put me back together again, and to sleep off the last of the anaesthesia. It was only after that did they call my Mum. They handed her my son. He was wearing an adorable, dinky, little red knitted hat. I didn’t have the strength to hold him.
I don’t remember the months that followed. It took two months for me to not feel sick. I wept deeply in front of my mother. Something I’ve never done in front of her before. I struggled to bond with my delightful little boy, I was too much in agony to think of anyone else. I felt guilty. I felt guilty for not bonding with him instantly, for just wanting to be in a quiet room watching YouTube videos, and for not being physically able to carry him up and down the stairs.
I could barely walk for two months. I don’t remember much of the first half of 2021, but I got better and there’s a baby here now. He’s great.
When the lockdowns lifted, I so wanted to be a person who had used the time to nail their pandemic passion project. Started a podcast or finished another novel, perhaps? Or used it to grow their social media following and leveraged it to get a book deal? I was just so busy surviving I didn’t have the time. How odd that I feel guilty about this?
The pandemic chewed me up and spat me out and, to be perfectly honest with you, I’m not sure I’m better for it. The rational part of my brain knows it’s crazy to productivity shame myself despite all that’s happened. The trouble is, even though I survived, it took so much effort — I feel exhausted. I feel utterly exhausted even though I’ve stayed more or less in the same place.
Grieving, mourning, existing, repairing, maintaining, cleaning, surviving and recovering may all look to the outside world or even to yourself like you’re doing nothing. But you’re running an emotional marathon on the inside and you don’t have to apologise for having nothing to show for it other than still being here. I’m just glad I’m still here. I’m glad you’re here too.
Things are so much better now.
Thank you for reading — I hope you found my thoughts interesting. You can find links to my other work here: https://linktr.ee/sayde.scarlett
