Tag: quarantine

2020 vibes

2020 vibes

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 1 Comment

I’ve been rewriting this entry for about 6 weeks now, because every time I’ve gone to sum up how I’ve felt for the past 18 months, I’ve ended up being brutally honest about how, at points, I’ve not been very happy. Then I wake up the next morning, and I’m embarrassed about being such a downer the day before. But the fact is, that ever since I moved to university, and ever since being thrust into long periods of isolation, there have been a fair few moments when I’ve felt really down. More down than I’ve felt in a while.

If I think about it, then it’s easy to attribute it to lots of things in my life – huge changes, new stresses, the usual stuff. I know it’s normal, and I feel a lot better now than I did in the Spring, or even a couple of weeks ago when I started writing this. Nonetheless, the past 18 months have been really hard, I’m really tired, and though I have lots of things to feel excited about this year, the first couple of weeks of 2021 have felt like we’re going to have much of the same for the foreseeable future. And it’s difficult to have to force yourself to keep looking on the bright side when normally, you don’t have to think about it so regularly.

For me, isolation meant that I had a lot of time to sit on my own and think. This allowance to just stop for a minute seems like it helped a lot of people all over the world. But my brain just started to get hung up on the negatives, and I started to get more critical of myself than I’ve ever been before. I became acutely aware of how lonely I’ve felt at points over the last 18 months, and somewhere along the line that morphed into me shaming myself for sleeping with men. Don’t ask me when, how or why. I also started to think that I must be stupid if I can’t remember those 15 Japanese grammar structures 10 minutes after I’ve been told them. I thought maybe I just wasn’t good enough. But worst of all, for the first time in my life I started to feel like when I’m at university I should cover up my callipers so that I don’t draw attention to them. I don’t even think I’ve ever been to my university library wearing clothes where you could see my shoes. And that’s not like me at all.

However, it’s difficult for me to admit these things in such a public way because I know that my friends and family won’t enjoy reading this, and will probably tell me off for being such an idiot. I know these thoughts are stupid, I know there’s nothing wrong with the way I am or the way I look, I know it’s dumb to feel so lonely, I don’t regret anyone I’ve ever slept with, and I know how lucky I am in so many ways. But it gets tough out here sometimes.

If we’re going to get anthropological, sociological, or just a bit nerdy about it, then a lot of the things I’m feeling can be traced to the fact that society just doesn’t like young women to succeed. It encourages us to criticise each other, but more importantly, our societal structures and expectations ask women to tear themselves to shreds so that they can be as inoffensive to the world as possible. Thus, all the millions of pressures coming from every b*stard direction can sometimes get the better of you – no matter how much you love yourself. So don’t feel stupid, weak, or guilty if you can’t always bat them off.

I’ve had some really upsetting moments in 2020 – like everyone else – but I also laughed every single day. And as long as we can still manage to do that, then it’s not all bad, is it?

So Happy New Year kids; let’s have some better vibes this time around the sun.

Xx

Lockdown blues

Lockdown blues

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

A few days ago I was feeling really low: I wrote a blog all about my experience of coronavirus, my opinions on the way the government has handled it, and how depressing quarantining is. I didn’t publish it though, mostly because I’m super bored of talking about our shambles of a government…

Everybody hates being ill, and now more than ever we’re made to feel like we should fear illness. Obviously the pandemic has caused suffering on a huge scale to many people, but as we approach the winter, we need to give as much attention to our mental health as we’ve been giving to our physical. It’s been very easy to focus on coronavirus as the only relevant illness for the year, but a dangerous consequence of that has been that we’re kind of neglecting everything else.

As you might’ve read in my posts from back in the summer, I found quarantining in Peru really intense and exhausting at times. So on the 26th October when I realised that I wouldn’t be able to leave the house until at least the 8th November, I was thrown back into all of the emotions I remembered from the first lockdown. And I really don’t think that anyone has been talking enough about how awful it is to be on house arrest for weeks. Yes, it helps with slowing down the spread of the virus, but it also does some serious things to your state of mind.

Thus, the point I want to make this week is that we have to push the drama of the government’s restrictions to one side. Whether you agree with what they’re doing or not, when you catch this virus you’re going to have to stay inside for a couple of weeks. That experience can feel overwhelmingly bleak – especially when you know that you won’t be able to go out for food or for a drink at the end of it. You might wake up some mornings and not see the point of getting changed. Then when you check your phone and see text after text from NHS track and trace instructing you to stay inside, you might start to feel really suffocated. We’re all feeling the same things, and it’s sh**.

But you have to make the effort to get changed; to cook something interesting; to have fun with those you live with; to call the ones you don’t. Do your best to surround yourself with good vibes, and try your utmost to address how you’re feeling.

I’m not always the best at looking after myself, but as I get older, it gets clearer that my own happiness is my responsibility. So just keep reminding yourself of the positive things, because this lockdown world can so easily push you down.

Get woke

Get woke

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The last 8 months have drastically altered the way the world works. By being forced to stay indoors for weeks – in some countries, months – on end, we’ve been thrust into personal isolation in a way we’ve never experienced. In the future, some will probably only talk about how they were really bored, unable to go on holiday, or gained an unhealthy obsession with TikTok during this time (guilty…). Whilst others will have worse tales to tell.

Overall however, there seems to have been an increase in how much the general public pay attention to the news. It’s an unsurprising change, given we had very little else to do…but even though people started watching the news more, it seems we still struggle to fully engage with what we’re hearing.

When we go through school, there are often moments in our classrooms when we’re encouraged to discuss the politics relating to whatever we’re studying: whether that’s how the social climate of 1920’s America influenced F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, or whether it’s answering the million-dollar question: why did Henry VIII have so many wives? However, a lot of the time our curriculum doesn’t actually encourage us to really think about the topics, and then relate what we learn to our society today. We learn phrases we know ‘the examiner wants to hear’, but we’re 15, so why would we need to care about these things outside of the classroom?

But then we come into the world and we’re completely unprepared to understand everything that’s going on. Only we’re not completely unprepared: it’s just that we’re rarely taught how to recognise that what we learnt about the Tudors, the Bolsheviks, or the Ancient Romans is relevant to us now. Furthermore, people think they don’t have access to politics because they don’t know the lingo. But politicians complicate things on purpose; they’re trying to make you think that you don’t get it because then you’ll leave them to it.

Plus as humans, we separate ourselves from our history and assume that because we weren’t there, we don’t need to give it that much attention. And our learning at school is for exams, it’s rarely for the sake of knowing. But trust me, you’d probably recognise a lot of the ideas and political tactics kicking about now, from your history lessons if you took a second to think about it. After all, humans can be amazingly innovative but we also have a habit of ignoring our past, then repeating it because we’ve ‘forgotten’ about it.

So I couldn’t care less about how many news articles you share on your social media: it’s your profile, do what you want. What I do care about though, is people asking questions and actively learning about the world they live in. We’re the next cohort of citizens and we’re inheriting a big, phat, stinking mess. I mean, the planet is literally dying…

You learnt so much about how the world works today from school and everything you’ve ever read. It’s not irrelevant and it’s not always ‘boring/depressing’: educate yourself about the positive/exciting parts of world history too. But there’s so much to be said for paying serious attention to humanity’s past mistakes, learning from them, and finally doing something else.

I listened to a podcast the other day that said around 22% of American millennials don’t even KNOW what the Holocaust was. And that’s terrifying. So please please please exit Instagram/Facebook/Twitter/TikTok for a couple of hours today and read a book, watch a documentary, listen to a podcast, read an article – I don’t care, just learn something new.

I want to go for a walk

I want to go for a walk

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 2 Comments

For me, disability causes a constant conflict between personality and body. Ever since I was small I’ve struggled to mesh the two together because I’ve never wanted to accept that there are things that I’ll never be able to do. From the age of about 8 until 14 I was awful for it: I’d just do everything that my friends were doing because I wanted to, and I’d rarely give a second thought to my feet. But then I’d end up with infections, and in a wheelchair. So living that way didn’t get me very far.

After about the age of 16 I’d managed to (sort of) make my peace with it. I accepted that I couldn’t ever live my life the way most people could, and I mourned it, but ultimately I realised that those are just the cards I’ve been dealt. I mean, my disability could be so much worse, and what do I gain from fighting it?

Then I was 19 and I had my gap year. I proved to myself that I could travel the world on my own: I went to seriously remote places, away from medical institutions, and showed myself that doing what I want to do doesn’t always have to end in infection and debilitation. It might sound trivial to you, but it was breaking news to me, my family and my doctors.

This year, quarantine happened and after a while the government started allowing people out for walks and exercise. This change to the lockdown brought so much relief to most people, but not to me because I can’t just go out for a run. I can’t just walk down loads of steps to the beach and then back up them, because if I do, I have to accept that I might injure myself. I might put myself in a wheelchair.

This is where we get back to how complicated disability is, because many of my readers have seen me in person and have seen me walk plenty of times. I can walk short distances, and I’ve been known to dance for hours on a night out, but sometimes it’s just luck that I don’t end up with a blister after doing these things. I’m a seasoned professional when it comes to internalising my worries and pushing my disability as far as it can go. I’m stubborn and I’m young, and I don’t see why all my friends can but I can’t. Like I said, it’s a constant conflict.

But I don’t write these blogs to be all ‘woe is me’. Loads of people have it so much worse than I do, and everyone does the best with what they’ve got. It’s just that if I’m going to write blogs about when I feel empowered by being a young disabled woman, then I have to show you the side of my condition which gives me no joy whatsoever.

Some days I just don’t want to be this disabled person. It makes me feel weak and suffocated. I don’t want to have to think about whether I can go somewhere, I want to be able to just go. Sometimes I look at my feet and wonder how it’s fair that I have to be the only person I know who can’t just wear normal shoes and have normal legs. I wonder how it’s fair that I’ll have this for the rest of my life, and how I’m supposed to get over it when there’s nothing I, or anyone else can do to ever improve it.

There are no solutions to these problems. Life doesn’t work in ‘fair’ and ‘unfair’ – especially when I don’t believe in any type of God. As far as I can see, random people get random sacks of sh** to deal with, and we move. I have a really good time even with the headache of my Spina Bifida, and it’s shaped me in so many positive ways. To be honest, if someone told me that I could flick a switch to get rid of it I’m not even sure that I would. Disability can enrich a person’s perspective on the world and life in many ways, but I’d never, ever, wish it on anyone.

Not feeling it

Not feeling it

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 2 Comments

Until yesterday, I wasn’t going to write a mid-week blog. Mostly because I’ve spent so much time with myself these past 52 days. 52 days man: I’ve not been outside in almost 2 months. (!) In fact, I have absolutely no clue what the country I’ve been living in for that time even looks like. If it’s past the view from the windows, then I’ve never seen it.

So the routine of my week kind of revolves around writing blogs now. But I’m only any good at this when I’ve got something to say, and how can I have anything to say when I don’t do anything? I’m trying to write down the things I talk about in my head, but I’m soooooo bored of hearing that little voice blabbering on all the time. I’d kinda like to hear someone else for a bit.

Lol didn’t manage it though, did I? Here we are, reading another instalment of that little voice’s monologue… ah well.

Quarantine has been a serious strain on the mental well-being of my parents and I. We never argue and we get along uncharacteristically well, so generally speaking we’re totally fine. We have a laugh and our issues are never with each other. But human beings aren’t built to be locked inside for months on end; it doesn’t matter how much they like each other.

Thankfully, me, my mum and my dad have somehow managed to alternate our breakdowns so none of us have been miserable at the same time so far. It’s not every day but every now and then, it just hits you. And whoever isn’t feeling like jumping out of the window on that day, gets the job of comforting whoever does. Lots of hugs, loud music, drunken dancing on the balcony, crisps and chocolate, Blue Planet, Judy Garland, sarcastic jokes. You know, usual family stuff.

But what I’m trying to get at in this blog, is that if you’re waking up some days feeling absolutely miserable then that’s a totally valid feeling to have right now. It’s a completely mad, upsetting time. It doesn’t matter how lovely your house is, or how amazing the people you’re locked in with are, sometimes you just can’t face another day doing the same thing, in the same rooms, surrounded by the same people, with no idea of when you’ll all be able to do something else.

I could end this with ‘hey, it’s mostly not that bad, let’s not dwell’ – a very true point. But there’s a lot to be said for allowing yourself a minute to just listen to some maungy music and bask in how crap you feel. You don’t always have to rationalise things; sometimes you just feel rubbish. And we’ve been stuck in the house for weeks with no prospect of an end date, in a world where the only news story seems to be how many people are dying. So if that isn’t an excuse to feel sad for a day, then I don’t know what is.

Xx