Tag: selfisolation

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.

Tiktok is getting me through

Tiktok is getting me through

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

In my generation, a big part of the way we connect with one another is through messaging. Some of the best laughs I have with my friends is when we’re all firing messages off in our group chat, getting silly over someone’s use of caps lock or a stupid gif they sent. But somehow society takes those moments of joy and laughter, and categorises them as pitiful or poor examples of ‘genuine’ human connection. All because there’s a screen involved.

In general people like to complain about the amount of time the younger generation ‘wastes’ in front of their devices, and I do I agree with many of the points made in that discussion. However, I don’t see how it’s exclusively the youth who stare gormlessly at their phones for hours. We have to give some credit to the grandmas out there being total Facebook queens: somehow they manage to share, like and comment on every family member’s posts the SECOND they’re posted. And that’s a serious skill which deserves some recognition.

So, yes, clearly young people are the ones who know all the newest apps and how to use them, but it’s not just us ‘wasting’ time on social media.

I’ve put quotation marks around the word ‘waste’ here because I think we need to stop being so constantly negative about social media. It’s no secret that there are huge negative consequences for our physical and mental health when we overuse our phones. And we know that sometimes the internet can be a really dangerous place. But even knowing all of that, I still don’t think that social media is exclusively toxic.

For example, there are a lot of people in the world who find solace in life on the internet. There are stories of kids who feel entirely alone in their physical reality, but the second they step online they feel freer to be themselves. For years children just suffered on their own in places they felt they didn’t belong, and now there’s always another place for them to go to feel accepted. How is that not worthwhile?

With everything, there are positive and negative aspects: there will always be examples of extremes on both sides. Surely, that doesn’t mean that we should solely focus on the negative extreme? What about the good bit?

Like for me now on Day who-cares-what of Peruvian isolation, social media has been a total saving grace for my state of mind. No matter my location or time zone I’ve been able to see, talk to, and even watch films with my friends. We’re still able to laugh hysterically together, and forget the fact that we don’t know how long it’ll be until we can give each other a big phat hug again.

I spend too much time looking at my phone: I know I do. I know that spending hours on end watching Netflix or scrolling through Instagram doesn’t do my mental health much good. I know that after a while it makes me feel lethargic, more self-critical, and a lot less motivated to do anything productive.

BUT, as much as we love to complain about it and as much as we know the problems it gives us, we love social media. We love to laugh at silly videos, we love to sit and message our friends for hours, and we love to zone out and just stare at a screen for a bit.

So let’s just start to admit that we can’t help but love it! Then maybe we’ll work out how to respect it, and have more of a healthy relationship with it.

Corona, you’ve turned my world upside down

Corona, you’ve turned my world upside down

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I guess the only thing I can really speak about this Sunday, is how the corona pandemic has affected my life. But don’t worry people, I haven’t got it. Or at least, I don’t think I have, seeing as people my age can just have it without knowing that they do…

But I’m pretty sure I haven’t got it…………………….? mOViNG oN

Living at University, my friends and I were all in a bubble where the world didn’t really seem to affect us much. The biggest excitement of our days was the prospect of a night out or any other silly s*** we could get up to. So when we woke up to be told that our University was going to shut early, and that we should take all of our stuff home with us just in case we didn’t come back for third term, we were all pretty taken aback. To add to that weirdness, I realised that I was going to have to call up KLM to ask them to move my flight because ever since February, my home is Peru. Which in itself is a totally new and bizarre concept.

I’d woken up ready to have a very relaxing day: I was going to watch some Netflix, eat some food, maybe shave my legs (Wild. I know), then go get drunk for my friend’s birthday. But at 2pm I realised that instead of this crazy Friday I’d had planned, I needed to speed-pack a suitcase and drive home to Yorkshire, ready to catch a flight to Peru the following morning. Complete madness.

Then when I was navigating through the airports, I was surrounded by people doing exactly the same thing. Some of them were pretty jovial and nonchalant about it, whilst others were complete nervous wrecks. The girl sitting next to me on the flight almost lost it when she spotted someone lying horizontally across the seats with a protective mask covering her mouth. I managed to calm her down by telling her that that girl lying down was severely disabled, and had come onto the plane in a wheelchair: she wasn’t dying of corona virus.

I’ve never had anyone look at me with such gratitude as she did once I’d told her that. *eye roll*

After over 24 hours, I made it here a day before the borders shut, and have been living in a state of national emergency ever since. What, you might ask, does that entail? Well! Let me tell you! It means that: if you leave your apartment for anything other than to go to the shop or to walk your dog, you’ll get arrested and fined £2000. So, since I don’t really fancy being locked up in a Peruvian prison surrounded by people speaking a language that I don’t, I haven’t been outside since I arrived. I feel it’s the most logical choice.

In all seriousness, the modern world has never experienced something like corona, and it’s led to a lot of things being cancelled. These cancellations has then resulted in a whole lot of sulking. And it’s 100% fine to sulk! I’m sulking about not having a summer term at University, and the idea of not seeing my friends for months. But just so we can help this thing end sooner and minimise the amount of people hurt by it, can everyone please just sulk at home? The sooner we sit in self-isolation, doing a jigsaw or playing monopoly, the sooner we’ll be able to get back to normal.

I’ve been in total lock-down for a week now and it’s really not that bad. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not lOVing it, and I’d really rather not, but sometimes we’ve got to do things we don’t want to do. So don’t be selfish, and just stay inside for a few weeks until this all blows over. Also, don’t be that idiot who freaks out and stockpiles food: you’re not actually living through The Day After Tomorrow.

Plus! At least through all of this chaos and weirdness, the planet is getting some time to breathe as we stop polluting and abusing it so much for a few months. That’s got to be good, doesn’t it?