My First Post, Coronavirus, and Self-Love During Unprecedented Times

In the words of Plato, strange times are these in which we live.      

Starting 2020, the last thing I could ever have expected is to be currently living through a global pandemic crisis with much of 2020, and my future, being put on hold. But 5 months in, here we are, fighting against an infectious disease that is effectively massacring thousands of people across the globe on a daily basis. 

And yet, despite the situation, I can’t help but be gutted. Like the many others I had seen declaring their despair at the situation on twitter and other types of social media, I had successfully convinced myself that 2020 was going to be my year. By booking various holidays, applying for an exchange with my University, and starting a diet after years of putting it off, I had finally begun to feel that I was getting my life on track to how I wanted it to be, with the start of a new decade being the perfect time for a clean slate. However, in the process of 3 months, this clean slate has suddenly been destroyed by COVID-19 and the lockdown measures that have been imposed on all of us.

It is a culture shock, really. In the wake of suddenly going from a busy day to day lifestyle to being stuck in the house with nothing to do, it is hard not to feel as if I am suffocating against it all. Being kept away from family and friends who I had become used to seeing nearly every day, and not even being able to take a simple trip to the supermarket without feeling like you are somehow in the wrong, is confusing and emotionally-draining, and frankly life has become a lot harder than I, and I am sure many others, ever expected it to. It’s like nothing is normal anymore and, personally, I find that scariest of all. Sometimes, I believe that our biggest enemy is our own mind, and our current situation leaves us trapped without any escape. Due to this, anything even related to self-love and self-care seems completely absurd at the moment. Why bother with our-selves when no one is going to see us anyway? Yet, that is exactly why self-love is so essential right now! During a time when we perhaps feel lazy and that many things are not worth it, it is important to remind ourselves that we are worth it! Even when we feel that we are not.

My current read is The Binding by Bridget Collins. Highly recommend for any fantasy lovers like me.

And so, despite it all, I do not believe that this year is beyond saving. After having two months off to myself, it has given me a lot of time to not only reflect on how I want to move forward with my time after the outbreak of Coronavirus has been contained, but also spend time doing things that I never had time for in the past, due to trying to balance a university course with a part-time job and a social life. By studying a degree in English and Journalism, I often-times find myself having to read books that I, in a sense, do not particularly enjoy and over time I had begun to associate my dread towards these books with a dread of reading all together. However, sometimes we just need time to fall back in love with the things we had fallen out of love with, and that is something I am grateful to lockdown for providing. By spending my days reading and also drawing, something I had not had time to do since I completed my Higher Art qualification, I have been slowly falling back in love with the hobbies I had forgotten were never a chore. It is reminding me to love myself and that not everything in life needs to be done to complete some end goal. Instead of stressing about deadlines, work, and the realities of life I can instead lose myself for however long I need in a novel or art. It is something I feel that everyone should be doing, as the toxicity that comes with mobile phones and social media has never been healthy for any of us and in reality, for a long time coming, we have all been in need of some sort of break.

So, instead of focusing on what could have been, we should focus on what can still be and the plans we can still make, despite the fact they will be in the future rather than in the present. In the end, the cities and countries we wish to visit will still exist after this outbreak has passed, but, if we do not follow the lockdown guidelines and protect ourselves during these unprecedented times, we might not exist to visit them. Right now, self-love and self-care is the most important thing of all! As no matter however bad things might seem right now, we have got this far, we can survive the rest. 

C x