How I’m Feeling About The Pandemic
Wow what a year this has been. I would have never imagined in a thousand years that we would be told by the government that you must not leave your home except for essential purposes. That we’d all have to communicate over text or video calls, and that it would last as long as it is lasting. I remember the dreaded feeling I had back in March last year when I heard I’ll have to start shielding in my house for 12 weeks or I could suffer serious illness from a deadly virus. I got cabin fever the year before when I was stuck in my house for 3 days because the Beast from the East dropped inches of snow across Scotland. It was horrible, how would I manage 12 weeks?
There were two positives that I tried to see though; everyone was in the same situation and I was doing this to protect myself for a brighter future. On Saturday 14th March, before I got my official shielding letter, I decided to start shielding. In all fairness though it lasted like 3 days as on the Tuesday I went out for a walk to the local playpark with my neighbour and the children that she childminds. I was fed up already and needed some company that wasn’t my parents or my carers. I also went on the same walk the Friday of that week too with my neighbour and the children, but this time I was more wary. It was the day that the schools had finished for that term year and suddenly about 30 children appeared at the playpark, I stayed away from them all, left not long after they appeared and didn’t go to the playpark with my neighbour again. After that I only went out for short walks around my quiet street with either my carer or my parents and occasionally met my neighbour in her driveway for a very socially distanced catch-up. Lockdown had well and truly came in to place and I needed to keep myself safe.
I paused the services that I got from a care agency, went down to only having two carers coming in for a limited time and got into the routine of video calls, watching favourite childhood movies on Disney+ and trying to figure how I was going to get through the next 12 weeks (if only I knew that it would be even longer). If you follow me on Instagram already, you’ll know that I took up cross stitching during shielding which definitely kept me occupied, and still is. That is one thing I’m glad about from this whole experience, I’ve found a hobby that I probably wouldn’t have found if life didn’t slow down for a while. Even though I’ve been on and off furlough for the past year my constant contact with the Euan’s Guide team and my fellow Euan’s Guide Ambassadors has definitely kept me doing, I’ve really enjoyed getting to know Ambassadors that I may have not met for a while due to where they live. I’ve also started working with an amazing group of young people through ARC Scotland. We formed our group Divergent Influencers just before the pandemic started and as soon as we started shielding or in lockdown, we’ve constantly been in touch with each other, having Zoom calls every week or so and working together to make a change for other young people transitioning from school. Again, if life hadn’t slowed down for a little while I don’t think we would have got even close to as much work done as we have.
This pandemic has been a nightmare, so much loss and sorrow in the world and a constant stress has surrounded me about my health and the health of those that I rely on the most. But there’s also been some pretty great positives, those I’ve mentioned above as well as others. Cases reduced a little during the summer of last year and I was able to enjoy a little bit of freedom, plus I was able to finally move out and get settled in my own flat. More about that next time though.
For now I just want to leave you with this quote “stay positive, better days are on their way” and remind everyone that if we all stay safe and work together, this will be a distant memory soon.
