Hey, how’s things this week — any better?
I put my friend on speaker phone and stretched out on my battered yoga mat, my trusty companion during a year of lonely lockdowns, seasonal festivities, birthdays, bank holidays, and rainy Mondays.
My yoga mat’s seen and heard it all; the incessant crack of ice as I’ve blended one too many margaritas; the incessant crack of my skull when I’ve more than had my fill… but these chats with my faraway friend are undoubtedly its lockdown peak of the week.
Ugggh no- I’m on my 19th nervous breakdown here. You?
Same!
Pandem-induced emotional eclipses. Our favourite topic. What caused it this time?
Car trouble — been stranded here without food as I couldn’t get to the shop for 3 days. Mortifying! How about you?
Eye trouble — had to take myself to the hospital, but I couldn’t see straight cycling there and nearly up-ended myself on someone’s bonnet.
Jesus — be careful woman!
I know, I found myself googling what to do when you can no longer handle life on this planet..
What did Google say?
Call The Samaritans.
Oh God, been there, lady. What did your therapist say?
I fired her. Can’t afford it anymore, and anyway I’ve lost faith in ‘talking therapy’…
What d’you mean?
I mean all she ever does is repeat my words back to me — like I’m not already PAINFULLY aware of how pathetic I sound — or she makes shameful comments such as: what do you mean there’s nobody? Surely there must be SOMEONE who could take you to the hospital/ supermarket/ mechanic? And then she charges me a fortune for the pleasure…
Yeah totally, but therapists are just the tip of the iceberg, really. It’s the smug lockdowners who’re really getting my goat now …
Ah yes, Smug Lockdowners, that infuriating breed of pandem thriver, newly converted to The Simple Life, who just love to wang on about how calm they are since lockdown; how contented they feel in their carefully curated bubbles, as they enjoy hour after happy hour in tacky pergolas, chowing down on burnt sausages and Aperol Spritzes.
They’re the ones with furloughed incomes who already had the perfect 2.4 kids set-up way before the pandem hit, or the Super Singletons who cherry-picked the love of their life off a dating app when all you’ve attracted is sex pests and narcissists.
Smug Lockdowners are oblivious to emotional eclipses. When they periodically ‘check in’ to boast about their perfect new lives, and you foolishly waste your 5 minutes of allotted air time trying to explain that things are going less than well ‘your end’, they invariably trill: Oh that’s a shame — I’m so sorry about your broken toe/ car/ spirit… good luck with that, let me know when you’ve got it all sorted, oktakecare BYE!
This is about as much help as someone saying: cheer up it might never happen to a person on crutches, or: I’m sure you’ll figure something out to a person drowning in the deep end, or: stay positive! to someone leaving a funeral parlour.
Smug Lockdowners are resolute about having no interest in returning to The Old Life when ‘this’ is all over – ‘this’ being a life threatening pandemic which is crippling the global economy, shredding our mental health, and turning us all into robots, NOT a cosy middle-class yoga retreat.
They much prefer their new lives, and wax lyrical about how convenient it is working from home in their converted barns/attics/extensions; how they much prefer a fortnight in a thatched cottage near Durdle Dor to the annual jaunt to Antigua; how they’re going to miss those Zoom group chats when the world finally reopens its doors.
My phone friend and I are the opposite of Smug Lockdowners. We were living a simple life long before Covid was a Chinese whisper; our chosen escape from the daily drudgery being to disappear for months on end to faraway places full of random strangers and infinite possibilities.
The pandem’s successfully obliterated all that (along with our sanity), and as we slowly ease out of what is HOPEFULLY the final lockdown, there’s nothing left of our old life to reconnect with, save for a handful of Smug Lockdowners, who’ll no doubt be busy congratulating themselves on how instrumental they were in ‘keeping our spirits up’.
©JLO
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Previously Published on medium
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