I’ve been finding less and less time, or reason for that matter, to sit down and write these days. Potentially the lack of routine and the constant sense of instability has meant that my core focus in life of late has been simply surviving. Trying to do anything else has seemingly been an insurmountable task. At this stage I feel like I am doing the bare minimum of what I need to do day by day just simply in order to get through. This current Lockdown 6.0 in Melbourne has been incredibly tough and I’ve been trying to reflect on why this time round has been so much harder. You would think that we would be used to it all by now. Melburnians spent a very long time in a harsh lockdown at this time last year also. But this time around, there seems to be a distinct lack of hope and an apathy which makes living through it all the more painful.
Melburnians have now spent over 245 days in lockdown; the longest in the world. There’s a sense here right now that we paid our dues, we sacrificed in order to preserve the safety of other Australians around the country, so haven’t we given enough? For me, it feels like we’ve lived in this way for such a long time that normality seems to be the foreign concept. I honestly can’t remember what life was like before this and it’s somehow altered who I am as a human being so much that I worry who I will be when we open up and when this is all over.
I read an article this morning about how we have continued to age even though lockdowns have grinded our lives to a somewhat stop. We have all this missing time in which we’re almost 2 years older with not very to show for ourselves in terms of life progress that should have occurred during this time. It’s difficult not to read that and feel a deep sense of loss and feel the need to mourn what we have metaphorically lost. There’s no doubting the fact that especially for Melburnians, our hearts are heavy, we are frustrated, we are tired and we’re simply over it. But the thing to remember, is that we have survived. We are still here, fighting for everyday to be better than the last. We have developed an element of resilience that was not there before. We’ve been provided an opportunity with time to spend with our loved ones that we never would have been presented with or taken up for that matter before all of this.
As I scrolled through my photos earlier this week I came across an Instagram tile that I posted at almost exactly this time last year which stated “we’re almost there Melbourne, stay strong”. The statement rings true once again. We are so close to some semblance of freedom and normality, of coming out the other side of this. The truth is that we aren’t the same people who we were in February 2020. We are far more battle scarred. We’re probably a little bit more cynical. We’re most likely behind on our life goals because we’ve been forced to stand still for so long. But we’re still here. Our futures are still bright, even though they make look slightly different to what we had originally imagined for ourselves at the start of last year. But there is still hope for us.
So as we come upon (hopefully) the last few weeks of this lockdown, let’s be kind to ourselves and others around us. Let’s always lead with kindness and remember that we have gone through all of this as a community, and that we should continue to hold that sense of community dear as we move forward. Let’s challenge ourselves to be better as we come out of this lockdown and understand how deeply the events of the last 19 months have affected us all. Don’t feel guilty to mourn what we’ve lost and what could have been. But move forward nonetheless.
We can do this Melbourne. The future is bright.
Big love ❤
I blog for Change. 