24th March 2020

Yesterday the panic set in.

For the last couple of weeks since this all properly kicked off, I’ve been happily distracting myself from the reality I’m facing. It’s so much easier thinking about everybody else.

I am awaiting my start date as a Clinical Sister in a local hospital and I have really struggled to watch events unfold whilst out of the loop. I feel defunct. Useless. So I started a community group to help anyone isolated or vulnerable, and filled my days bobbing around town delivering food parcels. I cannot tell you how much I have missed this feeling. There aren’t many things in life which are so rewarding, it’s one of the things I miss the most about my job.

What’s interesting is that despite being off for over six months with work related stress and depression, and these being such worrying times, I’m in surprisingly high spirits. The time I spent off work was life changing for me, giving me the chance to explore a creative side I had kept muted for years. I now have this amazing outlet which allows me to express and understand my emotions which is such a powerful tool for me. As soon as it became clear that the country would soon be on lockdown, I felt I needed to encourage the community to use this time in a positive way and to keep connections alive through creativity.

Along with the deliveries, I’ve been working flat out with my mate Mary to create a proposal for a creative project to address the issue of social isolation. So this has been a double whammy of keeping me so busy I didn’t have time to really think too hard. But also I’ve had this sense of purpose and achievement which has kept me in a positive place mentally. Although my new role has been looming in the background, I haven’t spent a great deal of time thinking about the situation I’m walking into.

I’ve kept myself as informed as I can about the Virus and have been watching how other countries have been battling it, with a heavy sense of foreboding.

We know what’s coming. It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion.

Somehow until yesterday I still felt a little bit removed from it, but it’s firmly in my focus now.

Yesterday I watched a video of a colleague explaining how she had moved out of her family home, leaving her two year old son behind, so that she could keep them safe from herself. I had come to terms with the prospect of working ridiculous hours, the personal risk to myself not only physically but also emotionally and had steeled myself to the battering I am likely to take.

What I hadn’t prepared for was the prospect of having to leave my family, because I will become a danger to them.

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