As the UAE and much of the rest of the rest of the world begin to ease their way out of lockdown, I’ve found that normal service seems to be resuming for my own mental wellbeing. Not that I initially knew anything was in any way not normal; as someone who is in the fortunate position of not suffering with their mental health, lockdown and the pandemic hit me harder than I perhaps realised in the moment.
Here in the UAE, our lockdown came hard and fast, and had every non-essential worker literally confined their homes 24/7. The only exceptions were grocery and medicine shopping, and these only with an electronic permit issued by Dubai Police. Whilst I definitely felt the frustration of not being able to leave our one bedroom apartment, I didn’t feel, at the time, that the inactivity would have a particularly negative impact on my mental health. I’m a ‘coper’. I would be fine. But now that life here in Dubai is almost back to normal, I’m starting to see just how wrong I was.
Pre-COVID19, anyone who knows me personally will attest to the fact that I don’t stop unless I am severely hungover, and even then I can usually drag myself out in to the desert for a quick spin. I work, I train, work a bit more, I train a bit more then I pass out.
My husband does almost all the cooking in the week and does all the laundry (although this is more to do with my inability to keep pairs of socks together than anything else). On a rare free afternoon or morning, I invariably fill it with a skiing session or, more lately, a paddleboarding session. Essentially, I like to have plenty on.
Now, I am completely aware that I am one in almost seven billion when I say that COVID-19 quickly put paid to any kind of normality. Work stopped, training stopped, life as I knew it stopped. Yet amidst all this insanity, social media was filled with this desire to appear more motivated, to be more creative, to do more home workouts. On one hand, I appreciate the value it had – I definitely made sure that my lockdown stories were light and funny, that I made homemade honeycomb and that I posted it to my Instagram story.
COVID19 unwittingly created this online community to replace real the one we had lost. It was great while it lasted, but for me the honest truth is that I have never felt less motivated or less myself than during the past months. I was doing these things so that everyone else knew I was keeping up with lockdown life. In reality, I found training to be a huge slog, my desire to write completely evaporated and my lust for big adventures sometime in the hazy future disappeared entirely. It is only in the past few weeks, with Dubai easing out of lockdown and normal life cautiously emerging, that my mind has started re-aligning with the things I love.
I really do feel like with this return of routine has come a return to a more usual state of mind. Whilst I know that some more time to reflect and relax can be healthy, I feel like I have escaped from a bit of a black hole, mentally, physically and emotionally. I’m more motivated to get up early, more motivated to write, and to the consternation of my ever patient husband, more motivated to plan slightly mental adventures for the next few years. I have no idea whether these adventures will ever come to fruition, but at least now I can dream big, instead of dreaming about my next sanctioned trip to the supermarket.
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