COVID went easy on me; I didn’t lose a loved one, almost no one of my family or friends were ill, my job went nowhere, masks didn’t scar and my mental health did not profoundly suffer. As far as COVID goes, I was lucky as hell, and I know it.
It was over the Christmas when half the country had COVID and the government’s out-of-office seemed to be on, that I considered what the end of COVID might be like. Tonight I tuned in to hear the Taoiseach announce the end of most restrictions, heralding the return of normality.
But what was normal? What was I like in that normal? Because I think the last time I was me was when I was 33, and I’ll be 36 in April. If COVID is ending, I’ve serious training to do to get match-fit for life after COVID.
I was ten years living in Dublin when I left for Chicago, and I came home a day or two after Ireland went into lockdown, which we’ve been in and out of since. Do the math and it’s three years since I’ve lived the life I used to know as normal. There’s been plenty in that time that I have loved and enjoyed (see every post I’ve written in that time) but it felt like there was something amiss or missing, that I wasn’t being the whole of me.
Sitting around the weekends, getting up late on Sundays; that’s not me. So used of my own company that I’m only half listening to others; that’s not me. Having no news or stories is not me. Not saying hello and chatting to everyone in the pub at home, that’s not me either. The million excuses for not doing things is not me, nor is making the Brendan voyage out of a trip further than Galway. Twice in Dublin in two years is not me. Looking at my own travels like they’re someone else’s documentary; definitely not me. Not going to A or B at the weekends because I might be tired the following week (I’m actually mortified even writing that) is not me. The phone book filled with people I haven’t called in months and months is not me.
And yet it took me two years to cop the above. I guess two or three years will make nearly anything seem normal; we adjust, memories fade, and we forget that things used to be so different.
Now, there is of course context. Our context is COVID, and any story told in the future of 2020 and 2021 will be incomplete without mention of COVID. Going nowhere and doing nothing was the right thing to do. Anything we were excited about usually got cancelled anyways. But the flip-side of that was indifference to what did go ahead. After months of praise for going nowhere, going anywhere seemed a titanic task.
They were my decisions, but those decisions were shaped by COVID and a concern I’d bring it to the island or to my workplace. So I lived my life within this island’s 8km x 5km, which suited me just fine at the time; indeed it suited me too much because it’s only now I see now that even when I could, I wasn’t going places, doing things, visiting friends. WhatsApp voice messages replaced calls and real conversations, because what was there to talk about? Yes, we have a pub, yes all the teaching is through Irish, I get my shopping from Joyce’s. I wasn’t even going home. Dublin and Donegal seemed to be the far side of the moon.
Staying put was just infinitely easier. And there was no-one calling me or any of us out on that because, y’know, COVID.
After three years away from most of the friends I’ve known and loved since forever, without them to hold a mirror up to who I was or am, I accepted this version of me, assuming this was what mid-thirties were like. That 33-year-old in her Aasics runners under a work dress belting out karaoke on a Wednesday night in a Dublin pub was just a memory.
It’s not that mental of an idea. I mean, if a left hand didn’t get used for two years, wouldn’t its owner either forget it or how it’s used?
There’ll be digging to be done to find that 33-year-old with a helmet hanging off her bag in a bar on George’s Street on a Tuesday night (dinner and a heap of wine in Market Bar isn’t even all that exciting!!) or she who used to be so mad for road. But finding her is the aim of this next go around the sun.
And when she’s found, like a good clear-out, there’ll be stuff thrown out and stuff kept. That photo (if anyone knows how to make them smaller on WordPress please tell me) is me in my element singing The Foggy Dew at our beloved Friday night sesiúin at Teach Ósta; I’ll definitely keep the singing and the music. I’ll hang on to the fitness, the writing and reading, the mindfulness and appreciation of landscape, the self-assuredness, the kindness I’ve learned from the people here, an Ghaeilge, and the inner peace. But going out the door – out, out, out! – are the million excuses not to get in the car, visit people, do things. Never again will I have no news when asked. Never. Straight for the bin too are the rambling monologues of WhatsApp voice messages in place of calls, the dearth of cultural activity and doing nothing on weekends.
My new year’s resolution is to combine the best of 2020 & 2021 gave me with the spirit of that 33-year-old who, in pure nostalgia, I’ve become very fond of.
So now, consider me in pre-season training for post-COVID life. Join me. COVID has taken enough from us and those of us who can need to ensure it takes no more. While restrictions are lifted and life is there for living, not one more day, dinner, drink, date or dance should that damned virus take from us.
My new year’s resolution for 2022? Be me at 33.
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this, other posts can be found here – they’re mostly about Inis Meáin these days, but there’s stuff there about politics, home, rural living and other notions I took on given days. I’m on Twitter too, if you really like what you read!!
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