How to cope with the lockdown? Don’t ask me

How to cope with the lockdown? Don’t ask me – I’m not coping

SAM April 10, 2020

Bibi Lynch on the beach during one of her daily walks (Picture: Bibi Lynch)

Lockdown? Coping with The Lockdown? No problem for this freelancer who lives on her own. I’ve worked Chez Bibi for 25 years and am A-OK with it. No worries at all.

The weirdest I ever got living alone was watching myself smoke. So I’m good. All good. Lockdown? A piece of stockpiled cake.

Except.

I can’t stop eating or I can’t eat. I can’t stop sleeping or I can’t sleep. I can’t stop crying or I can’t cry. The Lockdown has freaked me right out. And I am as tenacious and resilient as the best of us. But this? This has messed with my mind.

I’m dreaming I’ve infected Paula Abdul with Covid-19 – straight up – or my thoughts are so tortured I’m wishing the virus would just take me.

Such melodramatic internal cries for help were cut short this morning with ‘F*ck! If the virus kills me and my family have to go through deceased me’s stuff, which sibling will find my sex toys?!’ (my friend A is to blame here – this is her fear too, though I think she’s worried about her family finding hers, not mine…)

Depressed me suddenly found the energy to roll out from under the duvet into the kitchen where I searched for hiding places to stash them.

The beach where Bibi finds (some) solace every day (Picture: Bibi Lynch)

People on Twitter and Insta are creating art, singing parodies, baking bread and having all the Houseparty fun. But not me. I’m on my own and feeling it. I’m so blue I’d self-medicate and up my Sertraline — if only I knew for sure I could get more.

Why has The Lockdown hit me – and surely others – in such a fierce way? Because, in my case, it’s the scariest déjà vu. I’ve been here before. Not the horrifying pandemic, not that, thank God (doesn’t exist), but the forced isolation and loss of everything.

The Recession destroyed many of us and – psychologically and economically – it was (is) incredibly hard to recover from.

The decimation of your self-worth – when you go from owning your flat to outstaying your welcome at a new friend’s to begging a stranger to let you stay in his spare room to looking at hostels – is extraordinarily painful. (Let’s ignore for now that I was also grieving Dad – who died as The Recession hit – and my childlessness. See? Resilient.)

The Recession ruined my life. It took my career and financial security. Freelance journalists were no longer used — or if they were, they were now paid £1 a month. I almost joke: rates for a 1,000-word piece went from £1k – £500 to £120 or nothing at all. Work for the ‘exposure’, they said (to me, not to my bank manager).

It took my home. A psycho neighbour and Dad’s terminal cancer diagnosis were too much for my brain to deal with — so I sold my flat, put the profit into an account for my next deposit, but then had to live on that money because £1 a month wasn’t enough to survive on.

It also took my chance of having babies – I was single, too old for NHS IVF help, and my £1 a month wouldn’t have been enough to pay for a private clinic swab, let alone IVF treatment – and it took my mental health, which was resilient but not indestructible.

So, hello antidepressants but goodbye much-needed – expensive – therapy and my trust in people. Because people can be cruel when you’re in need.

Many people were beautiful and kind to me — but some were kind and then ugly. During this time I saw a man on TV — saying what hurt him most about being homeless. He said it was people resenting helping him. They’d help and then make him feel guilty. That really resonated.

So this awful, terrifying, unbelievable, crisis has brought this all back. Feels like PTSD. It took me 10 years to build a life again. And now this? Hard to not take it personally.

Yes, help is being offered and reassurances are being made. The Chancellor Rishi Sunak – a week after announcing help for salaried employees – declared (some*) self-employed can apply for a (taxable) grant worth 80% of their average monthly profits over the past three years (capped at £2,500 a month).

Universal Credit (UC) and Employment Support Allowance (ESA) benefits are also available.

Yay!

But the Government has already been swamped with over 1,500,000 new claims for UC since early March and the maximum ESA payout is £111.65 a week. And the grant? The grant won’t start to hit people’s accounts until June at the earliest.

I’ll be eating Brillo Pads by June. (And, boy, the self-employed will pay for any help we’re getting. The Chancellor stated ‘If we all want to benefit equally from state support, we must all pay in equally in future.’ So freelancers will be taxed to hell. Fine. As long as we get sickness/holiday/maternity pay, right?)

But at least my rented home is safe, yeah? Well, landlords can take a ‘mortgage holiday’ if their tenants can’t pay their rent — but there is no legislation compelling landlords to give tenants a ‘rent holiday’.

Following lobbying from housing and homelessness charity Shelter, the Government has introduced a full ban on evictions during the crisis.

This is great. But hardly the basis for a strong tenant/landlord relationship. ‘I’m not paying you and you can’t evict me. Now, that dripping tap…’

I honestly don’t know how I’ll survive until June. And then how I’ll survive after June. The money won’t be enough. And then what? Finding a few months’ rent arrears? I’ll be running out of organs to sell.

But, yes, I know I’m not dying. And no one I love is dying. And, oh, that dying. My friend who works in the NHS has described the death to me. And I can’t even repeat it. There’s no reason why you should have drowning nightmares too.

I’m here – we’re here – and I guess it’s chins up (the Lockdown has already ruined my looks; the comfort-eating has porked me right up) and let’s pray for many miracles: for vaccine researchers, for NHS gods, for victims, for you, for me…

I hate to be that person but there is great Working From Home advice out there and, I have to say, my daily walk by the sea is a life-saver.

FaceTime moments with friends and family are of course a joy (once I’ve found the perfect light) and exercise (once I do it) lifts me. Except for NHS YouTube aerobics lessons. I did one – designed as a warm-up for 95-year-old women who live in chairs in care homes – and it nearly killed me.

And even though social media is a mixed blessing right now – even seeing people’s lovely homes is upsetting me – I read a tweet from @katgordon that really struck me. Sharing her friend @parkhere’s sage words, she wrote: ‘You’re not stuck at home. You are safe at home. Change your mindset.’

I’m going to try.

*Those who make trading profits of over £50k a year, company owners who pay themselves a dividend and the recently self-employed (having set up since April 2019 and haven’t filed a tax return) are not covered — so up to 1.2 million of the 5 million self-employed will not get help

How to claim the grant, advice re: benefits, and Shelter’s Coronavirus support page for renters.

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