Coming To Terms With What The Hell Is Going On

It’s fair to say that this time last year none of us had a clue that something so drastic could literally lift our normal, day-to-day lives up and shatter it into a million different pieces… we all know what I’m talking about so I won’t dwell too much on the subject, but yeah… what has been going on?

At the start of the year, I was so excited about what was to come. I had a trip planned with the husband (I’ll never ever get used to saying that) to Amsterdam and a girls holiday to Dubai booked in the calendar, both of which I was lucky enough to take, but it wasn’t until I came back from UAE that everything started to change a bit.

When we were out there, people were wearing face masks and going, what I thought was overboard, with the hand sanitiser, but having been to Dubai a couple of times before, it wasn’t anything new to me, so I assumed people were just being extra cautious. When we got to the airport for our flight home, they were checking the temperatures of people who had been in and out of China, but everything still seemed quite normal, and even so when we got back to the UK.

If you follow me on social media or know me personally, you’ll know I spend one or two days a week for work in London, and even that felt normal for the next few weeks, but then things started to change quite quickly and the status quo was filled with a massive tension in the air.

In the middle of March on one of my trips down south, I made my way to the office as usual, on the tube and walking the fresh(ish) streets of East London and everything felt fine. I had meetings, went for lunch with my friends and drinks after work for a leaving do, and still, everything felt normal. If you know London, you’ll know it’s a breeding ground for germs anyway, especially on public transport, so nothing felt out of the ordinary for me. I joked on Insta stories that people were too close and coughing on me on the Overground back to Euston, but by then I was a few beers down and wasn’t taking anything too seriously. On my train back to Manchester though, I started to feel a bit sleepy but put it down to a long day and alcohol.

The next day my office was closed and everyone was working from home, which again wasn’t out of the ordinary. We’re very lucky that we’re set up to be able to do this, so if the UK was to go into Lockdown, we would be able to function as normal. My husband also started working from home the next week, which was good timing as I was struck down with coronavirus. I shared my symptoms and what I was going through on my Instagram and had a few people message me to say was I sure I had it; and to be quite frank, no I’m not 100% but I can only go off what the NHS helpline and my GP told me, which was that it sounded like I had caught it.

I’m one of these people who is not good at being ill. I still tried to work as much as possible, but was struck down with extreme tiredness, as well as sweating to the point where I was sliding off my chair (what an image!) but also was shivering because I had such a high temperature. It took me a couple of days to actually believe that I had it and after speaking to my doctor, I took a very much needed rest.

Take it from me, if you think you have it, or are feeling under the weather, then you really need to take some time out. Suffering from something there is no cure for and no real study into is scary, but it’s important to listen to your body and try and come to terms with what the hell is going on.

It’s fair to say that I don’t think, even now, that I actually had come to terms with everything, not even just for me personally, but in general – it’s crazy to think that even 2 months ago, we never thought we would be in this situation and that something has affected the world in such a drastic way; but on the flip side, it really has brought the best out of people and in some weird way its comforting that everyone in the world has gone through this together.

I’m not sure how much longer that we’ll be in this situation, and I really do hope that we are heading in the right direction. But for now, stay safe and let’s be as kind as we can possibly can be!

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