The quarantine period we are now experiencing was clearly to be expected. We saw it coming. But other than panic-buying certain essentials I was still largely unprepared for it. I read of a young widow, up in arms because analysts had compared lockdown to bereavement. I think when you’ve lost your life partner at a young age it is easy to become so absorbed by the enormity of your bereavement that you perhaps fail to remember that other kinds of loss, from very trivial to totally life changing, exist on a spectrum. And certainly, for me, lockdown has come as a series of losses.

Who anticipated such a loss of freedom? Suddenly I can’t just go where I want. I can’t see who I want. For someone like myself with restricted mobility, walking, running or cycling for an hour was inconceivable. I can just about get my fat little body to the nearest post box. Provided I don’t mind agonising back pain for the rest of the day. So I just spend hours indoors. My favourite bolt hole, Costa, is closed, depriving me of my safe place when the four walls threaten to smother me. Unlike many I don’t have a day structured around work or studies, but neither did my time consist of staying in all day everyday.

As a person living with serious mental illness, I have been taught to self-care to help manage my condition. I have a number of things that are positive and help improve my mood. Firstly I see a counsellor each week, to offload whatever is troubling me. Thankfully I have been able to continue my sessions by telephone. The other things I do, getting my nails done, having a massage, getting my hair cut and coloured, meeting up with friends and going to choir are all on hold for the moment. I’ve had to be really creative to keep up some self-care activities. And I’m really grateful for the friends who’ve realised this would be a particularly challenging time for me and have made a point of checking in with me. I appreciate it more than I can express and I wish I could hug every single one.

Now at the beginning of lockdown I was still seeing my Very Special Friend With Benefits, the man named Dave. After a very brief period apart last Autumn we had reconciled and I thought things were ticking over reasonably ok, despite him having moved permanently to Sheffield and me still being in Hampshire. He still owns a house here and we had met a couple of times when he was local and given the distance between us I was kind of confident we were pretty sound. Until lockdown. His behaviour obviously changed and there were discrepancies in things he was telling me. I had serious doubts that he was quarantined alone as he’d said. Because of my supreme ability to overthink, I needed more in the way of reassurances that he still wanted to be with me, and that we’d survive these unusual and unprecedented times. Sadly he could offer me none. He hunkered down, did what guys do, and went quiet on me. In a ditch attempt to encourage him to interact with me I asked if we could occasionally video call. After a day and a half he finally replied that it would be too difficult for him. The following day I was on Facebook and an advert came up for ‘a hug in a box’ and similar. I didn’t have his Sheffield address so I asked could I post him something? Again he declined. I felt him slipping away, unable to maintain the robust communication I really needed. In desperation I put to him the suggestion that he was with someone else. He completely ignored it, continuing to send funny memes and videos about lockdown. At this point I failed to see the funny side and I dumped him.

To say I was in bits was an understatement. Our only existing mutual friend was confident he’d be in contact to talk things though. He hasn’t. In fact he appears to have blocked me on every conceivable media. I’m so thankful to the friends who let me talk on the phone and cry late into the night as I’ve struggled with the unanswered questions. Although I knew he never loved me the same as I loved him, I did believe he was fond of me and respected me. Now I’m beginning to think that I was only ever his sexual plaything, as in fact, many friends had suggested. He had told me previously I would never leave him because the sex was too good. Shows what he knew.

I know for a fact we’re not the only couple who won’t have survived the lockdown period. But the end of our relationship, at this moment in time, for me, feels massive. We had been a part of each other’s lives for a year and a half and I actually had begun to believe we were for keeps, even if we never progressed beyond Very Special Friends With Benefits. I guess not. I still miss the messages. The in jokes. I miss having that one person that I tell things to. The important things and the important to me things. There is no doubt whatsoever that this is a significant loss. However alongside loss of routine, loss of self-care activities, loss of freedom and loss of physical contact with friends, it feels greater than ever.

I continue to have been preparing my father’s bungalow for sale. It has been a long process hampered in no small way by my mental health and my brother’s unwillingness to sell and therefore cooperate. I have been faced with so many memories, in the various belongings and in the home itself, where I grew up and my parents lived all my life until their deaths. I found myself one day last week, curled up in my dad’s armchair, chatting randomly to him, sobbing my heart out as I did. That in itself doesn’t particularly concern me. But spending time with one of my close friends after would have been the pre quarantine norm. A cup of tea, a cuddle and the chance to talk and process was sorely missed. I think continuing to grieve for my father at this time has been challenging, not least on his birthday when all I really wanted to do was book a table for me and the boy at dad’s favourite Harvester. Unable to do that I pushed myself to create a delicious lunch for us. And completely burned myself out in the process. I didn’t achieve much the following day. One day I will learn the constraints of the chronic illness I live with. But clearly not yet!

Being unable to do the things I usually do and spend time with my friends hasn’t been easy. It’s not a life changing bereavement (at least for me personally) but neither is it without consequence. My mental health has been decidedly ropey at times. I don’t exaggerate to say there have been days when depression has pinned me to my bed. It has stolen my appetite. I make myself eat by routine, not because I am hungry. Many days I wonder why I have a headache, only to realise I haven’t had a drink all day.

But in the midst of this I have found the ability to be creative when it comes to self care. I have been writing more. I just about managed to paint my own nails. Despite the lithium tremor. I’ve had some cooking sessions where I’ve topped the freezer with nutritious meals. And I’ve communicated in new ways with friends online. Spent quality time with the boy. Even when things have been hardest I’ve managed to avoid having to call in additional mental health support, and I’m proud of that. Life isn’t at all easy right now. But equally it isn’t all bad.

*since starting writing, some restrictions have been eased, some freedoms have been increased and some outlets have reopened. Hence I may have enjoyed a takeaway Costa earlier today!