I also realised that I would probably never again have untold months stuck at home with my wife and our children, the three people I adore the most in the world. I knew that, while much of my work had been stunted, many others were in the same position by extension, I finally had permission to slow down. For the first time in my professional life, I was almost completely divorced from the race to success. But when I look back to the anxiety and grief of the pandemic’s darkest days, my lockdown was, in some ways, a period of reprieve. In late spring this year, my lockdown Stockholm syndrome was difficult to reconcile with the atmosphere of excitement all around me. “Oftentimes, there is no word to express how we’re feeling, and I think that’s one of the ways that novel situations – like being vaccinated against a pandemic virus that none of us has had before – leaves us sometimes confused about what we’re feeling,” says Dr Zachary Goodell, a social psychologist at Virginia Commonwealth University. But language isn’t always up to the task of helping us understand how we’re feeling. These conflicting emotions are likely familiar to many, to greater or lesser extent, as we unsteadily make our way forward to a new phase of Covid-19 on unsteady footing. Yet I’m calmed by the idea of another potential lockdown, or at least growing restrictions. Now, with the Delta variant on the rise, I fear for the safety of my young son and newborn daughter, neither of whom can be vaccinated. On one hand, I was thrilled to have the safety net of vaccination, yet, on the other, I was overwhelmed at being thrust into another new reality, after spending the previous year learning how to exist within the bounds of a pandemic. I couldn’t make sense of my tangle of feelings. Had the lockdown rendered me ill-equipped to deal with the world at large? Or was I simply unable to process the emotional whiplash of a return to society? Yet it also seemed to signify the loss of something safe. I realise that not everyone has been as lucky as me. I recognise that my sadness came from a place of privilege I have my life, my health and my work, in addition to the ability to so easily get vaccinated against this virus.
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