The loneliness of the coronavirus lockdown is insidious. But there can be no denying – it takes its toll

There’s a lot of uncertainty right now. If, like me, you suffer from anxiety, you probably aren’t living your best life at all times right now

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Here we are staring down the barrel of our second week on lockdown. I don’t know about you but thus far, I’m nothing but a big old bag of emotions.

I only realised the emotional toll this new, weird, distanced way of life was having on me on Thursday night. Having lost track of the time, I stood in the living room very confused by the sound of cheering, clapping, whooping, hollering and the clang of wooden spoons on pots. The nation was clapping for our carers. As soon as I rushed outside and started making a noise myself, I promptly burst into tears.

All that noise, made all around the country (and throughout the Republic of Ireland for their health workers) was the first real, tangible sign of the fact that we really are all in this together, not just as individuals – crawling up the walls of our homes and our own minds.

This one simple collective action generated more community feeling than I have felt since that weird and wonderful Danny Boyle production that opened the 2012 Olympics in London – where the Queen parachuted into the stadium and a cast of dancers dressed as medical staff bounced on beds in celebration of the NHS.

The sudden onslaught of feeling was overwhelming – not just thanks to the long-lost sensation of community. It also made me realise how truly sad I’ve been feeling and that, in truth, I am in a sense grieving.

The loneliness that arises from living without the subtle, unspoken impact of time spent in the company of others is insidious and can go easily unnoticed. But there can be no denying – it takes its toll.

Of course many of us relish a bit of alone-time after a hectic week; others crave their own company and prefer solitude. But the removal of the choice to be alone and the fact that, currently, we cannot take the decision to go out and do things or see friends or family is what makes this experience so damned difficult.

There’s also the fact that we’re generally so bloody-minded; tell us we can’t do something and there’s nothing else in the world we want to do more. Right this second.

My pre-lockdown social life could probably be described as bordering on inert. Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing people, I could hardly be described as shy, but I spend large swathes of my life feeling absolutely exhausted from work and the daily exertion of a London commute, so therefore those swathes are generally spent at home, on the sofa before going to bed around 9pm. But I could go out – if I wanted to. I could go to the cinema or the theatre or for dinner with friends whenever I liked.

We have lost our usual way of life, our routines have had to go out the window. Human beings do not (as a rule) respond well to uncertainty. We don’t know how long this lockdown will go on for, we don’t know if we will get coronavirus, we don’t know how we’ll suffer (mildly or severely) if we get it and we don’t know how our family and friends will be affected. That’s a whole lot of uncertainty right there. If, like me, you suffer from anxiety, you probably aren’t living your best life at all times right now.

However, one considerable positive to this situation is that I’ve never seen such a rapid normalisation of discussing mental health. While in recent years there has been an enormous shift away from the old-fashioned stigmas around the topic, there still remains a lingering notion that one doesn’t need to consider one’s mental health unless diagnosed with some form of disorder.

Now, in the new world of social distancing and lockdowns, everyone is becoming keenly aware of the fact that mental health isn’t something that happens to someone else. Instead, we all need to manage it in different ways, be that through video calls, online workouts or meditation. And when we are released back into the wild, here’s hoping those changes take hold and we never let them go.