I’m not even sure where to start. I am currently in my kitchen with my foot propped up on a cushion because I may have sprained my ankle. My good ankle and I am getting ready to move to a new house so this is going to be interesting…

I moved into this house for 12 months. I knew this from the beginning but the room and location are both great and the price was right but since lockdown began one of the guys in the house has been texting me on the regular reminding me that I have to move. This guy isn’t here but his presence has been very much felt. He is acting like the landlord when he isn’t the landlord. Long story short his attitude of my way or the highway while he’s not even here caused by housemate Kevin to find somewhere new to live.

Kevin moved out just over a week ago and I feel like I have lost my life raft. Kevin made lockdown bearable and fun and it wouldn’t have been the same without him. Although I am moving now at the end of this week, I’m still sad; sad that Kevin won’t be in my new house and sad that I’m leaving a house that was really great for so long. I feel like I’ve been through something here and now it’s just different. Different because someone was here and took down my ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘You are important’ notices in the window. Different because there is the constant threat that the guy who has caused the situation to become toxic might come home at any minute but mostly different because Kevin is gone.

Lockdown has been so many things and now that the country is coming out of it feels like so many other things. The country may be coming out of lockdown but I’m not. Nothing really changes for me, bhuel except that I’m moving house but workwise, meeting people-wise, having things to do-wise nothing really changes. I visited my best friend and her year-old twins last week and I couldn’t pick them up. It took everything out of me to not pick them up but I didn’t. It felt unnatural and unkind but strangely enough it was the kinder thing to do.

I think this whole experience is shining a light on how we used to live our lives, how we spent our time and what didn’t and wasn’t working. I don’t believe humans were built to work the 30, 40, 50+ hours a week that we’re being told to work and I am hoping that this whole situation will help people to realise what is really important in their lives.

For me, it has helped me realise how important your home is. How important it is to have people around you that support you and how much we really rely on the internet these days!

Within the first two weeks of lockdown here, so sometime in March maybe…possibly, I don’t know. What year is it… but anyway at some point this year I did an at home retreat with Miranda MacPherson and soon after that I got sick. I was sick with suspected COVID but not officially COVID for about 4 weeks in total, during which time I was also continuing with my Holistic Psychotherapy and Counselling degree and my own therapy. Right now I am avoiding one 1500 work essay for college, I am preparing mentally for another 1500 word essay that will be due at some point and I’m also getting ready for ‘group process’ or what feels like group therapy online and I have been making videos for a Tuismitheoirí na Gaeltachta whatsapp group and for my own Facebook page (The videos can be viewed here) and I’m building up an online business of sorts. I’ll be doing a full moon ceremony on Facebook live on Sunday, 5^th July for anyone who’s interested and I have also been doing a lot of Facebook live meditations at 8.30 in the evenings. So despite the fact that I have been saying and thinking that ‘I’m on the dole and not doing anything’ I have actually been doing a lot and I haven’t even mentioned my zoom job interview and my transcription work…

And after reviewing all that has happened for me over the past 100+ days since the government told us to go inside and not come out I have decided that I need to get my head straight, I need to process, I need to take time out and these three days will be just that. So when I have moved and when I am able to I am going to take 3 days off. I am going to have my phone on airplane mode, I’m going to have enough good, nourishing food in the house for the three days and I’m going to write out some sort of a schedule whereby I will be doing a lot of meditating but I will also be journaling. I’ve never done something like this on my own but I’m looking forward to it, I’m looking forward to the quiet and to being in my new home and to maybe figuring out what ‘coming out of lockdown’ means for me.