When The World Stood Still





Melissa Wade

 
© Copyright 2024 by Melissa Wade



 Photo by Alexas_Fotos on Unsplash
Photo by Alexas_Fotos on Unsplash
 
The millennium was still defined as new when I started my first job as an admin assistant in a government department. Though I was happy enough, a little bee buzzed in my mind, restless, constantly annoying me. That nagging feeling something wasn’t quite right, or missing. This wasn’t the plan. Before I got ill and spent a year signed off sick (a doctor’s decision rather than mine), I was going to travel, be a nomad seeking a place in the world and explore life. Not scared, tired, restless and exhausted every evening. On a dark London winter’s evening I found what was missing: bliss. I too, like Isabel Losada in her book The Battersea Park Road to Enlightenment, was going to find it. From that day the search began for: Then it became simply “being me”, a sense of self.

Sometimes I find that sense of self.

When that happens, I stop for a while. I look out onto a calm sea. One day the sea will crash against the cliffs, the pounding sound of waves and howling wind whipping up water. For now, waves ripple gently onto soft golden sand, the air still with the sun beaming down in every corner, warm on bare limbs. The sea mirrors my inner world, calm and harmonious. As writer self sits leaning against a rock, she draws a mandala in the sand. To be washed away. Secure enough that she’s not dependent on its permanence. Alive, she’ll walk along the cliffs, sit writing in beachside cafés. She’s escaped her broken self. Liberated, free. One day the search continues again, trying to escape that stormy sea. Cycles in life.

*****

March 2020 plunged the world into a bleak landscape with a new vocabulary to describe it. Moonlight and stars disappeared from the sky bringing endless darkness. Except for a tiny corner in the world where they still existed. And I found it.

The Week Before Lockdown
Even before the world shuts down there is an eeriness like the silence of early Christmas morning when nobody is out and about. I meet a friend in a café for lunch and to write. There are flowers on the table and a warm welcome from the staff, I can pretend this isn’t happening, some miracle will occur and it will all go away. Maybe it should, but it is not getting covid I’m scared about. It’s all the other immediate things. Sometimes I worry what if I get ill, what if someone I love gets ill. To combat these fears I tell myself, this is you. You are the person who will die in a pandemic not because you catch covid but because some other disaster befalls you out of your sheer clumsiness. And though I will never say this to anyone there is some relief in knowing my life could end. Over the last couple of years there have been the times I want to go to bed and not wake up.

As the UK panic buys, I’m trying to replace what I don’t even have. I don’t want to stock up on rice, pasta, paracetamol, baked beans, oil or toilet paper I just want a packet because I’m running out. But there are none of those things on the shelves. It’s all too much and I leave the supermarket.

It’s Friday, lockdown is inevitable. I must buy some groceries if I want tea. In Morrisons I talk to the little child in me. We’ll use pearl barley, and look Melissa no one wants lentils. You love lentils. There are lots of lovely lentil dishes we can make. God knows what this oil is but we’ll give it a go. Until I find a packet of toilet paper, I didn’t know I could be so excited buying toilet paper. The lesson learnt: that when I don’t feel like grocery shopping, pick myself off the floor and go. The sun is shining as I carry my shopping home. Husband is coming over. The day is looking up. I lie on bed with him, his arm around me. His tone soothing,

I know you don’t do well with not going out. I was thinking about you staying with me. I’ve enough provisions and you’d have wi-fi. He pauses. Except maybe it wouldn’t be such a good idea because I’m not near a supermarket and you’d have to get a train to work.

I bury my head in his chest, so should they escape he doesn’t see the tears and ask what’s wrong, see the image I’ve painted of us companionably doing our different hobbies in his house. It’s tempting. He is easy to be with but I can’t.
 
Yeah, probably best I stay here. It’ll be fine.

Not for the reason he mentions but because I can’t cope with the disappointment after believing in the magic of us being okay, together, and then it ends. We end. When he goes home that evening, I am lost, sad.

I like projects and create one for the weekend. It is to prepare for lockdown. Not even I can convince myself this is going away. I get craft supplies so I can knit and make things, lots of books from the library. The librarian tells me that as it’s closing today, I can have 30 books. Good thing I live just round the corner from the library and so can easily make the required number of trips to carry back words that will remind me of a pre covid world and allow me to escape. Back home, I make myself a cosy bubble to study in and place all my goodies in there.

Lockdown
Now that there is lockdown I’m not scared and the stresses dissipate. It is not a problem for me to work from the office as I can’t do so from home. I have a piece of paper confirming this (I’m a key worker, apparently). It doesn’t mean I do valuable work like volunteers, community groups or provide care. It means I’m part of the infrastructure to allow the essential services to run smoothly in lockdown. My lovely tutor organises it so I can do the course on my own, no need to interact with the group on Teams, and she’ll keep in touch by phone. There is nothing to spend money on now I can’t go shopping (I don’t internet shop). Social distancing, no hugging, no meeting friends. This doesn’t sound so bad. Without commitments there will be more time for study and I’m looking forward to creating a presentation on journalling that I’ve been excited about since the counselling course began. I’ve calmed down and instead of panicking every time I get one of those covid emails, I simply add them to the archive that will one day become history.

The world is shut down, hurting, scared afraid, but nature keeps going. I’m conscious that we are largely insignificant, despite our pain the world will keep turning. There is something reassuring about this and that the natural world gives us something back: a comforting sheet of warm air and sunshine floating above the planet to lift our mood. Flowers sway in the gentle breeze and birds still sing.

And now I’m in that tiny corner of the world where moonlight and stars still shine. For the first few days of lockdown, I’m on leave. I get up early to go for a run, excited that on this attempt I will stick with running as I enjoy it. Halos of sunshine across the sky, breathing in air that smells of the mountains in Switzerland confirms I am alive. And then I feel guilty because I am. Why do I get to live, be safe when thousands of others don’t?

I watch writer self, serene on Saturday mornings, at her desk reading about journalling and with her happy face. She builds up a folder of journal entries on a variety of topics and in the afternoon weighted down by wool, knits and purls her way through heather coloured balls to create a blanket. She is not yet editing her novel, but I know this will come because the thing that writer self discovers on the counselling course is how much she wants to write and as much as she would love to be a counsellor, now is not the time. This was her dream with Husband. A fellow student had once told her it would hurt less if she stopped thinking of him as her husband. She won’t though. He will always be Husband.

One of the things that scared me about lockdown was broken self losing her coping mechanisms: retreating to a café for a morning coffee fix so she’d feel able to cope with life. If she couldn’t do that, how would she cope and function? It turns out she is more resilient than I gave her credit for. She can’t get coffee but has bought herself some to have at home as she works on new projects such as an Open University’s open learn course Art and Life in Ancient Egypt. She learns about tomb and chapel art; the importance of its art in the afterlife; how it is akin to our medieval art – long friezes rather than individual compositions; and the colours used. She finds ways to soothe herself like buying treats from the supermarket and treasures the time she spends socially distanced from her colleague and friend in the office. She learns to stop reading the news, the statistics. Those she knows are okay and that is enough. The news might be scary but her house isn’t.

And I have a support bubble with Husband.

One evening, I’m drinking tea at my desk and Husband is sat on the bed.

Do you mind going into the office?

He is thoughtful, will do a lot to make sure I’m okay. And I am. I explain working at the office is better for my well-being.

It’s just if you did, they can sort you out with their internet. Lots of companies are doing that, he says. You can move in with me. I have wi-fi and plenty of food for us. Though maybe not all vegetarian.

His humour and thoughtfulness makes me tearful. I notice how carefree I am. And for a little while yet he’s still Husband. Years on I still wipe my desk in the office every morning and I if I leave it during the day, use hand sanitiser when I’m back. Yet at the height of the pandemic the thing that makes me feel safest are his hugs.

Post First Lockdown and Tier Systems
As the restrictions ease and the world opens up, when Husband and I go out for ice-cream or cake and coffee, sat by the canal soaking up the sunshine and chatting, everything feels okay. Out by myself, less so, except the couple of places I’ve given a stamp of safety for writer self to drink coffee and write. It’s calmer there than on the streets of the market town.

I don’t break down. I can’t. I’m in the office when Husband tells me the paper has been stamped. I escape to make tea. I wait for the kettle to boil, looking out onto the main road where the rest of the world is carrying on with a mundane day. There is a tiny fragment of relief. The words, young, free and single come to mind. I’m none of those though, still deeply in love with Husband and thus he has the power to hurt me, covid has taken away my freedom and I nearly forty. I also feel empty.

Husband has left me because he can’t deal with our fragmented relationship. To ease the pain, I phone a friend from the park where I’m sat under the trees. He tells it like it is, no softening the blow: You need to walk away. Stay with family, start again, move when all this is over. He’s being supportive but broken self had hoped for something more comforting. The irony, of why I’m here stems from craving comfort but for some reason I can’t allow myself it when Husband, who isn’t anymore, said pack a bag and come to stay with me. How can it be harder to say yes to what you want than no?

Being apart was short lived. We wrap up in jackets, sit outside where a robin hops around looking for worms and we eat something nicer - vanilla ice cream and talk about my counselling course, randomness.

We’re going to have more ice-creams he tells me.

Holding hands, the next morning, with the promise, that yes, one day we’ll go to Nottingham we walk around the town drinking coffee to keep warm. He lifts me up so I can see over the wall at the new-builds he’s talking about. What makes lockdown so nice, is these little moments, all the simple things I prefer over the supposedly bigger more exciting, and that I’m writer self. Like a day in June, seated by the canal, having chocolate cake and coffee. I ask Husband a question. Stemming from his reply I animatedly respond with how I’ll move my novella forward. Later, at my desk I put notes together and wonder if the secondary plot isn’t in fact going to take over the whole novella since I’m more enthusiastic about this than the original concept. But it will be months before that January day, with glorious sunshine and a dusty sprinkling of snow on the hills that I do any work on the novella because some days writer self is broken. I cry, am sad, restless. I colour in books with flowery patterns. When I do, I get lost, when lost I forget. And things are that little bit more okay.

It’s been a year since I moved from rural village to rural town. That day I promised myself that come 28 June 2020 I would be okay. One year on I am not okay. But I have the next best thing: some time off and so, as writer self, filled with a sense of excitement and happiness I’m at my desk wrapped in a cardigan with a takeaway cup of coffee, and a candle lit. It’s more akin to a dark winter afternoon than summer morning. Writer self decides that when this lockdown ends things are going to be different: Writer self had a very good journalling session but come the weekend it’s still not one for a run. I skip it, go straight out for a coffee, come home and read Julia Cameron’s The Sound of Paper, slowly coming round from the injection of caffeine so I can clean, journal and knit before popping out into the sunshine where the world too is coming around after being asleep. The town is busy, bathed in sunshine, with people sipping coffee, licking ice-cream and buying souvenirs in the shops.

A few days later Husband and I have a meal in a Turkish restaurant and celebrate his birthday. Being out with him is more manageable than my own but I’m still on edge so glance at him to remind myself I’m with him and nothing bad is going to happen.

My birthday is warm and sunny and I brave a café by myself to drink coffee and write, see friends for tea and eat veggie sausages and mash with Husband in the pub. He’s tired. I’m not, I’d like to sit here drinking more gin and tonic chatting and laughing together. But he’d like me next to him and that too is nice. Whenever, I have leave, I have spent some of it away but not this time. This time I am at home. I wake rested, calm, happy knitting a blanket, colouring and pottering. It teaches me something valuable: the importance of time to stop rather than do.

I could get used to this I think, spending Christmas on my own, following Borris’ ruling. Bliss. No stressful pre-Christmas journey down to London. Nobody that I’m going to let down. And though people have said it doesn’t feel like Christmas, for the first time it does. A burning candle smells of cinnamon, the bedroom snug, I write in the morning, unwrap gifts that remind me how loved I am, read a Christmas book and watch Paddington.

We move in and out of lockdowns, as I move between writer self and broken self. There were moments when I am scared, when I hurt and when I am fed up. But in that first lockdown I wasn’t stressed. I had time. Everything slowed down, was calmer and I could do the things I enjoy. On a writing workshop in 2022, Jan asks us to write about the time we were most in the flow of writing. Describe it in great detail, she said. Think of a moment, when you’re in a café, happy working and inspired by your novella I say to myself. Minutes tick by and nothing comes to mind.
It’s January 2021. Lockdown. The first day for a year, damp on your nose, white flecks of show on the hills, cold, but you’re alive, you’re happy. You walk a loop through the park, along the canal, pop into a café that’s open for takeaway only. You buy an americano. You unlock the door, whack the heating on and sit by the window, sipping your coffee and most importantly writing, papers propped up on the window sill, your second desk. I snap a photo. You are smiling and everything is okay.

***

Whenever someone mentions lockdown, you never remember the horrors, the not being okay. You remember writing, journalling, creating, love, being okay, essentially writer self. Many a day I catch you day dreaming you were back there. Simplicity. Content. You were lucky and that made all the difference. If they write the history books yours will probably be the most unique, you not scarred by the experience, and for that, gratefulness does not come close to expressing how you feel.

Born in London, I now live in a market town in North Yorkshire. The day job is Business Support Admin so I love spending my free time doing something creative: writing, knitting or colouring. I also love yoga and never go anywhere without a book to read – preferably by the canal in my home town.



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