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Lockdown Lessons: Part Two (of 4)

PART TWO: My Takeaway For This Week (12th May 2020)

I've given up. Using gloves disposable gloves to cook and make brews with, that is. Every time I want to complain about
the talcum powder going everywhere making it look like I just stepped into a bowl of flour I wonder how do all those carers 
and cooks who are preparing meals for the vulnerable do it? My heart always goes out to them. Cooking takes care and
love and part of that love involves the sense of touch. I guess with some practice I could do it but instead I disinfect then
wash my hands about 25 times. Dry hands seem like a little thing to worry about when you're trying to keep the positivity 
going in a shared house.The mental gymnastics we all do have been on full display to me over the past week and to be honest it's bumped me 
along a bit but the strange randomness of life has always pulled me back up. That randomness being that this week I helped
a housemate find something they'd lost and helped them clean out their room (who says cleaning isn't a great form of exercise?) 
and as per usual we ended up spending more time looking at it and talking about the stuff we found and binned that before we knew 
it four hours had passed (and it was time well spent in my opinion).

A different housemate and I had gone grocery shopping and weigh-laid with all of our groceries on the way back home we 
discovered a Tesco trolley, so I suggested we "borrow it" to help us get our things back home. I later returned it to where we found it 
that was a workout in itself because it was constantly veering to the left and since I wear glasses I'm pushing the trolley and my 
glasses are fogging up so badly that I start laughing and even behind my face mask I'm grinning because, yet again, I found myself 
doing something I'd never thought I'd be doing. A kitchen plug is the item of the week that's gone missing, along with two housemates 
and hopefully by next week we'll have those mysteries solved as to where they've disappeared to.
Earlier in the week we'd gone to the park and discovered some memorials and I found a sculpture I'd been wanting to see for a while. 
And even though parts of the park were closed it was lovely to see people out walking or dogs walking their owners. We found that 
someone had set fire to a tree trunk in the park, and graffitied another one and I realised that there are a lot of bored people around
 at the moment and that boredom can lead to destruction of both the physical kind and the mental kind.
Social media adds fuel to that fire as people post pictures of their loved ones they seem unaware of the effect it can have on those 
who aren't in touch with their own loved ones especially if the people they've relied on in the past are letting them down at the moment,
or maybe they post in an effort to keep themselves hopeful. My takeaway is that social media is not helping those with mental health 
issues at all right now. Fear of missing out has now turned to fear of being out and about or being locked in and alone. Isolation can 
cause a lot of tension and it's making everyone feel alone and hopeless, even those who are living with others.
I'm fortunate in the fact that I have people in my life who love and understand me and my sarcastic nature and when my housemates 
feel low I pull on that knowledge, knowing that there are days when I hide away and I'm not my smiley cheery self, but when I do emerge 
I'm better than ever and I can keep going. I don't know when it'll end but I just keep plodding on, usually to the beat of some song that's 
randomly playing in my head because I know that this time isn't going to last forever. Am I scared? No, because last time I checked the 
world was still spinning, neighbours still have fights on the street, people are still speeding and blasting music out of their cars at 3am 
and we're still surrounded by a lot of morons and we'll still have them around when all this is over. I'm still optimistic, I'm just slightly 
more sarcastic than I usually am.


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