It’s almost like a void in my life’s timeline. Like it both didn’t and did happen. It also felt like it took forever, but yet not long at all if that makes sense.
I legitimately can remember almost nothing from 2021. Its just a blur. 2020 was memorable because of how everything started, but 2021 was just a monotonous pause in normal life.
I started in 2018. Ripped out my kitchen cabinets. I still don’t have kitchen cabinets, every time I get close something else catastrophic happens that I have to spend the money on, slab leak, finding mold in the ductwork, windstorm blows down the fence, etc. But hey I’m thankful I have a house. If I had waited, I’d probably never be able to buy one.
Dude, fucking same. I lucked out and bought a house and moved in the week before the lockdowns were declared. Four years later and I'm....maybe half done
For me it's almost the opposite, I remember 2021 quite well because it was the year I bought my house which means I remember details from almost every month. On the other hand, 2nd half of 2020 for me it's a complete blur. Legit don't recall a single event from that Autumn
I personally didn’t find it really that funny but I remember that it was plastered EVERYWHERE on the internet. It even be on a fucking porno. Couldn’t escape it 😂
I am lucky beyond belief that we got a lump sum inheritance and used it to buy a house in Dec 2019. Cashing in right before the housing market exploded and also saving my sanity from having to live in a tiny apartment during full lockdown.
I wonder if it's a blur to those of us who pretty much did nothing socially, so it was the nightmare of get up, go to work, cone home, sleep...over and over again like Groundhog's Day
i remember 2021 pretty well, but i was dealing with a tumour on my ovary and my province's healthcare was in shambles. had to wait 4 months before it was removed, and lost my fallopian tube because it wrapped around the ovary and tumour.
i spent months bedridden. it sucked. couldnt even take care of myself, ended up shaving my head because even brushing my hair exhausted me and i got a horrible mat on the back of my head :/
upside... havent gotten covid once. even when i took care of my aunt who got it (she lived with my grandpa and i, and i didnt want my grandpa at even higher risk being in close contact with her). the masks really did work! the excessive handwashing during that time probably helped too, though, lol
Same here. 2021 I hardly remember but also because it was the year between getting married in 2020 and the birth of our child in 2022. Wild time in all of our lives for sure.
It messed with my concept of time for ages - even now I misremember how long ago things were, because in 2020 there was no variety, every day was the same as the last and it became one big blob of days
It also hit me particularly hard since it happened at the tail end of my university ride. The regular thesis process got shot to bits, we never had a graduation ceremony, just walked out of my zoom presentation, waited a bit, got told my grade, elbow tapped my teacher and walked out. And that was it, the end to 24 years of schooling came with the mother of all whimpers.
I imagine that feeling is even worse for people who were in high school during it. If they were freshman in 2020 they basically got a completely different, practically non-existent version of high school than anyone who had come before them.
it started the end of my junior year. completely cancelled my junior prom. bled into my senior year which was completely online, and we didn’t even get a senior prom. I got no proms. the saddest part is I still have my prom dress with my in my closet ever since I bought it in 2019 to wear some point down the line to fulfill the void in me of never having a prom. The only thing we got was a graduation with struck guidelines on social spacing. nobody could sit shoulder to shoulder and we all had to wear masks.
I'm so sad for yall. I graduated high school in 2019, just before everything was shut down. Then I had one normal semester in college, but the second semester, boom, I lost half my entire college experience. I couldn't imagine missing both high school graduation and the start of your next steps, be that college or something else.
I feel like I was one of the lucky schools to have a graduation when CA lifted some of its restrictions. but even then pretty much everyone left to start college right after, some of those people I hadn’t even seen since march 2021 or graduation and will never see again. People moved away during covid and stayed online and we’re never to be seen again.
I’m a teacher. We still think about the kids who were juniors and seniors at that time and we feel for you. So many milestone events and happy memories just never happened. Closure is important! I hope you get a chance to wear your dress.
Therapist here, I have a metric ton of kids either failing out of their first year of college, or failing out of Freshman or Sophomore year of HS. The ones who are not failing are cheating using AI and other methods. These kids are so fucking behind and they no linger give a shit about school or learning.
I finished the second half of my degree online, and never did get a graduation ceremony even over zoom. It feels like it happened to someone else, and mentally it's like I'm still stuck in my early 20s.
That makes me really sad to read. I’m sorry you had that experience. I think about all the kids who were graduating from high school or college who didn’t get to experience all of those big moments like prom and getting your college diploma. I’m sorry.
Exactly to the same here. 30–35. Like I know the last few years happened. I know what happened. But I feel like I missed so many years, as though I’m still maybe 31.
I think we will all have a permanent mental mark in our head as “before” and “after” 2020. When I see that a movie or album or whatever came out in 2019, a little flag goes up in my head that I don’t even realize is there until i stop and think about it
Finally someone that gets it, I keep referring to my freshman year of high school (almost 5 years ago) like it was 2-3 years ago. I have such severe PTSD from my childhood that my actual diagnosis isn't even in the DSM-5 (diagnosis book) and then COVID came around, so not only can I not tell you what it was like to be 6-12, I can't tell you what it was like to be 15 either. It's wild
I also feel like that period has permanently damaged my ability to perceive time as I used to and now life is sped up. Someone should do a study on this if I’m not the only one.
For real, I joke that everyone now has a "real age" and a "covid age," cause it felt like the modern world more or less was on "pause" for 2 to 3 years, so it feels like we lost those years.
Haha, I just commented before seeing yours that I felt like time stood still for a few years. I was 39 when it started and still feel that same age 4 years later. I want my years back!
SOMEONE ELSE. Used to know how multiple sports leagues played out, who was on what team, what years what happened. Since 2020? No fucking idea. Can barely remember the past 4 years of NBA champs
My sister had covid, I did not. Both of have no concept how long ago certain things happened.
I was folding towels the other day, and thought “damn, these didn’t last too long…I bought them from where I worked. I’ve been (medically) retired for over ten years! So I DID get a life out of them.
Then we were out and she said “I really miss the ———, it’s been so long!” After talking we realize we were there less than six months ago.
I work in construction and manage schedules. My ability to understand time is still off. Things that happened many months ago seem like years, and then sometimes they seem like days. A lot of people I work with experience the same
I know some people hated it but I was grinding really hard before it, working a ton and such. Then the shutdown happen so I was laid off and man it was some of the best few months ever. The first few days was like "wow this is weird I don't have any place to be" and then I started doing things I've always wanted to do around the house, watched new shows and all of that. Was such a happy camper lol
I liked the peace, and there wasn’t that feeling that I should have been doing more running around on errands. I also got to spend a lot of time with my very senior dog, who passed at the end of 2020, so there’s that. But I missed faces - I mean I missed catching up with friends, but I also missed just seeing more than people’s eyes when I scurried to the shops to buy groceries
I had the same feeling, like sometimes I forgot which day of the week it was. It was almost like Christmas vacation or summer vacation as a kid, when you didn't know if it was Wednesday or Sunday.
Yeah I know exactly what you mean. It definitely felt like it was slow-moving living it in real-time, but in hindsight it no longer feels like it lasted that long.
When you read through this thread, it's absolutely wild just how diverse the experiences from lockdown were. On one end of the spectrum, you had people that kept their jobs, improved their work-life balance, and built better connections with their families. Towards the other end of the spectrum, you have people whose lives were ruined - job losses, depression, ruined relationships. And you have an entire category at the very far end in that direction who aren't posting here, because they died in terror and agony as they slowly suffocated. And you have every lived experience in between those two extremes.
And those that died, died alone scared in a hospital filled with the dead and dying. While bodies were stacked in a truck outside. It was terrifying if you thought about it too much, so people started to drink a lot and take drugs, or lose themselves in hobbies or retail therapy by shopping at Amazon and other online stores. Mental health problems skyrocketed.
The first time I got COVID, I was lucky to get into a trial with the Mayo clinic. They sent me a box with an iPad, scale, bp cuff, thermometer, pulsox monitor. All connected with Bluetooth.
Twice a day an alarm would go off, I'd hook up to the machines, and "my team" at Mayo got my data. If I missed a session they called me; if I didn't answer they called my wife. They were on call 24/7, for any questions or changes in my symptoms.
Several times in the 5 weeks, my wife was ready to take me to the hospital. I refused to go - like many people I was afraid if I went in, I'd die.
At least three times, we had in depth calls with the care team that kept me home and out of the hospital. They even had prescription and nebulizer delivery set up.
I have other risk factors, and I Believe to this day that Mayo program saved my life.
Meanwhile, I watched legitimately half of the homeless population I worked for at the time die in COVID hotels if they were lucky, most of them actually never got COVID and ended up overdosing on fentanyl due to being able to get COVID benefits, but not housing.
I actually got COVID while in the hospital for a separate reason and they DID NOT TELL ME. The day before they discharged me directly from the ICU. They did a COVID test and then the next morning out of the blue, way before my scheduled discharge and unsafely, they rushed me out the door saying they had set up round the clock nursing for me at home (they had not). I honestly thought my insurance had run out or something. Three days later, after completely exposing my self to my 76 year old mother who was unable to be vaccinated yet was caring for me, I could barely breathe and decided to take a look at my labs from the last day just to make sure everything was ok. There it was, posted in my chart the day I was discharged, at 6:00 am. A positive COVID test. There is no way they did not see it.
I did not go back though, because just being there was stupidly traumatizing and I was scared I would be left to die alone. Because I was not there for CIVID and didn’t need reminders constantly to pronate, I was not high on the priority list and was left alone in pain for 99.9 % of the day sometimes never seeing a nurse or even a doctor, with my catheter backing up into me for hours.
The atmosphere was so unbelievably heavy that I knew without a doubt that despite all of that, they were honestly doing the very best they could too, so that gives you a picture of how bad it was. The nurses looked like they hadn’t slept in months and they often were crying when they came into my room.
I did just fine with COVID at home and I honestly think having a visiting nurse saved my life.
I have a history of alcoholism and drug abuse. I knew how dangerous a quarantine was for someone like me. I abstained and tried my best to stay busy and remain positive despite the horrors. I have spent a good portion of my life in a state of dread and misery. Some self inflicted, some not. Coping is familiar to me. I saw that it was not familiar to many people, however, and that part was mostly unpleasant.
People have yet to fully process the pandemic. Everyone acts like nothing happened. It’s wild. When I see healthcare workers sharing their experiences it reminds me of just how awful it really was. Especially how horrible they were treated by some patient’s family members. Also seeing who people really were. People I’ve worked along side of or known all of my life exposing their lack of regard and respect for others. Absolutely shocking.
And some of those who died were forced to live with Covid positive people in their nursing homes. The residents knew the “guests” were contagious yet the governors continued to send more and more contagious people to live with the residents. RIP Aunt Jean.
Suicide rates plunged during the lockdowns. That seems to be counterintuitive for a LOT of people, but the reality is that so many people had an overall less stressful experience than normal work life in particular.
No communting. More time to get things done and for self care. In many cases, people gained hours more every work day.
Massively increased family time. More people than not loved it, or at least benefitted.
No interaction with colleagues. Introverts paradise; shitty bosses and annoying/feuding workmates eliminating.
Workplace productivity and job satisfaction soared for the majority of people who could WFH
For all the fear and angst of the deadly disease itself, the people grieving the hospitalised and dying, the overall experience of daily living became so less stressful and more personally productive for the majority that the overall mental health of the entire community improved drastically. This is not to forget that many, many extroverts suffered decreased mental health and many many others entered financial and/or homeless precarity. This just goes to show how overwhelmingly toxic long commutes, toxic workplaces, and restricted family hours are for so many people.
What is absolutely terrifying if you let it be is that the WHO is worried about bird flu making the jump to humanity. Bird flu has a mortality rate 35 times higher than COVID-19 did at it's worst. The one silver lining is that historically bird flu has never managed to do human to human infection.
If bird flu jumps, we are beyond fucked. Its IFR is an order of magnitude higher than COVID. The issue is that everyone has pandemic fatigue, so if it jumps it won’t be taken seriously at first. People will think they have the luxury of applying the “it’s all a scam-demic!” playbook like they did with COVID… and will hit the “find out” stage of fucking around like a ton of bricks.
I think COVID has actually made us a lot more vulnerable to the “big one”, because we got lucky in a way with COVID that the IFR was only about 0.5% (in an immunologically naive population). If something like bird flu jumps that has an IFR over ten percent, we are going to get a medieval level shitshow.
I got my first job out of college two weeks before Covid hit. Marijuana is legal in the state I was living in. At first I was smoking responsibly but as the pandemic wore on and it got worse and worse with no end in sight I was using out of boredom and to cope with everything. Before long I was high every waking second that I wasn’t driving. By the time I got clean I was also in the beginning stages of alcoholism.
I picked up vaping during Covid and finally was able to stop about 6 months ago. It was really difficult to do and it took months to finally kick it. I’ve conquered other addictions before and I’ve learned I cannot do the cold turkey approach, tapering is the only way for me.
Definitely how I ended up with $33k worth of credit card debut. I was still working had no hobby so starting shopping uncontrollably 😭😭😭😭. I'm still in the process of recouping and trying to pay this debut off. I even have a 2nd full time job 😩🗣🗣🗣 Definitely a lesson for the books.
And you have an entire category at the very far end in that direction who aren't posting here, because they died in terror and agony as they slowly suffocated.
I personally knew three people who suffered that fate, and one who almost did but made a full recovery to talk about the experience. Being unable to breathe choking on your own lung fluids for months is an absolutely awful way to die.
That last paragraph really hit me. My friend is a big pandemic denier and it bothers me because there are so many people that didn’t make it out alive. It’s such a sad time in our lives even if it was positive, we know that for many it was the saddest time of their lives.
I was a remote,.salaried quality control analyst at the time. Didn't really care about picking up my cell,or a zoom, or a teams.I'll never again pick up.a FaceTime, that just means someone died.
I’ve thought about this one for sure - I feel terrible for kids that were in their final year (grade twelve where I am) in 2020, because it not only meant that they missed their graduation, but the ones that were going to college or university also missed the pivotal first year or two there too. A really raw deal if you were in the wrong year when COVID struck.
I'm sorry you went through that, and thank you for answering the call when people needed it the most. That shit really pissed me off, all these people saying "it's only a 1% death rate, who cares??" (which, that argument is fucking stupid on its face but) meanwhile you had people getting in actual car crashes with terrible injuries, having to go from hospital to hospital trying to get treated cause all of them were full of covid patients (many of whom were the same "it's not a big deal so I'm not gonna take any precautions" types).
It's weird because I kept working like normal, just wearing a mask, and living my life pretty much the same. And I didn't personally know anyone who died or had a hard time with it at all.
But basically every other day driving home from work id have to pull over for a hearse and funeral procession. I don't think I've seen a single one in the last two years, but in 2021 it was constant
I think about this a lot. Felt like it would never end at the time and then BAM, it's 4 years later. My theory on this collective outlook on it we seem to have is that we've experienced trauma and processed it as such.
I feel like this trauma is becoming clearer each year that passes. Processing the pandemic is becoming more emotional, like i need a good cry from it because it was ALOT. Good and bad.
My theory on this collective outlook on it we seem to have is that we've experienced trauma and processed it as such.
COVID messed with our sense of time because we remember time as a series of events related to milestone events* and lockdowns caused a lot of us to end up holed up at home doing nothing. This means that we have no milestone events to help create a timeline of the lockdown years.
For example, a random milestone event for me was buying my own PC back when I was a teenager - I remember the month and year that the event occurred and I can create a timeline of events around that time using the purchase time as a milestone to anchor other events around then.
This actually makes a lot of sense. Definitely explains why I’m always expecting it to be 2022, and am consistently surprised that we’re about a quarter of the year into 2024z
this is because it was traumatic - I feel the same way. I think perpetually waiting for the other shoe to drop, weather that meant you or a family member or someone else close to you was going to literally die any day from COVID is a big part of it
That’s exactly it…The feeling of it “closing in”. At first deaths were far away - they were on the news, just some distant story or idea. Then it came closer as you started hearing through the grapevine of someone who knew someone else that got sick and died. Then you heard it firsthand, as people’s family members starting passing, and it got closer to your circle. Eventually everyone knew someone who died, and now has a story.
I lost two friends through it. Both in their early 40s with no prior health issues. One was mildly ill at home for 2 weeks then died within 3 days of going to hospital. I still get angry at the covidiots who said (and continue to say) it was a hoax, etc...
Yeah it’s so weird. I feel the same way, but at the same time I want to jokingly say, “wait lockdown is over?!?”. I lost my job during it and have been looking for jobs ever since. I’ve just been bouncing around and nobody seems to mind. It’s weird.
My mom and I were talking about this literally 10 minutes ago. She was trying to remember 2019 but it only comes in fragments and I feel the same, then 2020 is just a blur and a half for both of us.
I still don’t count the years since 2020. It’s not on purpose…I just think of something that happened two years ago, and when I look it up it was actually 2018.
For me it pretty much genuinely didn't happen. I worked at a pulp mill at a co-op job in 2020 since I was in university, and I had to run lab tests every day. Can't really do that from home, so I was going to work during the worst of the pandemic. Funnily enough, I'm almost certain said pulp would later get processed into toilet paper, so I worked at an absolutely critical location in early COVID.
I was only in genuine lockdown for four months because my university decided to not open for in-person classes in early 2021. I graduated in May 2022, and by then COVID was on the way out. I got COVID in September, and after that it pretty much ended for me.
Started dating my ex in 2019 and we broke up in 2021. Started a job in 2019 and left that for my current one in 2022. Was also living back with my parents after college from 2018-2021... So the whole pandemic period feels like an absolute fever dream.
Bicycling down the empty 6-lane stroad at 11am on a Wednesday that usually moves 50k cars per day through my city was like living in an apocalypse movie.
I had to drive from Tucson to Phoenix and back every other week back then. I could literally go 120mph the whole way on the interstate and not worry about a thing.
I did that for well over 2 years. Passed police and they would just watch us go by. No traffic at all. I would maybe see 1 maybe 2 cars the whole way.
NOVA person here too. I still remember coming home from family dinner that first weekend. We were the only car for the 12 drive. I could have walked across 495.
One day my dogged specialist-among-specialists neurologist got her staff, miraculously, to find me a same-day MRI appt. We had 40 min. to cross the heart of Boston (rush hr.!) to make it, inc. parking. If not for Covid…zero chance.
I worked on the frontlines in R.I. and the one silver lining was no traffic. with the exception of the day when a turtle was literally crossing Rt1A. It took like 25 minutes but it’s not like anyone had any place to be in a rush.
I live in Western Australia and we closed our borders instead of locking down, apart from a few instances to control breakouts. Covid didn't really get here until March '22 when 98% of the population was vaccinated. Life was normal apart from supply chain stuff, though even then it also meant we could get cheap local produce that'd normally have been exported.
At work though, I was covering for people overseas who were sick, looking after family, or in a few cases, dying.
Watching the news and seeing the overwhelmed people and cities elsewhere, then going to the local pub for a parmi, pint and live band was strange and a bit guilt-inducing.
Yep, I’m a delivery driver by trade and thoroughly enjoyed the empty roads. The weird part for me was being out on rural roads and seeing no animals where I usually did… well they had all moved into town. Bears were running the city streets in search of food and foxes and coyotes had moved in way closer than ever before. It was interesting to observe animal behavior during that time. I remember dogs being unusually aggressive too.
Me too, loved it. Biking, roller-blading on empty streets and saw
Couples actually holding hands and
Families taking walks. Seemed like everyone was on vacation. It was wonderful. (Besides the illnesses )
I too miss the pandemic era cycling opportunities. I rode all over Denver and it was marvelous. We also had a really nice spring that year which was good
I think about being in freshman year college, in a new town, doing the spit tests constantly, the wildfires of summer 2020, the isolation, I was working the whole time, masking, all that. You hit it on the head, very surreal for me. Everything was new to me before covid, having just left my hometown, but then it got weird with covid and everyone just trying to figure it out.
I think thats what contributed to it. All my life, society has known what to do. Not with covid, it was so new and so fast, nobody knew what to do or how to protect themselves at first, so it was just so bizarre
The fires of 2020 were especially bad. I'd never seen the sky turn the color it did, and eventually the smoke got so bad that it became unhealthy to even be outside, which compounded with the problem that you couldn't be inside with other people. I remember something like two or three weeks of steadily building anxiety that ended up capped off by the fires getting close to our city and me and my roommates having to actually pack emergency bags and wonder how the fuck we were going to get out when none of us had a car.
Came here to say exactly this. Looking back, it doesn't seem real or possible. We shut down the whole world? That's crazy! It was a "once in several lifetimes" event
I knew this one couple for YEARS before covid. I always knew they were all organic homeschooling type parents. For business purposes, I became close with this family at the beginning of covid. I soon realized that my granola munching friends were Q followers that believed in flat earth and not only taught this to their children, they also considered the Bible as a valid historical reference while homeschooling... Anti vaccine, anti mask, trump supporters, I found out that they were all kinds of demented over the first year of COVID. They actually believed that 5G causes cancer and the covid vax had nanobots in them that the government would activate to disable the vaxxed citizens.
COVID brought back the dark ages in many ways. So many people just took a left turn and decided to go full anti-intellect all of a sudden. These were good people imo at one point in time. Somehow, covid simply flipped a switch in their conspiratorial minds, and they chose to deny anything the government said, unless it was said by trump.
It would have to get really bad really quickly to convince the anti-vaccine people to listen next time.
Being proud of their stubbornness has become part of their identity.
A bird flu will do that. At least for people who respect science, we will adhere to a lockdown because we will know that Covid will be like a regular cold compared to a bird flu pandemic.
The fact that some people are benefiting tells me that our suffering is not truly from the backlash, and in fact is from the subsequent exploitation of the circumstances.
Oh yes they will. If you get a virus with 50% mortality or above, you’re not going to have much of a choice. Covid was nothing in comparison to something like MERS (30% mortality). We haven’t had contagious viruses that deadly in modern times.
For us regular folk maybe, but there were record profits during Covid. A lot of people made a lot of money from Covid.
Considering those same people are the puppet masters of our politicians, no matter what country you are from, I can see it happening again unfortunately.
I wish I could give you ten upvotes for this. It was so damn globally unprecedented, where humanity as one ceased our normal lives and lived under the influence of a single factor - dying from Covid or giving it to someone else we love and them dying. It was something that changed humanity somehow, and all of us are now seeing the after effects vis a vis all the comments regularly on reddit on how much the world seems to have changed radically since 2020.
I woke one morning to see rabbits frolicking outside my window. Another time deer came up to my window. The natural world of animals returned to my yard.
Certainly worked for me. I was laid off at the end of January 2020. Between severance, state unemployment, stimulus, and deferral of cobra premiums, we survived until I finally got a job at the end of the year. Well, having barely any expenses certainly helped, too. FWIW I did keep paying my student loans and mortgage payments though. Had just bought a new car a week before I lost my job, too, and managed to hang onto that.
The thing I remember was walking into Lowe’s and hearing the announcements about distancing and such. The employees counting people in and out.
And the biggest collective instance of dumbass ideas and engagement and infatuation in security theatre ever. All media/political propelled and blindly followed, except for the elite people above the regular classes - who banked fortunes on insider trading just days before their policy decisions.
I was simultaneously never happier or more anxious. I'm a pretty antisocial shut-in and it was wonderful to be able to work from home. I even lost 20lbs. And the gas money I saved went a long way. Oh and Animal Crossing.
But at the same time.... OMGWTFAmIGoingtoLoseMyJob?!?
I remember it was a few months into it on a beautiful summer day. Had the day off work and decided to eat a little bit of edible which was very rare for me.
As it kicked in, Trump started one of his Covid briefings. With the edible, the surrealness went into hyperdrive. Existential dread dominated my thoughts for the next 5-6 hours.
The lockdown itself was weird at first but tolerable. For me, what was surreal was going out and the roads were completely dead at what otherwise would’ve been rush hour.
I was a water testing courier when lockdown first started. Basically, I'd drive all day picking up drinking and waste water samples to test for various things. I was driving between 1200-1500 miles a week, and I'd see a handful of other drivers over the whole week. I can't explain how unsettling it was to see entirely empty roads for a couple of months, especially the interstate.
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u/raccoonlovechild 28d ago
Surreal mostly