Today marks five years since the first Covid-19 lockdown in Ireland was announced by An Taoiseach, Mr Leo Varadkar, on 12 March 2020. Five years on, I’ve been reflecting on the surreal events that unfolded afterwards. Although everything is now back to normal, and many things are “as they were” before restrictions were announced, part of me cannot help but wonder whether as a society, we have collectively dealt with the psychological, emotional and economical impact of that uncertain period, which was followed swiftly by events that continue to unfold in Ukraine and Russia.

It was my good friend Shelly and late friend Leigh who first alerted me into thinking that this emerging virus in China was something to be worried about. I read back some of our group chats from late January/February 2020, and shake my head as I am reminded how the three of us tried to pre-empt what would happen next. I predicted that they might have to shut the schools for a few weeks, while efforts would be made to contain the virus. No-one could imagine the chaos that unfolded during the following weeks and months.

On the morning of 12 March 2020, while everyone around me was stocking up on tinned goods or toilet roll, I remember walking around Dunnes Stores looking for a nice Easter Egg for Alison.  I remember that I bought a few groceries as well, but I didn’t know what to buy. I just bought two bags of pasta and some noodles, along with four bars of soap (the pumped bottles were already sold out), while looking at people’s heaped trollies around me. The Easter egg was my priority. I could sense that Alison was going to lose so much in the coming weeks; she didn’t need to lose the Easter bunny as well.

Afterwards, I came home, feeling sick to my stomach. Despite being an avid reader of dystopian fiction, I didn’t know how I was going to deal with this uncertainty, nor how I was going to guide my eight-year-old daughter through it. That day, in an effort to distract myself more than being worried about my child’s education, I printed off a large number of worksheets from an educational website, thinking that if the world was about to be thrown into chaos and unpredictability, that it would be best to try and create some semblance of routine for the sprog.

That afternoon, when Alison came home from school, she’d just been informed that school was to be closed for two weeks, but even at the age of eight, she was clever enough to know that it would likely be longer. She asked so many questions, and for the first time in our lives, we had no answers. We sat watching the news as Leo Varadkar announced the lockdowns. John Paul had just started a career break, and I remember the relief that he would not be working and exposing himself to the virus. I became institutionalised very quickly, accepting isolation as the way things had to be. Like millions of us, I threw myself into work and homeschooling in to keep busy, trying to suppress my nervousness at the uncertainty around me. (What are the psychological effects of this now, I wonder?)

The world was thrown into autopilot, and slight lunacy. It became an offence to meet up with others, to take a drive into the mountains or to the beach, or to travel further than a 2km range from your home. Only one person could go shopping from a family at any given time. We had to mask up and keep our distance from those we loved, not only for two weeks, but for the guts of eighteen months. Hugging a friend was seen to be first degree murder. The message was, do you want your granny to die, all because you couldn’t resist giving your loved one a quick cuddle in the supermarket? What long-term effect is this messaging still having on people, especially children? 

In July 2020, Alison attended a socially-distanced drama summer camp in the local youth centre. I was apprehensive, but more concerned about my only child becoming too isolated from other children. After the second day, her drama facilitator messaged me to say that my eight-year-old daughter had told her that she had predicted the coronavirus pandemic, that she’d had a dream the week before restrictions announced that told her that something bad was going to happen in the world, and because she hadn’t told anyone she believed, essentially, that she was to blame for the entire pandemic. My heart turned to ribbons as I thought of the psychological burden that my little girl was carrying This is the unspoken impact of the OTT messaging behind the pandemic. We, her parents, were stunned as we explained, repeatedly, the scientific reasoning behind it. It took a long time to convince her, and even now, I see the damage that carrying that awful “secret” did to her.

Nobody in their right minds would ever want to return to those dark days of lockdown, although I will admit that it took me a long time to regain the confidence to put myself back out there and claim my life back. I became institutionalised in the safety of my home, going from somebody who went to Dublin at least twice a month, just because, to someone who didn’t go anywhere, until last year. 

We’ve had a rough few years that we simply have not been allowed to collectively recover from: COVID, the Ukraine-Russian conflict, economic instability, and now fecken Trump, so as we reflect on five years since the lockdowns were announced, we must remember that we have been through a great deal of collective trauma, and to give ourselves a break. And to congratulate ourselves, too, for doing our best in such unprecedented circumstances.