The year everyone lost.

For a lot of people 2020 has been a curious, disruptive and challenging year already. It has ripped away from many the very thing many people feel is the most precious thing we have and yet the one thing we take most for granted, TIME.

For me 202 has felt like the culmination of the developing situations of the wester world. Our society reaping what we sow from years of ignorance and social disparity. It has also felt somewhat like every other year I’ve lived through for the last two decades prior.

That is not to say I’m not understanding and sympathetic towards those who have been badly affected by the monumental disruptions to modern society as the bulk of us in the capitalist west know it, I just feel that to an extent I could see many of the events coming from a mile off and I had lived though many similar events in my own personal life numerous times over that when the world suddenly stopped for everyone I saw little personal change.

For a great many years I had felt like one of a group from a lost generation, discarded from the desired mass of humanity left to muddle though in the background. This came from years of abuse growing up in my pre-teen, teen, and even post teen years. This came from a standing in modern British society that saw the bulk of my years in poverty or at the very lowest levels of earning. My place in society gave me odd personality traits, which made few people interested in knowing me and in tern just made my personality traits all the odder. This was not aided by probable, as yet undiagnosed despite my best efforts, mental health problems. As such I grew up with few, then less, friends and as such quite separate from much of humanity.

This separation from modern society and culture is equal blessing and curse. I may not have as many connections or relationships as others may, but those I do have are extremely close and loyal on my part. It also allowed me to be more adaptive and hardy when universally disruptive events do take place.

When a pandemic rolled around and whole cities, eventual countries, were put under lockdown I was more than prepared and not too challenged. When you barely see anyone outside your house most days anyway, having that happen to everyone isn’t such a problem.

Yet now it’s been several months and while many places are not under the same type of lockdowns as they were at the early hights of this year of pandemic (even though the cases are currently far worse in this country than they had been during that time?) time even for me is becoming hard to judge. I had, ironically, signed up to a gym a month before the pandemic in order to force myself to get healthy. This sounds a bit first world problems at first until I explain that my mental health conditions, body issues, and severe shyness has prevented me from taking what had been such a monumental step until the age of 38. Now due to lockdown my confidence is back to near zero, my gym membership is closed and my weight is at its worst in my whole life. Worse still since I had been diagnosed with sleep apnoea and need to lose weight to, you know, live.

I feel back at many stage ones for my mental and physical health, and I was ready for this to an extent. Primed for another bad thing to take place and ready to ride it out as best I could with my wife and cats to keep me company.

For everyone else though, this disruption came as much worse than they could have feared, or worse, as a nightmare out of the blue.

For my day job I work in social housing for a local authority, and I have been given the unfortunate opportunity to see the effects on people in local communities up close. I was involved in the early stages of communication with the vulnerable and elderly required to shield from the worst life-threatening effect of the virus. I have had to see the death notifications roll in and listen to my colleagues talk about having to call next of kin, seeing a mental toll mount on people as we and those around us survive.

It has struck me that you would have to be completely devoid of empathy so not be stuck by the effects this last year must have had on so many, no matter the background, status, or mental health of those surviving. It is true that a virus like COVID-19 has no care who you are, where you’re from or how fit and healthy you are. Everyone has lost something during this, not just money or their health, but a period of time. When you break down everything you can own or have, time is the only thing you can truly feel loss over. Regrets come from time wasted, things not done or said, shared experiences lost.

I also fear for those with even less opportunity and value to the modern western society than even I had growing up. Even when with next to nothing, sleeping on a cold concrete floor I had more privilege than many others will ever be fortunate enough to see. Now I fear deeply for those reliant on the help of others and their governing bodies to help them stay alive and part of their communities. It is also an odd irony that I would move into the public sector work space, only to see most developed western governments willing to openly cause a social genocide via deliberate inaction and ineptitude and learn to hate government in general more than I had when I started.

I believe people are suffering physically and mentally in all sorts of areas of society and I hope we all get though this time now to see better days to come. Even after a terrible and challenging five years, things can be better.

If you ever feel alone or lost, reach out to someone, a friend, a family member on the phone, or even a charitable organization like the Samaritans. You don’t have to be part of a new lost society, you don’t have to struggle or suffer alone.

• https://www.samaritans.org/ — 116 123 (UK)

If you know of any mental health or suicide prevention services in your area please feel free to share below in comments the details and country it’s for. Thank you.