Teen perspective on restrictions

I’m 18, I was nearly 15 when lockdown started. It was really hard for my age group – and I expect all others – because we had literally everything like school, friends, other activities and stuff taken away with no clear date on when we’d get it back. It was particularly hard for us to lose our friends because we’re at that stage of life where friends are more important than family. But what was hardest was how everyone wouldn’t really let us say we were upset, they just only saw the benefits of lockdown – which did exist – and ignored the harms, which also existed. I started writing a blog about how it was affecting us and as you can imagine I get a lot of hate and I’ve broken a lot of relationships over it. I stand by it though. Going back to school was worse, my school’s restrictions were masks and bubbles and they weren’t so bad in themselves but the way they were enforced was. Teachers were literally screaming and shouting at students, saying they were killers and should be locked up again and some used the exact same techniques I’ve seen bullies using, crowding round people and pressing in and screaming in our faces.

Our year group had the most cases so for two weeks they made us sit facing the wall at lunch and break and we weren’t allowed to turn our heads and one teacher just stood in front of the wall telling us every day how we deserved this as a punishment, not for infection control. And one teacher died during covid – it’s not clear if it was of covid but some teachers told us we’d killed him and sometimes I find myself believing it. And I know the teachers were unhappy too and I felt horrible knowing I was scaring them so much but instead of helping each other we were just shouting at each other. I don’t think they knew the effect they had – I told one aggressive teacher how it really made us feel and she apologised and has been lovely since.  But this is what every day was like for two years, except for when we were in lockdown again. I don’t remember much of the next lockdown because it’s just a numb, lonely blur. And masks in class made school even worse because everyone just went silent in their masks to the point where sometimes I wouldn’t say a word all day. I sometimes picked fights with teachers or bullies just so I could have a conversation .

And doing this every day had a huge effect on my mental health and on my friends and family too but it’s not my place to say how they feel so I’ll just talk about me. I was really happy the day before lockdown, I was excited by everything and I wanted life. Restrictions turned me into the opposite of all those things. It soon reached the point where my only moods were feeling totally numb where I wouldn’t be able to feel anything, or just sad or angry for no real reason, but sometimes all the things that we’d lost and all the fear and anger and sadness would get too loud in my head and on those days I’d stuggle to breathe properly because there was always a kind of pressure on my chest but on these days it would go into a physical pain like it was being crushed and I just wouldn’t be able to cope and sometimes I’d want to cry but I wouldn’t be able to get it out, like my body just wouldn’t let me. I’d love to say I’m better now and I mainly am but that’s because I know life is normal now. I still panic when I’m reminded of restrictions though because I wouldn’t be able to come out the other side. I’m so tired. And I spent the last three years constantly being told that restrictions were good and I was evil to feel like this but if restrictions really were good, we’d still be locked up. But we’re not, we’re living normally because in reality we need each other more than we need to hide. 

That’s basically it, sorry this has been so long