Total Disruption from Lockdowns

COVID started when I was 20 in my second year of school, now I’m 23 and my whole life has been flipped upside down. Throughout life, I was already dealing with lots of issues growing up as my parents immigrated to Canada and were in a bad relationship together, only staying together due to me and culture. Parents would always fight and stress us all out, never have good communication and be in a mess with regards to maintaining the house, taking care of me, finances, etc. Mother later had a work injury and fell into severe depression when I was 9, making our lives harder especially after she had just completed university again here in Canada for her new job; back injury has taken years to recover and doctor only put her on antidepressants as a treatment for depression, has taken her over 12 years to get back to her job. Stress and mental health issues from this  for myself would lead to more fighting and dysfunction growing up, however, I was able to get through life okay and later get an okay job at a young age and get myself into engineering undergraduate. However, COVID restrictions came and totally disrupted my life during school, taking away my job and school away from me for a long time; I was able to get by in life despite my home situation through work and school, but COVID has just been too much. I got ill and became diagnosed with depression, IBS, binge eating disorder, and anxiety, and got treated by my doctor with antidepressants; the IBS and eating disorder became and have been more severe leading me to have chronic pain not just within my gut but now throughout other parts of my body, and I felt pain and discomfort throughout all parts of my body at least a few times as a result. It’s really difficult to get better, I’m doing everything I can, and not sure if I’ve been treated properly at all by my doctors or psychologists. Been trying my best to keep myself healthy.

Later on, I tried going back to school when they were reopening but unfortunately, at the last moment they no longer had any housing available for me to move into (hard to find a place there) and so I started driving to school. I had stopped driving right before COVID hit since I lived on campus initially and then didn’t drive again until summer 2021 after vaccination but was very depressed and feeling bodily ill driving around. Within the first two weeks of driving to school, I depressingly ended up crashing my car, leaving me without a vehicle to get there. Moreover, COVID restrictions had came back to my school, with all this going on I decided against going back to school as I wasn’t sure whether they would close down again and chose upon finally going back to my old job, however, not sure if this was a good choice but everything has just been very hard to go through and process properly about what to do with my life; family has not been properly supporting me as well despite all the diagnosis and ER visits I’ve had. Worked my old job and tried really hard to get better with lifestyle change, however, I’m still suffering from depression & chronic pain with everything that’s happened. Went back to school again properly in 2022 but ended up doing very bad as I haven’t recovered and my program is extremely difficult, last time I studied was when schools shut down. For the second semester, I didn’t go back to school as I didn’t want to waste time & money on not doing well and went back to my old job again. I am planning on going back again this year 2023 with a lighter course load and still trying to recover but my mental health and especially physical health issues are chronic and making my life just full of pain every day; will see if I can afford another vehicle. I’m only getting by because growing up with my family has made me somewhat resilient but it’s hard to keep going through this every day, especially when I feel pain all the time and my life hasn’t gone back to normal at all since this all happened, and it feels like all the hard work I was putting into school before all this has been taken away. 

I have included a photo below of the mess in my home that I’ve had to live in growing up as it continues to happen. It’s very unbearable to live like this with my family and then have to deal with all this COVID disruption. Keeping myself anonymous as I would like to maintain my privacy.