Please believe me that just because it looks like the northern hemisphere (or at least Europe) is opening up that it’s getting easier. For every day of hope, like a potential date where we can just register to then attempt to get a vaccine appointment, there is never ending uncertainty, rising case numbers, the reality of variants and the flux state around mutations, working from home in your bedroom for months on end, and knowing you can neither afford to visit nor move back to family.

Every single lockdown has been harder than the last and the palpable uncertainty is an incrementally compounding source of a cloudy state of despair with brief glimmers of weak sunlight breaking through.

I just keep reminding myself that even if it looks good or better or preferable from the outside that it’s never that simple. And then I remind myself of a truthful saying, “It’s not the end, it’s an uncomfortable pause.”

I still don’t feel like I’ve got this and please know there is togetherness in what we’re mired in.