To a New Dawn: Letters of Solidarity Anthology

CHRIS STIRLAND, 17 On March 23rd, Boris Johnson announced something I never thought I’d experience: England was officially locked down. Meeting friends, going to school, and not wearing a face mask all became illegal overnight. At first, I thought nothing of it. I thought in a week’s time England would be back to normal. I couldn’t have predicted how wrong I would be.

I went into lockdown with an optimistic mind-set.

However, that optimism started to fade as each day became longer and longer. Life became very meaningless, as the weeks went by with no real end in sight. Although staying connected via social media really helped me out, and keeping up to date with what my friends were doing with their time during lockdown inspired me. They were dealing with it a lot better than me: they were having productive days and were enjoying their time in isolation. Whilst I lacked any motivation to get out of bed in the morning.

Gradually, I became more and more aware that if I was ever going to enjoy lockdown, I was going to need an end goal to work towards. And although to many it would seem pointless, I set a goal to get better at a video game. Having an end goal really helped me get through the struggles of isolation. Being in isolation also made me begin to appreciate the small things in life, such as simply being able 92