JAMES COWTAN, 17

26th October 2020

Dear Mum, I know we didn’t see eye to eye during lockdown. And I know I tend to bleed on people who haven’t cut me. Sometimes I worry that they might leave me because they’re all bloody, so I wanted to write my experience and struggles of coping with the coronavirus pandemic to you in a letter.

Before lockdown began, if you would have told me that I would have needed to complete all my college work on a computer at home and I wouldn’t actually have to go into college… well, I would’ve jumped at the chance to just work on my laptop at home! But I can tell you now that I took everything for granted. Because of the pandemic, I was robbed of my time at college – and as a young teenage lad who was recovering from depression, doing nothing all day, every day, wasn’t good for me. I would sit in my room, watching the clock tick by every painful hour. It was like my mind had been sent to an execution.

Tere was a moment in lockdown where I was sitting in my room, feeling so down. I thought that everyone’s goal in life is happiness, and yet the end result is always death? So, what’s the point in walking barefoot down this road

of shattered glass when you could just skip straight to the end… What seventeen-year-old should be thinking that? Tere were days when I would just sit looking out of my window at the rain and hear it tap, tap, tap on the windowpane and drip, drip, drip down onto the conservatory roof. And there were days when I just sat on my Xbox, bored out my mind but still laughing and talking with my friends, masking my emotion. Te issue was I couldn’t really complain, because everyone was going through the same problem: stuck indoors all day because of a virus. And I thought how stupid it was, but what could I do? I was helpless – it was like I was stripped of my freedom and my recovery, and just lef to rot. I was a sinking ship that was burning at the same time. I saw on the news that a nineteen-year-old girl committed suicide due to her fear of losing her independence. She went down as another suicide statistic of mental health and she, unfortunately, was not the only one. Tere were other people, like me, that felt tranquilised with waves of stress and fear crashing over them. Before lockdown, I had the ambition the size of an elephant and I had things arranged like birthday plans. We even had a holiday to look forward to in Spain, but we were just stuck in the house instead. I had the same routine every day. Get up. Brush my teeth. Go downstairs and whinge to you. Go back upstairs. Watch that same old clock tick past every hour (and quite frankly the hours felt like they turned into days, but I still stared at that clock). Eat dinner.

And I took it all out on you and Dad. I used to shout, because I was so frustrated that I couldn’t do anything but sit. Having me in a bad mood added to all your other stress, such as a new-born baby and two sevenyear-olds who were so very afraid of what was going on (they weren’t old enough to understand the seriousness of the issue that was happening worldwide). Tis continued for months until Boris Johnson announced that we could at least go on runs, and I did, whether it was just a mile… or two… or three… I just wanted to get out of the house. I then felt as though I had part of my life back. It made me realise that an unhealthy life like that was not the sort of life I wanted to live.

Yes, we are still in this pandemic, and the second wave is now upon us, but I don’t feel sufocated to the very brink of me falling unconscious. As the year has progressed, I’ve seen my friends. I’ve been to college. And it’s all so refreshing, compared to what lockdown was like when I felt as though I was breathing in the same air I was exhaling. Plus, I’m not now trapped in a room like a prisoner in solitary confnement. It feels good to have a part of my life back. At least, for now. From James P.S. You’re back home now, surrounded by the people who love you the most and you’re over 50 days sober, which you should be very proud of.