Lockdown stories

We love our kids and before the lockdowns, we always thought we'll never have enough time to spend with both of the boys. But after going through homeschooling, we still love them, perhaps even more than before, but we're so happy they're back to school and my hubby and I can spend some time together, just two of us :))

I am a shop assistant and work with tourists in a small open shop. There are no walls and outsid air is flowing through the roof only shop ... My boss is pushing me to wear mask all day and I can't breathe with a mask for 8 hours ... I understand the rules but should we mindlessly obey without applying logic? I can't tell my boss to f*** off as I need the job. But I'm frustrated...

Last year we had a lockdown during weekends, no one could go out from Friday to Monday. I thought I will get an panic attack from being locked in apartmant. Or a nervous break down in worst case. I was alone with my kid. Friday night I was doing all sort of things just to keep me occupied so hour by hour time passed and I won, nothing bad happened in my mind.

At the start of the pandemic, my father had his second stroke. None of the family members were allowed to visit and even our calls to request his status were often unanswered. After some digging around, we discovered that the rehab the hospital was proposing was actually just a nursing home. The rehabilitation therapists would not actually be allowed to see him. In the end we decided that he should come home. He died with his family around him last year.

Half the people we know didn't believe in the virus, the other half didn't think it was that big a deal. As one of the people who already had the infection at the beginning of the pandemic, precisely because of others' selfish behavior and the need to visit even when they felt sick, I wasn't eager to meet anyone in fear of contracting the virus again. It is part of our culture to go around and visit everyone you know, have drinks, hang out regularly even if you feel under the weather because people believe that the flu is 'just' the flu and they don't care if they transmit it to other people. Same went for the new virus. If you are afraid of it, you are pathetic, if you tell them to stop visiting, they are insulted because how can they possibly be contagious when they are your family/friends? That attitude caused me and my close family so much stress. There was no way to convince them that not seeing them was safer for both sides and was not insulting. So, when the lockdown came, we were so relieved we didn't have to come up with more excuses as to why we can't go to a birthday party or dinner with 20 other people amidst the pandemic. As if we needed an excuse for that, but this is Serbia. We could finally rest at home, alone, with so much less stress. And before someone thinks we should have told people to stop coming - we did. They kept ignoring our wishes. Those who didn't got very angry and stopped talking with us altogether. And I am talking about close family, not some distant relatives, they were parents, brothers, sisters. I can't wait for another lockdown because everyone is behaving as if there is no pandemic and are genuinely surprised when I say I don't want to go to a wedding or a dinner party.