Ever since the pandemic started, I've felt different, and not in a good way. Before all of that happened, I felt more connected to life. I had interests, things I looked forward to, and I generally felt present in the moment.Now it feels like I'm just existing. The pandemic ended years ago and life is supposed to be back to normal, but mentally it never feels like it fully came back for me. It's hard to explain. I just feel emotionally flat and sad compared to how I used to be.Sometimes I wonder if I'm romanticizing the past, but I genuinely remember feeling happier and more hopeful before 2020. Since then, the years have kind of blurred together. Time passes faster, motivation is harder to find, and even things I used to enjoy don't hit the same way.I've kept expecting that feeling to go away and for me to "snap back" to who I was before, but it never really happened.Has anyone else experienced this? Did you eventually get past it, or did something fundamentally change after the pandemic?
>>34626403A lot of people lost friends or had relationships deteriorate and found it difficult to rebuild them. Many also became depressed and have yet to recover from depression
2020 killed any momentum i had regained after a desperate push to change from being a long term hiki in 2010 - 2017. I got to experience normalcy for a year or two before being put back into the hurtlocker once more. Shit killed everything to do with humanity.
>>34626403yesyesyesI became way more 'antisocial' than I used to be... I barely leave home only for brief errands and I seldom go out with friends or family (in fact, i have not done so once this year)... I know I wasn't like this before I feel a certain emptiness inside from staying home most of the time, but it doesn't really stop me from enjoying things like it does for many people here who say they can't enjoy anything at all... i mostly play video games and I do enjoy thembut I don't watch many movies or similar, and I think I stopped watching anime without realizing it..at the same time I found myself drawn to more somber stuff not really my usual selfi've noticed a loss of interest in things I used to like, I'm definitely one of those who felt the pandemic 'took a little piece of me'
>>34626403I was messed up before covid so I didn't really notice it. This is just probably how your 20s are though.
>>34626521Are you me
Zoomer perchance?I have nooticed people that were about 12-18 at the start of the pandemic were the worst affected, because at the start they were kids and at the end they were adults, and the only thing they experienced in the meantime was solitude, their boomer family members and vidya.All the formative teenage experiences were called off; no houseparties, no drinking beers in the park, no dating, no driving lessons, no pregnancy scare. The poor fuckers took the sum of their experiences up to their early teens and were forced out into the world with them.If you're old enough to have become a shutin before Covid, it was probably just a period of time in which you felt less guilty about your state of existence. I am an agricultural contractor so my work never stopped, and I barely socialised anyway. The only things that stick out in my memory about it was the roads being wonderfully quiet, drugs being difficult to source and otherwise normally adjusted people suddenly becoming good little Gestapo surveillance assets. Multiple times my neighbours reported me to police for going to work.In retrospect, it is quite hilarious to me that anyone suggesting that we should just ignore the pandemic was chewed out as a psychopath, and then once it became clear that the economy would not survive any more lockdowns we just did that anyway and were fine.
>>34629643I kind of agree with you. The government sucks and other people suck for making you feel bad about the coofid.
I agree OP, but in my case it was that I lost my job and then had to go back to wagie bullshit. I used to work a nice office job I loved and thrived in. Not only did I lose my friends, but no longer having stable income or stable schedule is a double whammy of being anti social. Top it all off with a really shitty family and friends I just don't really want to socialize anymore. It feels fruitless and pointless. I can't seem to relate or understand anything anymore and the more I try to learn and just be myself the more confused and insecure I feel. Even going to therapy and self help bullshit just makes me more confused on what I need to change or keep because it feels like nothing works in the slightest.
>>34629643yeah I was in that range you mention at the start of the pandemic and I think you’re very CORRECTI don't blame everything on the pandemic but I've been isolating myself by choice lately an I think that’s the main effect on me... settling into habit and disinterest at first I didn't mind and I was even enjoying it but now it feels like it's time to change, it's been almost two years of being in this frozen stateI know i could initiate change at any moment truly, yet the prospect of socializing as before feels rather tedious.. i’ll probably make a change once I get a new job
i was in my junior year highschool when quarantine started (march 2020 in burger land), and all my senior year was quarantined.you aren't alone friend. i agree with what other people have said here, but want to say that the world is just genuinely worse. There is being nostalgic (which i am not), and there is recognizing a bowl of shit for what it is and not calling it a new type of brownie. Things which were deteriorating even before the coof (many of which for decades at that point) just accelerated (I was foolish enough to go into quarantine thinking "okay, NOW people are really going to start making a fuss about all the shit that sucks. Now things must SURELY be bad enough that the masses will stop turning a blind eye, right?").If it was just the batsoup virus and quarantine for a year + the variants and shit, it would have definitely sucked hard but there could have been a bounce back, both in all our own lives and the world at large. but since all the worlds oligarchs, who have always had the utmost contempt for us plebs wanting to live normal lives, used succulent chinese cuisine as an excuse to go into over drive in fucking us over, things got worse and then continued to get worse with no relief.and i don't say this to gloat or pretend im some enlightened genius but simply acknowledge reality, but most people don't see anything wrong and in fact bray like twats for this since they have their bread and circuses, despite EVERYTHING being demonstrably more shit and the bread being more sawdust than ever and the circuses featuring humans with brushes plugged up their asses instead of actual fucking horses. i just want to curl up and cry most of the time. what i'd give to have been born boomer...
