The world stood still, the nation in mourning, and the public who were already filled with worry were plunged into even more despair as Prince Philip had passed away. However, that didn’t matter to me because I was submerged into the latest episode of “Falcon and Winter Soldier”. It’s not that I’m saying that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is more important than someone dying, it’s just that…2020 was a year of so many people dying that it just wasn’t a monumental thing in the grand scheme of things.
Hospital admissions were out of control, so the fact that one person dying was supposed to be better than everyone else seemed extremely insensitive. I wasn’t always unphased by death, with the death of my father when I was three years old death was always a concept that I was afraid of. I was afraid that death would take me and the people that I love, but the pandemic changed all of that.
With the number of casualties literally painted in red, Black Lives Matter just starting to veer its head, and the lack of human interaction being an all time low, the rise of COVID-19 has dulled my senses.
With lockdown coming in swift and fast, it felt as though I was ripped from my newly acquired friends that I had made a few months before. Mentally I was in the worst place imaginable. I wasn’t the only one who felt this way, according to the House of Commons Library, mental health declined around 31% during the pandemic.
You couldn’t see your loved ones and were forced to be under house arrest which only meant one thing…self-reflection. I kept thinking to myself “Do I really like my life?”. Being in a whirlwind of negativity really means that you forget what it really means to be happy. I wanted to escape. For me, that means turning to Marvel and the other properties that Disney+ had.
I don’t think I’m broken, I just think that lockdown took something from all of us that we can’t get back and in a way we are all grieving our old lives.
