Do you feel like you lost a year to the pandemic?

Definitely.

I feel like I'm treading water I guess. At the moment I'm not thinking beyond being able to catch up in the year ahead...I can't think about any possibility of that not happening at the moment.

I also particularly feel for my Dad and my MIL though...at 85 and 88, a year is an even more significant chuck of time 

No, I feel like I have lived a longer year than normal filled with intense and difficult emotions. I am hoping that it makes me more resilient and grateful some day but right now it feels like literal and emotional survival skills in high demand for me and my loved ones. Not to mention my country. I could see conceptualizing it as a loss but that is not the way I look at things.

Yes, I feel like I’m not moving forward but also not moving backward. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve done things and enjoyed our time together but it’s definitely been tough. I feel like I am constantly saying “when COVID is done, we can ....” (whether it’s the kids asking about something or just me thinking about things I’d like to do)

I can certainly understand why some people feel that way. I had a pretty rich year full of personal growth. In my heart it was kinda my last year for “traditional” so that hit me hard but it also gave me the freedom to leave the country before the shit show. I’m of course excited for when this is all over so that I can find a new home.

Covid changed my attitude and my mental health so I feel like it's no different really than other periods of struggle in my life. When my mental health changes, I have to shift my goals. I have to shift my thinking. I have to work harder to figure things out.

And while it's been different, I don't feel I've wasted the time any more so than I feel like I've wasted the time during any other round of depression.

I try to focus on what I've learned. What the experience has taught me. Because that's truly, IMO, what defines a period of time. And I've learned a lot of things. Especially about my relationships. With my family, friends, kids, and partner. And one thing is for sure is that I've learned me and Jeremy are tight. We have only gotten closer. So that's a huge bonus.

My kids and I are finding our way after years of craziness. And I appreciate that so much.

There's so many good things for me coming out of this.

ETA: I validate though however you are feeling. It hasn't been easy. I'm looking for silver linings because I have to believe for my own mental health that they exist.

no, i feel like life has marched on. i have found a full time job. my kids and i continue to do what we can do - play games, get out for hikes. i am in a year long relationship so i think that helped... having someone i care about to spend time with - i think i would feel more alone and isolated without him, especially when kids would be at their dad's.

i feel my kids' lives are on hold more than mine. i think my daughter feels it most. she is a very active "joiner" with many friends. the boys are more homebodies.

but it's okay for everyone to feel what they feel. no one expected this and we are all dealing the best we can.

I think my kids have lost more than I have. But they also have more time to make up the loss.

(Lately my mortality has been nagging at me, as it does many in middle age. Being stuck in one place all the time doesn’t help the feelings of being somewhat trapped. So many doors are closed now - I have to look for new ones to open. The pandemic hasn’t helped that.)

No, I don't feel it was lost. A lot of difficult things happened for us this past year. Some of them came out fine - 3 surgeries for DH that were in the end, successful. My mother's challenges had really nothing to do with the pandemic and could have happened at any time. The pandemic made it worse in that I could not visit her in person in rehab and I don't yet have the amount of contact with her that I'd like. Yet these things could have happened in any year and we would have had to get through them.

I'm surprised that I didn't miss the travel as much as I would have thought. If you'd told me last January that something would happen that would cause me to never leave the state the entire year?! I would never have believed it. I don't think there has been a year without travel since I was about 4 years old. Yet I found things to do at home and infrequent short local trips to enjoy.

And there is one positive that is here to stay - I now LOVE grocery shopping because I do it online once a week and then just drive down and pick it up. I make one other interim trip in person to pick up a few things I can't get at Walmart. Finally, I'm not running to the grocery store all the time.

You are going to have good years and bad years in life. I'm chalking 2020 up in the bad column and trying to move on.

I don't feel that way about myself, but I feel that my 18 year old daughter has. Her senior year has been really depressing. It has been very challenging to do college visits and get that interaction that makes you feel excited about going. She's an anxious kid and it's been much worse lately - lots of issues with acid reflux and feeling very uncertain about everything. It's sad. She's supposed to return to school with a hybrid schedule next month and she doesn't even want to go back.

Yes. We haven't been able to see our DS and grandchildren, except briefly in July. I have no hope we will see them before fall at this point.

We have many friends and family we have not been able to see. I was enjoying retirement and freedom.

The only positive is when DH had so many health crisis and 4 hospitilizations over the summer, we didn't miss anything, as it was all canceled.

I don’t feel like the year was wasted in the sense that my kids moved on in school but I do feel like we’re missing out on so much (planned things or just regular life) and that makes me feel sad and overwhelmed and negative. So i might feel like i wasted a year in the sense that time has passed and I won’t get that time back.

I feel awful that my kids and I can’t see my parents even though they live an 8 min drive away. And I know that there are a million worse things out there that could hurt my parents before Covid and what if I wasted the whole year being safe instead of hugging them and being with them.

And while my kids get to go to school and move on with their lives they are missing out on so many milestones that are time dependent and can’t be rescheduled. Sure, they’re gaining resiliency and moving on with their lives but they know they can’t go backwards and get this time back so they have no choice.

I think these feelings can be compounded when you live somewhere where some follow regulations and some don’t.

Me too. While the year was not as I had planned, I do not perceive it as "lost" but rather... different than I anticipated

I feel like I have learned a whole lot of skills I didn’t necessarily want to learn. I definitely didn’t get to do a lot of things I wanted to do. But no, I don’t feel like I lost a year.