Caitlin Thomson shares what she is most excited to get back to when Covid-19 restrictions lift.
There is a list on my phone of all the things I want to do after lockdown ends, big and small, but mostly medium. On the one hand I am looking forward to graduations, holidays, seeing family members who are abroad or in care homes. On the other, there’s reuniting with my friends’ pets, not feeling nervous at the corner shop, everyone fitting onto one picnic blanket. And in the middle sits the things that first came to mind when asked about what I most wanted to do when lockdown ends, the things that once made up the majority of what I would look forward to – house parties, day trips into London, sleepovers, going to the cinema or a gallery or a museum. Really, any event which is predicated on being near to other people. And it has been the keenly felt absence of this nearness which has made the list on my phone a tricky thing. It has often been updated whilst crying, late at night, or on a particularly self-pitying daily walk. I always think that checking it will make me feel better, give me something to hope for, but more often than not it just represents a year of lost
memories, of time that could have, should have, been better. And so, it is being repurposed- its role now is not that of a wish list, but of a reminder. In five years’ time I want to check it on the beach, on the late train home, whilst arranging a playlist for a party, and take stock of the luxury future me will have been granted by the sacrifices of past me, of past us. The luxury of time well spent.
Article Written By Caitlin Thomson (She/Her).