Dear Future Me,

Inspired by The Guardian’s Return to Sender article, over 100 days in lockdown I wrote a letter to my future self, post Covid-19.

Here are a few from the spring/summer of 2020.  

Dear Future Me,

There was a time you couldn’t even step out your front door without feeling desperately anxious. Everything you touched you recoiled from, you wondered if this was the surface that harboured the invisible virus.  There was a time when you couldn’t hug your parents or even a best friend who’d lost their sister. There was a time you were interrogated by a policeman for walking your dog.

At first you were in denial, you buried your Covid-riddled head under the duvet, and told yourself, it will be over in a few weeks. Then just as you were recovering, the UK went into lockdown and you realised it was far from over. Now that you felt well again, you embraced the idea of enforced isolation; you made exhaustive lists of all you would achieve with all this time on your hands. All those rooms in the house that you’d redecorate and screenplays you’d write. All that quality time you’d spend together as a family. 

But the weeks dragged on. The death toll continued to rise and springtime road trips and gigs were cancelled, work commissions trickled away. You felt anxious and desperate to escape. Suddenly you had nothing in the diary and little to look forward to. You wanted to be the best version of yourself in lockdown but more often than not, you were your worst self – all your insecurities heightened by the intensity of quarantine. 

As a family we struggled to find a new way of existing together under one roof. Everything we loved and hated about each other was magnified. We all retreated to whatever space we could carve out for ourselves. Slowly we discovered that the only way through this unfolding pandemic was to establish a routine that grounded us all. 

You were grateful it was spring and had the time to take in and enjoy every flower that revealed itself in your garden and added colour to your mundane life in lockdown. Do you remember the time you watched a scarlet red poppy open? Really watched. Took the time to take in its velvety opaqueness as its petals were blown, then fluttered to the ground and withered away. It reminded you of how fragile and temporary life is. 

Thoughts drifted in and out, lucid moments lost in the fog of isolation. By mid-June you realised that if you got through this day having managed just one thing, it was enough. Whether it was sun salutation or a page scribbled, you’d achieved something, and that something meant a lot when the whole world around you was falling apart.

Dear Future Me,

I thought pandemics were just in the movies until history proved me wrong. Stood outside the Royal Free as the UK’s first Covid-19 patient was admitted, the TV crews congregated, yet I was more concerned about my dad inside recovering from a stroke to take much notice. I told myself this was an isolated case, it would be neatly contained. Like a big budget horror film with 2-star rating on Rotten Tomatoes, this was just being hyped by the media.

But this plague wasn’t going away any time soon. And no matter what our government did, it never acted decisively and we never felt sure anything was under control. Should we send our kids to school? Is it right that key workers were expected to do their jobs without adequate PPE? 

I’m shocked that my country’s government has been so arrogant, hypocritical and so utterly useless at raising spirits in such dark times. On such a small island, how have we had one of the highest rates of deaths? Would so many BAME people have died if we had a more equal society? What fall-out will there be after all this is over? 

As a self-employed writer I’m used to WFH, but only when it’s just me, lost in my projects. Now it’s about snatching those precious moments to myself, with constant low level anxiety bubbling away beneath the surface. I’ve never wanted to return to my office more – confinement is stifling my creativity.

Work hasn’t dried up completely but I know it will soon. Then what? It’s forcing me to pause, take time to write, get that pilot finished. I imagine that I will be relieved that the human race wasn’t eradicated, a vaccine found. 

I will remember how much I missed the impromptu kitchen parties; the post-deadline pub sessions; the hedonistic club nights; raving in a field with all besties around me. But I will miss the quiet city streets, with less traffic, less litter and more space to move about our lives. I will miss the cleaner air and the slower pace of life. I will continue to be grateful that I survived Covid-19 and that everything changes, however hard that is to accept, so enjoy every damn moment.

Dear Future Me,

If you’re reading this, it means you made it through the pandemic of 2020; the year you wrote off, but survived. 15 March 2020 was the date when life as you knew it changed.

I worry that a vaccine won’t be found and many more lives will be lost to Covid-19. Most of all I fear that the lessons we learnt during months of lockdown will be forgotten.

Do I have protective immunity? Was an antibody test made available to you and will you ever really know if you had it? Is it safe for my daughter to go back to school? Have scientists found an effective vaccine and if so, will it reach the poorest in the world?

I hope we look back on this time in lockdown and see it wasn’t a temporary recovery of nature. That future generations see this as the year we accelerated the transition to a cleaner, fairer, more equal world. 

I hope you are one of the many voices calling an end to our incompetent government – who misled us; didn’t protect us when we needed it most; didn’t provide vital PPE to frontline workers and failed, completely, to lead the country effectively for the good of all.

Have you started hugging your dearest friends yet? I expect you’re still wary of using public transport, of being in confined spaces with strangers, but please tell me you’ve seen your dad and he made it through. 

Locked down with my husband, daughter and dog, it was a rollercoaster of emotions. I hope when you reply, you will tell me the good days outshone the bad ones. And please look after yourself. Cos this ain’t over yet. 

Dear Future Me,

I’m writing to you three months after you survived the 2020 pandemic, when you were struck down for 16 days straight and couldn’t move further than your bed without feeling utterly exhausted. You couldn’t sleep, felt desperately depressed, your legs throbbed constantly, you lost all sense of taste and smell, and came worryingly close to ending up in hospital, unable to breathe deeply, like a cat napped permanently on your chest.

Purely to satisfy your curiosity, I hope by now you’ve found out whether it was Covid-19, that it ate up your respiratory infection and you’re fully healed. Fortunately, you recovered well. The irony being that just as you were ready to go out, lockdown happened and you were forced to sit and contemplate what life had given you. 

If you were honest with yourself, you’d say that before becoming ill you were terrible at saying no and your body couldn’t cope with it all. The constant pull of FOMO urging you to party with whoever wanted to. You wanted to stop, but didn’t know how to say no. 

I’m curious to know whether you’ve found a balance yet, a space in-between where you can still let go, and have fun but without the terrible comedowns, the angst-ridden mornings full of guilt when you took it too far, as you always did. I’m curious to know whether the world has changed for the better. 

As I write, we have become less reliant on fossil fuels, pollution levels are low and the air is cleaner that it has been for decades. White people are facing up to their centuries-old prejudices, acknowledging our privilege, and the systemic racism both here in the UK and US. People are taking to the streets to protest, calling for justice for all black lives lost, killed at the hands of law enforcement. 

Say their names: George Floyd, Elijah McClain, Milton Hall, Ezell Ford, Dante Parker, Breonna Taylor, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Jonathan Ferrell, Sandra Bland, Eric Ganer, Freddie Gray, Natasha McKenna, Ahmaud Arbery, Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, Kendrec McDade, Kimani Gray, Cristian Taylor, Trayvon Martin and many, many more.

But look out: you know how hard it is to shake off bad habits: complacency, laziness, selfishness, don’t let them creep back. Make sure its a movement not a moment. Will we still be checking on our neighbours, our friends, taking care packages, shopping local? I hope that, as a society, we’d become less selfish and more caring. It feels like we can collectively change, but fear that you, like the rest of the world overestimate your capacity for change. Please, prove me wrong.