Australians have had it tough over the last two years, but no city has had it tougher than Melbourne. Mental health in the hipster capital, which has suffered the most austere COVID restrictions in the country, is arguably at an all-time low.
A Redditor has taken to the r/melbourne Reddit community – a subreddit for Melburnians and Melbourne enthusiasts – with an honest admission that is resonating with people from all around Australia. The user started: “Was relatively fine January 2020-present but I think it all just hit me.”
They continued: “Two years of my life flashing by (the supposedly best ones too! In my 20s), a global pandemic, politics everywhere (I’ve tried avoiding this my whole life but find it impossible now), people somehow supposed to ‘live with it’ (wtf? Like just yolo it lol?)… ugh.”
“I don’t know how to describe it. Feel like a truck hit me lately. All these corporations hellbent on profits, climate change, (potential) wars/fighting etc, and so much bad news all around (I’m aware there’s plenty of good news).”
Reddit user u/Bisah1342
“I’m not left or right leaning politically (or rather anything) but surely as a society who’s developed such advanced technology (AI, ML, automation etc) we could do better than working most of our lives, in jobs we don’t really like, for a bland ‘retirement’, which we probably won’t enjoy…”
Before getting too ‘into the wild‘ the Reddit user then pivoted back to social skills (or rather, the lack of them): “Lost most of my social skills these past years too. Maybe I’m just grumpy I’m getting older hahahah.”
“This post probably didn’t make sense 😂 Zzz 💤 I guess I’m just tired, and two years of fatigue just only started to hit me. : p meh.”
Classic Reddit. And a classic take, which many Australians can relate to, by the looks of it. The thread has garnered 386 comments and has an upvote percentage of 96% (and has been upvoted 1.9k times).
One Reddit user responded to the post: “Yep. Im older than you, but I feel a lot older than I am and that only happened since going back to work this year. I need to be out with people in the world, but also can’t be bothered. Its [sic] going to take a good year to get out of this slump I think.”
Another wrote: “I am 100% the same mate, was relatively ok but struggling up till these last holidays which just dropped me on my head. The world today just seems completely altered.”
Another response was: “I have been feeling it too. Honestly, a lot of us have. I think maybe some kind of emotional exhaustion and a bit of a ptsd of the last two years. The cycle of ‘breaking news’ of case numbers, closed borders, of the lockdowns. Now we have have to recalibrate to adjust to this year. I think 2022 we are now facing the feelings of having had to soldier on for so long.”
“Please be compassionate to yourself OP and know your feeling are valid.”
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Other users shared how anxious they were about going back to working from the office, while another shared how “f***ed up” they’d been ever since “losing my job August 2020,” explaining that they felt lost “in every sense of the word.”
Another interesting take was that some people took a weird sense of comfort in lockdowns and have stagnated because of that: “Yup. I feel like lockdowns at least felt temporary and somehow took some weird comfort in them,” one user wrote.
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“Now it just feels like a real false life of not really doing much and this was supposed to be the great restart. Work is depressing AF. I feel ripped off my beach trip away I had mentally built was rainy and then a small trip after was canned cos of a common cold.”
“I know I am grumpy to be around at the moment as a result of all this too. I am putting it down to COVID + Post Holiday blues combining into a massive s*** supernova.”
They ended: “Anyway – my advice, ignore the news and politics, that helps. And then find joy in something you can control – dunno what… hiking/sailing/sport of some sort.”
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