Lessons Learned In A London Lockdown, Part 2: The Unexpected Silver Linings

When I wrote Part 1 of this back in early August, I was only beginning to properly recover from the breakdown that I had experienced in late April. The whole ordeal had left me very emotionally raw and quite empty, and it was going to take quite some time before I could get back to that state of equilibrium that I had prior to the breakdown.

But also as I wrote in that first part, the rebuilding and recovery process meant that I had to start fresh. I had to press reset on all on my friendships and relationships, and start to rediscover life more independently. I realised that I had come to depend on way too many people in the last few years, most of who seemed to disappear when the bad times came about a few months ago. They say you can never have too many friends, which is true, but what they don’t say is that they need to be of quality. And I’m at a point now where quality matters to me more than anything else.

On that note, my usage of Facebook has gone down to virtually zero. I don’t even really post on Instagram either. I realised that having been on Facebook as much as I was prior to lockdown had a detrimental effect on my mental and emotional wellbeing. I was depending on Facebook and my posting on there for my emotional support. In hindsight, it was one of the factors that led to my breakdown.

I find Twitter to be best suited to my intellectual needs nowadays. It’s not so much an emotional crux as Facebook was, and it’s how I get most of my world news anyway. As I touched on in Part 1, I did a cathartic clear-out of a lot of “friends” and “follows” across all of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I took away a number of people whom I felt had not been there for me as much I had been for them. They were disproportionate relationships that were draining me detrimentally, and I knew that if I hung onto those, it would get worse for me. So I drew a line.

New friendships have formed, and some old ones have been rebuilt with stronger layers. I’m getting more used to standing my ground and ensuring that my voice is being heard more in those one-one relationships. One of the things I resolved myself to do following my breakdown was never to be taken for granted again, and while that has resulted in the quantity of my friendships decreasing, the quality of the remaining ones has increased a lot. And that has given me a great deal of satisfaction.

On the employment front it has been a fascinating journey, with a number of eye-opening moments. Obviously with the gyms being shut over lockdown, I had no work. In fact I was having to rely on the self-employed grants from the UK government to survive. Sadly though, it wasn’t all roses after lockdown was lifted.

When gyms reopened in late July, I got treated quite appallingly by one of the gym chains with whom I had had permanent classes prior to lockdown – in fact they had unceremoniously terminated my contract, and deemed via an algorithm (I kid you not) that I was not worthy enough to continue teaching the classes that I had owned for six months. Another gym chain with whom I had permanent classes had changed their music policy post-lockdown, which meant that I could no longer teach from the immense back catalogue of music that I had accumulated over the years, and thus dampening the experience for both myself and my members (and for any Australian instructors of a certain era reading this, you will know exactly what I mean – I still bear the battle scars ten years later and was not willing to compromise myself again).

So the resultant lack of work left me with two options – either I leave the UK entirely, never to look back, or put my name out there and start to look for office work again. So I did something I never thought I would do – I created a LinkedIn profile. And it actually felt really good completing it, reflecting on all the experience both fitness and corporate that I had gained over the last 17 years or so. I even responded to a few job ads. Those of you who have been unemployed will relate to the feeling of sending your CV out to 10+ recruiters daily, and just literally crossing your fingers and hoping for the best, which is especially not easy in a pandemic situation with multiple workplace restrictions. Sigh. But it was not all bad as it turned out – indeed, there was a highly unexpected silver lining…

In mid-August (a couple of weeks after I wrote Part 1 of this tale), I received an unsolicited call from a recruitment agency who had discovered my CV on a website that I had applied through via LinkedIn. They explained to me that they had a role available within the Civil Service that required an immediate start. I had never worked in the Civil Service before, or any public sector job for that matter. But with all the setbacks that I had experienced with the gyms, and the fact that the economic situation in the UK was about to get *much worse*, I gathered the universe was trying to tell me something. And if there was one industry that was guaranteed to keep functioning throughout a recession, it would be the Civil Service.

So I duly accepted. At the time of writing this, it has been almost three weeks since I commenced. And I am relishing all the challenges that it is providing me so far. I won’t go too much into the role itself, but I will say that it is working within a part of the Civil Service that is under a lot of pressure right now, and I don’t envy anybody who has to deal with that at the present moment.

On a social level, I have only just recently started to physically socialise with people again, albeit with a few caveats. Social distancing being a must, only within my local area, and always outdoors (the third one might get a little tricky though as we head into the winter months). In a sense I am still keeping my movements limited as they were during lockdown, as I believe that is the best way to keep the wider community safe. In fact (and this may be considered too much information for some of you out there, so just warning you now), it has meant that I have been celibate for quite some time. Not an easy feat by any means if one is a gay man like myself, and yes it has been rather challenging at times, thanks for asking. But believe it or not (and this is the reason why I bothered to mention this at all), there was another unexpected silver lining…

I was at a point in August where I wanted to do something worthwhile. And then I thought one day, just totally randomly,

“Hey I haven’t slept with anybody in six months – I can donate blood!”

You see, being a gay man, there are still a number of activities, even in 2020, that I am restricted from doing that most straight people would have no issues with partaking in. One of those activities is donating blood.

These restrictions date back to the days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, where some blood supplies were inadvertently contaminated with HIV, which in turn led to a number of people becoming infected with HIV as a result of blood transfusions. This also led to a number of lawsuits against the Red Cross, which in turn resulted in a number of restrictions against men who have sex with men (MSM) in giving blood, as they are still deemed to this day a high-risk category.

BUT there are ways around this. These days, MSM *can* donate blood, provided that they have not had any sexual contact with other men within the last three months. Still a bit restrictive if you ask me, especially with the multitude of screenings that the blood goes through these days before it is even deemed worthy of donation, but it has certainly improved over the last 30 years or so.

So that’s what I did a few weeks ago. I donated blood for the first time ever in my life. And I can honestly say that it was one of the best things I’ve done where I felt I truly gave back to the community.

And a bonus silver lining that came out of the donation – my blood type is O negative, which means I am what they call a Universal Donor. Only 7% of the population have this blood type, and it is the one used by emergency services when an urgent transfusion is required. So I consider myself extra blessed that I can help the most number of people out there.

As we move into a new month of this highly unpredictable year, I look back on the previous six months, and I realise that my life is incredibly different now to how it was even that short time ago. I wouldn’t say it is better, but it is nevertheless different, and I’m deriving a lot of joy from discovering this new life of mine. And for me, that is the ultimate unexpected silver lining of all.