By now, those of you that read my blogs know a few facts about me. You know that I’m a 36-year-old mum, a psychotherapist in training, and I suffer from MS. What you don’t yet know is that I have a second autoimmune condition called Palindromic Rheumatoid Arthritis and today I’m angry, I’m livid. I’m sad and disheartened by what’s happening in our country.

I’m not sure this blog will make any difference at all…. to anyone… or to the current situation but I’ll write it anyway, because my heart is breaking. It hurts so badly right now I’m not sure I can put into words the way I feel. But I’ll try do that while I try not to cry. If I had to describe my sadness and fear in the same way we ask our clients to do in therapy, I’d tell you the sadness is in my chest, it’s pitch black, it’s deep, it’s scary, and there is no way out of it.

Despite my conditions, I lived a good enough life till Covid19. However now, my medications, especially both together, put me at risk. Basically, the risk of hospitalization is high and complications just as high. So, you can only imagine the way I feel right now. If I log onto social media or any of the local news portals, I see chaos, and I see a government making a mockery of this virus. Worst still, I see a government saying nothing at all….all while cases keep increasing and sheer panic and frenzy hits this rock.

In a matter of days, I feel that once again, my ground is shaken. It was happening. The infamous second wave we’ve all spoken about, the second wave that I believe we were sarcastically told was only found in the sea. Yet the reality is, we knew this was bound to happen despite everyone’s best efforts a few months ago…. because it’s been made pretty clear to me that the virus is a war we cannot win, unless we have a vaccine, so it saddens me that our nation’s government thought otherwise.   It saddens me that the public was told that we had won this war when to me we obviously hadn’t. We aren’t stronger than nature. Stronger than God. We are human, we are vulnerable, each and every one of us. So undoubtedly, we also all make mistakes, but I hope that we as a nation realize the mistakes we are making and stop putting lives at risk, over the financial gain of a few. We will all survive if we spend one damn summer not partying the nights away or getting on a damn plane to travel the world. But we won’t all survive if we keep up this attitude. How spoilt have we become? How selfish? This road will lead to families being broken. It will lead to death. To nationwide fear, anxiety and trauma. The economy will not thrive as is being claimed. The economy will fail. Jobs will be lost because people will get sick, mentally and physically and their families need to care for them. . . or worse, cry for them.

I’m so tired. The thoughts are exhausting. Social media has become exhausting. So once again, when I feel like I’m panicking, I go back to my teachings and I try find the ground I’ve lost. I focus on what I can control and sadly I cannot control the government nor the parties, nor the travellers, but I can control my thoughts and how I’m going to live in the near future, how I’m going to live today under the new circumstances … and today, I choose hope! I chose to live as best as I can. I know that I need to take care, of myself as well as my family, so I need to be vigilant. I might sound like a broken record because I’ve said it before and I seem to always end my Covid related journals on the same note. But I can be vigilant, by wearing my fucking mask, to pretty much everywhere that isn’t my house, and I wash my damn hands every time I can… and I hope that, will be enough. I will not be locking down this time, it’s not mentally or financially feasible for us to do that, but I will be careful where to go, what to touch, who to meet. I will be creating a social bubble with a few closest and dearest, that are being careful like me, and I will hope and trust that God has a bigger plan….because we sure as hell don’t!

Making it alive to the end of the year and beyond is not something I worried about. But logic and reason make me realise that I didn’t simply because I forgot. We were so consumed by our fast-paced life that we just forgot we could die tomorrow. We took so much for granted, including remaining alive till next month or next year. But it isn’t is it. It never was. I more than anyone, should know that because I’ve been thrown a few curve balls along the way. I think that remembering this, remembering our humanity, isn’t possibly the worst thing that can happen. Because from this place we are humbled, or at least some of us are, and we are reminded that we aren’t invincible. We are reminded to be careful, to appreciate each and every day and to appreciate our families and friends, because in the end, that’s what matters.

In the meantime, we should also continue to hope that the mistakes we make as a nation will be smaller than those made thus far. We hope that we are still in time to contain this virus and we realize, as intelligent human beings and as a community, that together, we do not need the authorities to tell us what to do….we can decide that all on our own. We retract, out of our own free will, we take one or two steps back, and take at least some of the precautions, and make some of the sacrifices we were wise enough to make just a couple of months ago…. because that, is the only way we can really win this war. It is clear now that 2020 will be a part of history; whether we make Malta’s history a good one, depends on each and every one of us. Hope, they say is the last thing that dies, and I’ll be holding on to it, for as long as I can.