A new column looking for rays of light amid the gloom Saying goodbye to FOMO

As week two of a locked-down life comes to a close I’ve been trying to put my finger on something.

How could it be that a life that’s been suddenly stripped bare of all spontaneity and unpredictability; of all of the frivolities that add joy, like restaurants, drinks with friends, shopping and travel – could feel so… relaxing?

Literally overnight, all of our worlds shrank; replaced by a brutally pared-down version of life as we knew it. Instead, we have been handed an extended period of quiet, solitary reflection.

And, of course, there is masses to miss: people, mainly, but also freedom to travel around the city that I love so much. But I’ve surprised myself with the alacrity with which I have adapted to being at home most of the day, and staying in every single night.

In essence, the feeling is not dissimilar to that frisson of secret joy that occurs when someone else (and it’s not the same if you are the one to pull the plug because… guilt) cancels your dinner plans or pulls out of a weekend away due to illness, or unforeseen circumstances.

And then, slowly, it has dawned on me: for the first time in my entire life I have not been suffering from even a shred of the FOMO that has been a lifelong affliction.

I know lots of people suffer from the Fear Of Missing Out, for a variety of reasons. In my case, it is the legacy of growing up the youngest of four children, which left me plagued with a more or less permanent feeling of certainty that high jinks are being had elsewhere, and without me. Not only that: perhaps more fun is even being had because I am not there.

Well. Not any more, it’s not! I have never been as certain that no one else is doing anything much other than trying to hold things together at the moment. No one is going out to do anything exciting without me. No one is meeting up without me; going to more interesting and exotic holiday destinations, or shrieking with Lols that don’t include me. In fact, literally everyone is doing exactly what I am doing: spending most of the day at home where – and this is if they are lucky – they are trying to make sense of home-working, possibly at the same time as grappling with trying to home educate children. All of us, though, are staying in every single night.

Obviously I’m not proud that it should take such a grave and unprecedented event to silence my demons. But there we have it.

There are many challenging and awful things about this time, for all of us. But there is also something unique going on that almost none of us have ever experienced in our lifetime: suddenly, at the very moment in time that Brexit had served to dissect the nation more efficiently than a round of camembert, here we all are, united. We really are all in this together.

Everyone is doing exactly what I’m doing: staying in every single night

Victoria Young