Voices – Our Lives in Lockdown | Mental Health Awareness Week 2020

by Adam Smith

Today, during Mental Health Awareness Week, it is two months since the UK lockdown began.

Earlier this month, I reached out to people all across the country to help me paint a picture of the state of our mental health at this extraordinarily difficult time. And though their voices told of hardships and suffering, they also told a far brighter tale: one of togetherness, strength and hope.

‘Voices’ is the culmination of over 40 of those inspirational individuals. This is a story of our lives in lockdown, and of how this atrocity that has torn us apart has actually brought us closer together than ever before.

We’ve got this.

There’s no prison bars on these prisons of ours:
No lock to pick or key to turn – to turn back the hours,
reverse the pendulum’s swing, to take us back.

It’s spring.

It’s spring, but we cannot tend to the flowers.
The sunlight reaches us but the warmth is fleeting,
a new day dawns but it’s not friends or family we’re meeting;
it’s another day in the cell but no cellmates;
another page on this calendar without dates;
another lazy weekend but our bodies are restless
another climb up this mountain – this mountain that’s crestless.

They say home is where the heart is, but perhaps that’s grown outdated:
Home is where our heart aches; and our hearts ache to be reacquainted.

For days. Four days. Four weeks. Two months and rising.
Time flows on like the rivers but our resolve is capsizing:
our buoyancy falters; our compass needles spin: listless –
We long for our shipmates: mums, dads, brothers and sisters,
for friends’ laughter to fill our chambers, to set sail for adventure:
for the advent of a new day – one we won’t let fester,
won’t take for granted, won’t waste, one we’ll cherish and treasure.
One we’ll wholeheartedly embrace. One we hope stays forever.

Let us never forget that this storm which has cleaved us apart
Has also cleaved us together and it has opened our hearts
to how much love we have to share, to those around who hold us dear:
And even in these darkest of times, stop and listen:

It is their voices you can hear.

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