Illustration by Ren O’Hare.

Originally published in print September 2020.

My mum woke me up before 9 am every single weekday morning during lockdown.

It was beyond frustrating. Since I’m the literal opposite of a morning person, it did not suit me at all. The worst part of it all was that it seemed pretty unnecessary. It’s not like I had anywhere to BE. Or much to do. Online classes started late and any social interaction with friends usually happened in the evening. Nobody seemed to be ready for a call or FaceTime before the late afternoon. Everyone was sleeping in. So why all the hassle? 

Aside from the fact that my whole house was buzzing with activity from 7am onwards due to work or school concerns, the reason my mum always seemed to come up with was the fact that “we need a routine if we are to get through lockdown unscathed”. I complained and unwillingly complied, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that maybe she was right… 

After a while, getting up earlier got easier. There was a certain comfort to this rhythm we were getting into that helped me get over the strangeness of these “unprecedented times”. It allowed me to adapt to online learning faster, since it did not feel like I was on holidays, and pushed me to actually complete my essays on time. Allowing lockdown to overpower everything, from my social life to my daily routine, would have probably put the biggest strain on my mental health and would have taken ages to recover from. 

I’m not saying it was perfect, but this small aspect of strict routine allowed me to feel like I was keeping a minimum of control over my life. I couldn’t change much about the events that had gotten me into this situation, but I could have an influence on that specific aspect. That’s not to say I wasn’t glad when holidays arrived and I was once again sleeping in, but at least something positive emerged out of this experience I really was not a fan of in the beginning: a sense of normalcy.