Covid 19, mental health and National Lottery Day.

Covid 19, mental health and National Lottery Day. 

Friday is normally the punctuation point of the week, the full stop, a temporary conclusion to toil and industry. For those of us who have now retired on mental health grounds it's the last day of the week and a chance to look back on recent events with perfect objectivity. You don't particularly mind about the substance of the week because every day is precious and a gift. Somehow the world will never really make any sense because there are travesties of justice and indefinable elements that just defy explanation. So you get on with the business of life and try to blot everything out that may be causing you any mental distress. 

Simply Autism, a condition you were diagnosed with quite a long time ago, plays tricks with your mind and distorts your reality, rather like a heavy downpour of rain which car windscreen wipers can never remove since the rain seems to intensify and you can never actually see the traffic in front of you. My Aspergers Syndrome condition is neither a hindrance or help but in these difficult Covid 19 times or post Covid times it can have a detrimental effect on your mental health because reality has escaped through the windows and left you feeling numb, shocked and dumbfounded. 

At the moment dear reader my sense of smell and taste has completely deserted me and, to be honest, my whole mindset has been gripped by some terrifying fear of the unknown. Your body becomes reduced to the point of emotional meltdown. You can't move properly with any enthusiasm, your anxieties become heightened and you begin to think that everything is your fault. Clearly this is not the case but the things you could normally engage with are now psychologically beyond your reach. You may feel like going to the gym and working off the frustrations and irrational thoughts in your head but now you feel stuck. 

The problem is that everything is blocked, out of order, not working, feelings now like dark holes in your mind, ever present, raging inside your head, tormenting you with a sense of inadequacy. Covid 19 has totally blurred the lines of perspective, a distortion of your focus on everyday life. The voices you used to be able to hear are of course the ones you can still recognise but the rest of the world is some distant exotic island where everything now feels haunting, disembodied, mysterious and yes, quite frightening. In a manner of speaking all of your faculties are no longer functioning. 

As somebody who has Autism, structure and routine are of paramount importance and without it you feel lost and robbed of the activities you used to take for granted. You miss the company of people who were friends with similar backgrounds and although you tell yourself that this is not the end of the world, you still miss their company and friendship. So how do you fill your time without thinking that the world is caving in on you. You try to pull yourself together because everybody insists that if you do that then things will seem much better than you think they are.

But your whole body is seeking some means of mental salvation, an immediate antidote to all the craziness inside your head. So you resort to Zoom, that glorious modern day video conference call device where people from all corners of the world can now meet up with each other on your computer screen and speak to each other at the same time. Zoom is now that wonderful piece of technology that enables us all nowadays to see each other, hear each other and talk to each other as if they were in the same room. 

Zoom is sociable, social, a way of meeting new people whom we would never ordinarily had the opportunity to make the acquaintance of. For those who have been working from home for the last 18 months or so this may have been just like any other day in the office, factory floor, shop, school or university. Besides, things haven't essentially changed for you. Zoom has now become your important link with whomsoever you may be working at the moment. Now we exchange the language, mannerisms and behaviour that would normally have been common practice in those days of normality with our Internet companions. 

So let's stop for a minute. It's time to stop dwelling on your mental health shortcomings and everything Covid- 19 related. Today folks it's National Lottery Day. Now there's a thought. It's always advisable to avoid thinking about something directly connected with the everyday news agenda. If we keep pondering on the death and destruction in Afghanistan, the now increasing number of innocent civilians who have perished in that part of the world and a myriad other disasters, the more likely we are to lose touch with the good things in life that we simply take for granted and may have forgotten about.  

And yet it's National Lottery Day. During the mid 1990s Noel Edmonds introduced the very first National Lottery draw to a captive audience on BBC One. At the time there was much excitement and you tried to imagine what it would have been like at that first session of Bingo all those decades and years ago. You try to think of all those first betting shops, that moment in your life that sparked off a gambling pastime which, for obsessives, tragically became an addiction. So you filled in your betting slip and sat down and watched a TV screen in some fascination as your winning horse made you richer than you might have been had you not taken the plunge. But how dangerous and foolhardy the Lottery has now become although there can be no harm in the occasional punt. 

The Lottery has now become a well established weekly fixture in your daily life. There's the Lottery, the mid week Lottery, the Euro draw, the Thunder Ball and the Lotto. Now the chances are that whenever you pop into your local corner shop for a pint of milk and a loaf of bread, you'll probably find a queue of people with Lottery scratch cards. Now this is the point where you begin to question the necessity to spend goodness knows how much money in the vague hope of  collecting a small million or a couple of hundred thousand pounds. The truth is that this won't happen and you're kidding yourself into believing that a handsome Lottery victory will dramatically change your life overnight. 

For how long now have we been deluded into thinking  that wealth is now the key to permanent happiness? We think that vast sums of money will guarantee a stress free life and then those materialistic possessions that we may have fantasised about but could never afford are the only route to life fulfilment. The truth is perhaps closer to home. What happens when you've acquired that house in the country with six bedrooms, three conservatories, horse stables and paddocks, library studies, elegant kitchens with copper kettles, bathrooms with three jacuzzis, an Olympic sized swimming pool, balconies and verandas with columns wherever you look. And a garden that backs out onto the stunning beauty of the Lake District. 

Then of course we return to reality. We think back to those years before the football Pools coupon when a nation of football supporters would come home from their local teams Saturday match and dream of fantastic lifestyles where the neighbours we used to know just ignore you because you've got millions in the bank and they've barely a brass farthing in their pocket. 

Still, today is National Lottery Day and you never know. It could be you but probably won't be you because it'll be anybody but you. So who cares anyway because what are you supposed to do when you've got too much money. You'll never have to scrape a living again and that speedboat you've always craved is yours to take out on the high seas. So you try golf and tennis. But then how many rounds of golf or sets of tennis can you fit in during the day. So please enjoy National Lottery Day because it merely is a Lottery and pot luck. If you've got your mental and emotional health then that is your personal Lottery. Every day is sweet as wine.