It’s 2021 and the COVID 19 situation is worse than ever. People are dying, they had to open yet another ITU at the local hospital and now we have closed down all non-essential establishments and schools and people are being encouraged to work from home.

In other words, we have all basically been stopped in our tracks. And it is very necessary because we need to get these numbers down.

This is not the first time I’ve had to put my life on pause. When I had to do a bunch of fertility treatments in the hope of getting pregnant, I was constantly in a state of pause: I was training for a marathon and I stopped because I thought it may be a bad idea to do such strenuous exercise if perhaps I was pregnant. I didn’t go on auditions for plays because if I were pregnant I’d maybe have to drop out. If I was feeling ill, I would not take medication just in case.

It was not a good time. I had stopped living and simply started existing from period to period. Really quite terrible.

This kind of pause is significantly different, but the feeling is the same: the feeling of restriction and uncertainty and worry.

And also a little bit hopeless.

I had already put my career on pause for longer than I had planned. I was looking forward to my daughter starting nursery and maybe learning how to spend some time away from me. Now we are swamped in uncertainty all over again.

I am not complaining. Because in comparison to some, my problems are nothing. My family is far from starving and we have all we need.

But we are all definitely on pause. The only difference this time is that I’m really scared. This virus is new, nobody truly knows how it will behave. I don’t want anything bad to happen to the people I love.

All I wish for is that while the whole country is on pause, we stop, reflect and think about how it is up to us to control this monster so that maybe we can all press play again one day.