It's hard to count how many young people live alone in a rental house in a megacity with 25 million permanent residents.
Some sociologists tried to portray them: in their twenties and thirties, with relatively decent jobs but not rich enough qualifications, leaving their hometowns to work hard in big cities, and part of their emotions are pinned on the pets they feed.
Before the arrival of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, 23-year-old Luo Lu was enjoying this life.
She graduated from a college in Beijing a year ago and came to Shanghai, the city where her boyfriend lives, to join a public relations company, waiting for her to graduate while working.
Her base is more than ten square meters, in a 4-storey old house in the center of the city, the neighbor's kitchen downstairs is the only way for her to go up and down the stairs.
In her spare time, Luo Luwo paints oil paintings in her hut, does handicrafts, and rides her bicycle to check in various exhibitions and markets. "I found more than a dozen cafes and delicious dessert shops along the road."
She "struggles to maintain order in her life and her heart" in a strange city.
The "sense of order" was completely broken during the 87-day home quarantine.
"In the beginning, I was angry, crying bitterly and talking to my friends. Later, I was tired of everything." Luo Lu said, "My emotion regulation system is malfunctioning."
Luo Lu's feelings are not unique.
This spring, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Beijing, which accommodate a large number of young people, have all pressed the "slow travel button" because of Omicron.
Young people in different cities also have the experience of empathizing with each other because of the epidemic - "I didn't speak a word to anyone face to face from Monday to Sunday."
At present, the epidemic situation in major cities is easing, and life is returning to normal in an orderly manner.
Several young people interviewed recalled the life and psychological state they faced during the epidemic, "It's not just a person who will encounter a moment of collapse, I hope we can all get out of the predicament of negative emotions."
living alone
The last time Luo Lu left home for work this year was March 10.
The next day, she started working from home and shopping online.
Apart from doing nucleic acid and taking couriers and takeaways, she has never left the house again.
For the first 20 days at home, the delivery did not stop, and the takeaway was normal. She placed orders at the preferential prices of different grocery shopping platforms as usual.
Online office, cooking, fitness, the whole person is in a "relatively calm state".
"I'm not a person who is afraid of loneliness. It's better not to have low-quality social interaction." Luo Lu said that she was used to living alone.
She added an induction cooker. When she is not busy at work, she likes to study food. Most of the time, the "fan friend" is a stray cat that she picked up.
She grew up in Wuhan to 17 years old, went to Beijing to study, and went to Shanghai to work after graduation. Her family and good friends were not in Shanghai.
Behind the rental house she lives in is an old neighborhood in Shanghai, through which she bikes to work every day.
I also occasionally go out for a walk with my boyfriend in the middle of the night, "it's a different kind of scenery".
After staying at home, she sat with her cat by the windowsill and looked out at the road, the overhead and a "slim" tree that was six stories tall.
In big cities, more and more people are used to living alone.
The 32-year-old Zhao Tong joked, "I don't know if I am a 'Beijing young man' or a 'Beijing middle-aged'".
In the 7 years she worked in Beijing, she shared a house with strangers for the first 4 years, both boys and girls.
For her, the ten-square-meter second bedroom "is a place to sleep and check her mobile phone." She likes to work overtime in the company, and spends most of her time and energy on work.
Now, she rents a one-bedroom by herself. The rent has doubled, but her salary has risen even more.
She began to enjoy "free lifestyle and time": buying carpets, projectors, tablecloths and curtains were all ordered online, and there were always flowers open on windowsills and cabinets; hurry home after get off work, change clothes and go nearby Running in the park at night, "must have one day" on weekends to invite friends to eat, go shopping and watch dramas.
Zhao Tong has also acquired some skills from living alone - not only how to deal with cockroaches.
The "wolf alarm" she carried with her was crowded in the subway. After returning home every day, she immediately locked the door. The name of the consignee of all couriers and takeaways was "Mr. Zhao".
Data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs shows that in 2018, the single adult population in my country was as high as 240 million, of which more than 77 million adults lived alone.
One netizen wrote that this is a very friendly era for "living alone".
For example, people who can’t cook can order takeout, there is a taxi software for transportation, intra-city freight is available for moving house, there is a chauffeur-driven driver for socializing and drinking, a doctor can accompany you when you see a doctor, and sometimes you can find an “errand” to pick up things for yourself or even if you don’t know how to cook. Line up to buy train tickets, repair water and electricity, install furniture, all provide door-to-door service.
Zhou Zhiqiang, a professor at the School of Literature of Nankai University, once said in an interview with a reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that when a closely-connected society and technology are highly developed, people only need to do what they do to live a good life. Dependent on others for a living; improved living standards also allow people to cope with various risks and afford various types of consumption.
However, in the big cities and in the process of fighting in Omicron, these social supports had to disappear briefly in the lives of young people.
During the first month and a half of being at home, Luo Lu's anxiety was focused on grocery shopping. "It seems that she has formed a mentality that she feels very insecure if she doesn't buy anything every day." She needs to go to the food delivery platform from time to time to check if any stores are open. Can buy a little is a little.
In addition, the new skill she must master is to find the materials that a person needs to live in a short period of time, and collect enough for a starting fee of one or two hundred yuan.
During that time, Luo Lu's mobile phone displayed the app battery usage and communication software ranked first, followed by Meituan and Ele.me.
Li Youran, who has been working in Shanghai for 4 years, is isolated in a house shared by three people.
She bought a lot of oatmeal and milk.
In the shared room, three people share a refrigerator. She was the first to store vegetables, and only used one-third of her own space. Two boxes of eggs were placed in a corner of her room.
Among the 3 people, she has the most material reserves.
Two weeks after the lockdown, Li Youran has changed from searching for recipes for cooking to cooking a pot of green vegetables. She joked, "The pot is tired."
Another boy classmate of hers only eats one meal a day and eats 12 boxes of instant noodles a month.
Community group purchases have become increasingly abundant, ranging from eggs, vegetables, carrots to coffee and bread. Later, they also group purchased seasonal crayfish.
The crayfish moved her heart, but she could only think about it, she only had a frying pan and a small pot for boiling cereal milk, and the seasoning was incomplete.
My mother in my hometown would nagging more than a dozen times a day, worried that she would have nothing to eat.
Sometimes anxiety can't be resolved, and tears will flow down when talking.
In the eyes of her mother, she is still the child who has never been in the kitchen and only loves to order takeout.
Father quietly contacted Li Youran and asked her to call home every day, only she could comfort her mother.
Li Youran quickly thought of a countermeasure, and she "stealed pictures" in the circle of friends.
One of her colleagues is an "exquisite kitchen girl" who posts the meals she cooks almost every day.
She saved it, and then carefully cut off the background, leaving only a part of the edge of the plate, and sent it to the family group.
Mother sends several thumbs-up emojis under "She Cooks" every day.
isolated
Balance in life is only one aspect that young people living alone need to maintain.
According to an article published online by The Lancet, under the influence of the epidemic, the number of people suffering from depression worldwide will increase by about 53 million in 2020, an increase of 27.6%.
The number of people with anxiety disorders increased by about 76 million, an increase of 25.6%.
The prevalence of depression and anxiety disorders among women and young adults is more vulnerable to the pandemic.
When she first started to isolate at home, Li Youran was faintly happy. Apart from not having to get up early to squeeze the subway and save time for commuting every day, she still had her own thoughts-she had double eyelid surgery when she came home for the New Year, and now she has not recovered enough. nature.
In her schedule, she wants to get thinner and whiter before summer, and get a boyfriend before the end of the year.
When I was at home for almost a month, my colleague told Li Youran that he had recently become inexplicably irritable, "I don't know if it was because of work or the time at home for a long time."
During the period of working from home, they only receive a basic salary of 3,000 to 4,000 yuan, and the performance salary will be made up after returning to work.
Zhao Tong, who is in Beijing, has a similar feeling.
After the Omicron variant appeared in Beijing, she and her colleagues began working from home.
At home, Zhao Tong was pushed around by work.
During the day, I deal with domestic business. At 7 o'clock in the evening, I hurried to eat and then went to bed. I got up at 2 o'clock in the middle of the night to connect new projects with foreign customers.
There are no less than a dozen people who "talk" to her online every day, but Zhao Tong is still "frightened".
In the WeChat group, she complained about the troubles she encountered with a few close girlfriends. The girlfriends comforted her, told her jokes, and shared happy moments in life.
After a week, the WeChat group was less active.
"No one likes 'Xianglin's Wife', everyone has their own life to live." Zhao Tong said.
Li Youran also noticed his own changes.
For example, when the company held an online meeting, when it was her turn to introduce the implementation plan, a colleague interrupted her speech several times, intentionally or unintentionally, to express her views that were inconsistent with the plan.
Li Youran felt inexplicably angry and retorted on the spot with an almost stern tone.
That night she "stomach pain" and complained to several friends on WeChat.
When she was queuing up to do nucleic acid testing, she was still thinking about the actions of her colleagues yesterday, "the more she thought about it, the more angry she became."
Later, she reflected that it was not a big deal. There were indeed many imperfections in her plan.
If she acts according to her usual style, she will definitely maintain her demeanor and finish the speech in a leisurely manner.
"But at that point it's going to 'explode'."
Yao Yuhong, a professor at the Mental Health Education and Counseling Center of Tongji University, introduced at a mental health salon organized by the Narada Public Welfare Foundation that lack of face-to-face communication can easily lead to violent conflicts, "I don't think who has made a big change here, but we They have accumulated a lot of negative emotions, and these negative emotions can be contagious."
Chen Chen, who is a graduate student at a university in Shanghai, also found that "everyone's mood has become particularly irritable." People often quarrel while chatting in WeChat groups.
She remembers a time when a classmate sang in the dormitory and played music at 10 pm, and a fierce quarrel broke out in the WeChat group.
Another time, because of the box lunch problem, some students complained that the box lunch was not delicious. A boy said that the box lunch was not bad, so some people rushed to his dormitory, and the two sides had a physical conflict.
"In the eyes of the outside world, we are a well-protected group of people. We are guaranteed three meals a day. We only need to concentrate on our studies. But in fact, we also have difficulties that cannot be explained." Many of Chen Chen's classmates were troubled by insomnia. , In a dormitory of more than ten square meters, she and her roommate "basically only have two states of lying down and sitting, and it is difficult to exercise."
Thinking of the days when he was banned, Li Youran said that he basically "relied on himself to ensure three meals a day, worrying about whether the salary was enough for the rent, working, sleeping and exercising in a rented house facing the north of 11 square meters. If you wanted to fight face to face, you had to smash the opposite roommate. door."
During that time, there were many screenshots of text messages from various mental health centers that were widely circulated on the Internet, saying, "During the quarantine period, if you chat with flowers and trees, it is normal and you don't need to call for consultation. Only when those flowers and trees start to answer It is only necessary to seek assistance if you have a problem.”
Zhao Tong forwarded this joke to the circle of friends, "It's been a month since I stayed at home, and the roses dried on my windowsill haven't spoken to me yet."
Psychological problems in home isolation really cannot be ignored.
A number of psychological consultants told reporters that one of the differences between the new crown pneumonia epidemic and previous disasters is the need for isolation.
People who live alone are susceptible to depression. Long-term loss of emotional flow with the outside world will increase the possibility of depression, anxiety and other mental problems.
Li Xiangzhi, the operation director of the "Crossing" platform for the depression mutual aid and recovery community, found that after the epidemic, the need for people and people to help each other has become more urgent. The epidemic has brought isolation, and everyone's need to talk to each other is forced to be realized online.
"Whether it's an air crash, an earthquake or other natural disasters, everyone will gather together to find a way to keep warm. But the epidemic needs to be isolated to cut off the source of infection, which is very exciting to people," Yao Yuhong said, "because people are in trouble when they are in trouble. We need to hug each other, pat each other, express support or convey warmth. But at this time, it becomes impossible, the connection between people becomes relatively difficult and blurred, and the way of network connection may not be fully adapted to everyone.”
trough
A young man who lived alone described to reporters the change in his mentality after the three-month lockdown: in March he was "very frightened", in April he was "extremely angry", and in May, he was "numb and felt nothing." ”.
"Sometimes I will feel very low, and then I will adjust it a little bit, but it will not work after a period of time, and it will continue to cycle like this."
So does Luo Lu.
"I am a person with relatively strong psychological endurance, but the combination of the epidemic, relationship, and work has overwhelmed me." Luo Lu said that she could not realize when her emotions began to decline, but It is "always fluctuating and falling".
"I have no problems with my body, I don't have to worry about eating and drinking, but once my mind collapses, it will be completely useless."
During the three months at home, the relationship between Luo Lu and her boyfriend reached the most tense moment in the past three years.
Trivial matters often become the fuse. One party's low mood can quickly cause two people's internal friction, followed by quarrels, and each other finds problems from each other.
The quarrels became more and more frequent, and the word "break up" was once popped up.
During the epidemic, the only time Luo Lu felt "life is back" was when she was taken to Zhejiang for isolation as a close connection.
That time, she was wearing protective clothing, holding a bottle of alcohol in her hand, and went through more than ten hours of transport.
Before leaving, her suitcase was full of vegetables and snacks she bought.
What's more important to her is that there are hundreds of shops within 3 kilometers of the quarantine hotel, and the delivery fee for take-out is only 10 or 20 yuan, and there is no need to fight quickly.
There, she drank milk tea.
After returning to Shanghai, she also tried to capture some changes for the better.
For example, the materials distributed by the community began to increase. On the day she returned home from the quarantine hotel, she received nearly 20 catties of food.
But her negativity peaked after 80 days at home.
"Copy and paste every day, often day and night upside down and can't sleep at night".
On June 6th, at two o'clock in the middle of the night, Luo Lu was not drowsy while brushing the nucleic acid report with no results.
On the second day after Shanghai announced the gradual lifting of the blockade, a positive infection appeared in the community across the road from her home.
She was crying at home.
Yao Yuhong explained that more often, people's emotions affect judgment.
When a negative emotion is very strong, it is very easy to see all situations as very bad, and then there will be wrong judgments and extensions.
In her opinion, the uncontrollability of the epidemic will make people feel very frustrated, and their sense of security will decrease. People may begin to doubt, question and criticize, and start to pick faults.
"One of our assumptions is that if we really catch the initiator or the weak link in the middle, this problem will be solved easily. When the people who should be united are divided into the fault party and the victim party, it is even more divided."
"Maybe sometimes our frustration comes from our hope that this thing will end tomorrow, but none of us can control when it will end, so every time this expectation brings new disappointment, this It may also be where our mentality needs to be adjusted." said Kevin Xu, the founder of Daru Psychology and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology.
control
Controlling your emotions is not an easy task.
Chen Chen tried to find the reason for his emotional ups and downs.
She remembers a time when she was on social media throughout the day.
To this day, there is still a picture lingering in her mind. A person going to quarantine is bathing in a tent. The rain kept falling and the wind blew away the tent. The person was lying on the ground without clothes.
"I've been reading very negative news and can't stop, and basically I can't see positive information."
"From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, negative news is easier to spread than good news," Xu Kevin believes. "Because of evolution, we need to be more sensitive to dangerous information. Then we are prone to vicarious trauma, but you When we can’t do anything, we get caught up in negative emotions.”
He suggested that under the epidemic, sometimes you may need to put down your mobile phone and pick up a book.
"The book contains long-term historical wisdom. Through reading, you will find that human beings have actually experienced countless disasters, including our country. The more difficult times are, the more long-termism may be necessary, not only to see the current difficulties , but also to see our long-term advantages and hope.”
During the three months at home, Li Youran's weight reached the lowest point in five years.
At 7:30 p.m. every day, she started doing intermittent aerobic exercise for 1 hour in the 11-square-meter rental house.
With limited space, she had to stay focused, or she would "poke her toes on the legs of the bed while jumping."
She found a "sense of control" in her body. "When many aspects of career and life are out of control, controlling your weight and muscles will bring some happiness, and exercise promotes the secretion of dopamine."
Luo Lu felt the same way.
"Laying down and laying down a rotten life may be satisfying in the short term, but after a period of time, it will still make people feel empty and guilty. Try to be self-disciplined in life, lose weight and improve your posture, which can make people happy a little."
In the community where Li Youran is located, the property management and the neighborhood committee began to organize volunteers to participate in the organization of nucleic acid testing and distribution of materials.
When the epidemic is severe and supplies are relatively in short supply, the volunteer group is the most active.
She remembered that dozens of volunteer spots were snatched up by group friends as soon as they were released.
Li Youran followed the video to learn how to put on and take off protective clothing. Apart from "worrying that it will affect her roommates if she gets infected," she "all got happiness" in her volunteer work.
Kevin Xu believes that in a relatively bad time period, if you can actively participate in improving the situation and do something for everyone, it is actually very self-affirming and an effective way to spend the difficult time.
Yao Yuhong said frankly that, as a psychologist, during the 42 days in school, she had a period of declining hope and confidence, and she had experienced moments of anger.
She also "felt an exaggerated death anxiety and an exaggerated sense of powerlessness" because she was isolated from her family.
At that time, she would "make up stories" and joked, "Will it happen that after going out for many years, the husband will marry another wife? Will I be permanently separated from my family like this?"
She reflected that the anger was because she always wanted to find out where the problem was, "as if I could still have a control and understanding of this matter."
Yao Yuhong later recovered some sense of strength from her work, "from a victim to a helper".
She kept telling her students to have hope, but her heart would also be shaken - "That's a normal stress response."
She will also contact her teachers, friends to chat, and then calm down again.
In Li Xiangzhi's view, after the outbreak of the epidemic, many people will feel some discomfort. These discomforts may not be serious enough to need to seek medical treatment or find a psychologist, but they may indeed feel stressed or anxious from time to time. Therefore, the public's attention to mental health is particularly important.
"We want to prevent these tiny, neglected problems from building up and creating a 'black swan' event in mental health."
Luo Lu realized that her negative emotions were appearing more and more frequently, "I have to start saving myself", she wrote to herself in the file transfer assistant "to salvage myself".
She found some ways to help herself find happiness.
For example, when a wave of negative emotions comes, "do something that will pay off in the short term without using your brain".
She forced herself to wash the dishes, mop the floor, clean and then take a shower.
"Looking at a clean self and a clean home, suddenly it's not that uncomfortable." She turned off the negative news about the epidemic and replaced it with a relaxing variety show or TV series. answer to the question".
"I really hate when people tell me 'be strong,' 'it's getting better,'" Luo Lu said. "Just try to be happy."
Sometimes she could not sleep due to insomnia, so she simply did some work that had to be done but had to be delayed before, and her inner anxiety was much less.
In a rental house of more than ten square meters, it is difficult for her to distinguish between "work" and "life" in terms of space.
In order to increase the weight of "life", she began to study recipes, try hydroponics, do some crafts, or put on makeup and take pictures.
Yao Yuhong conducted a psychological survey in a university. She found that from the beginning of March to the end of May, young college students had the most complicated mood and the most ups and downs during the epidemic.
Some of the people in it will become more vulnerable, and some may be more resilient, mainly because of the outside world.
The destructive factors brought by the outside world include the limitation of living resources and rights, the influence of the behavior or emotions of the surrounding people, or the desire to break constantly.
In addition to self-regulation, maintaining reason and hope, and so on, those protective factors come from peer support, such as companionship, the good mood of others or the rendering of good qualities, feeling the help and contribution of others and participating in it, contributing oneself the power of.
cherish
Another "prescription" for Luo Lu is to contact her family. The epidemic has made her miss her family more than ever.
She said frankly that she has always been a person who likes to hide everything in her heart, and reports good news to her family instead of bad news.
But one day, she couldn't stand it anymore, and called her family, crying and venting, "relating her tragic situation and the speechless experience she encountered."
Mom told her to go home quickly, and grandma and her chatted on the phone for an hour and a half.
Under the comfort of her family, she calmed down a lot.
On June 1, Shanghai was lifted in an orderly manner, and Luo Lu’s unit has not yet been set for the official resumption of work.
She decided to go home.
She applied to her unit to go back to work at home in Wuhan, and "must go home and live with her family".
On June 10, Luo Lu pulled her suitcase and lined up at the "passenger lane for passengers from Shanghai" at Hankou Station.
Ever since she left home, she has greedily observed everything: middle-aged people discussing how to reimburse the cost of quarantine with their bosses, migrant workers holding plastic bags, and people who take out crumpled paper nucleic acid certificates from their pockets The uncle of the pole.
In a quarantine hotel in Wuhan, Luo Lu took a photo of a "sunset with some pink".
"The sunset has fallen into my heart," she told her friends, "and I can feel good again." She will also because of the "welcome home, and wish you all the best in your quarantine life" because of the delivery boy who came to deliver daily necessities to her. the message and the eyes were wet.
The only thing she feels guilty about is for her cat, which she can only foster with a caring colleague.
A friend of Luo Lu also decided to return to his hometown to rest for a while.
Friends are not used to buses without code scanning, and when they see roadblocks, they will think of the railings during the quarantine, especially want to make new friends, go out for a haircut and come back, forcing themselves not to wash their hands with hand sanitizer.
After the 7-day centralized quarantine is lifted, Luo Lu will also undergo 7-day health monitoring at home.
Although she can't go out yet, she has already started planning a trip to Yunnan with her boyfriend.
Before they set off from Wuhan together, her boyfriend would also have a meal with her family.
Her life seems to be able to return to the state before home for a short time: lovers don't hate each other, they don't question each other, they can go out to play, eat delicious food, face the pressure of work and overtime calmly, and get happiness from it and sense of achievement.
She wants to find different friends in Wuhan to chat and play. She feels that there are very few friends who can make friends after work.
She sighed, "Young people in the city are quite lonely."
Li Youran began to return to work at the company. She envied Luo Lu, "Going home is too tempting for a migrant worker, but it's also too luxurious." She moved twice in Shanghai, both of which were shared with strangers.
During this epidemic, she "talked to her roommate for the first time".
The roommate made chocolate croissants and gave her afternoon tea.
On June 1st, roommate Zhang Luozhu had a meal together in the living room of the rental house, chatting about "Wang Xinling Boy" during the meal, and occasionally fell into the embarrassment of no topic.
A week after Shanghai lifted the lockdown, Li Youran invited friends to go to a family farm in the suburbs to pick.
She didn't want to think about whether the sun was in the sun or the number of insects biting people. She only wanted to go to the crowd - "There is always a mentality that if you don't go out today, you may not be able to do it tomorrow."
But my friend declined, because I didn't go out for a long time, and my friend felt that "I am very panic when I see people, and it takes time to get used to it".
"Try to accept your anxiety, the more you want to control it, the more it will get out of control. When we encounter such a big thing, I am anxious and see what happens to him," Xu Kaiwen said. "If you expect the epidemic to disappear tomorrow, Then you're going to be disappointed tomorrow. So lower your expectations and see if we adapt better."
He mentioned that at MIT's graduation ceremony this year, the president introduced a study that "saying thank you" is very good for brain health.
We have to learn to deal with many emotions without letting them control our judgment and our brains.
"We love each other more than ever, and love specific people and things." Luo Lu said that her wish today is - "I hope everyone in the community tonight will be negative."
(At the request of the interviewee, Luo Lu, Li Youran, Chen Chen, and Zhao Tong are pseudonyms)
China Youth Daily, China Youth Daily reporter Ma Yuping Source: China Youth Daily