I don’t know about you but it seems to me that COVID has quintupled the aging process. I was 44 when COVID struck in 2020, now, two years on, I feel like I’m turning 54. Ten years for the price of two. How on earth did that happen?

It was two years of mostly staying inside, not going anywhere except for walks in a much less-polluted, almost car-less, environment. It was a time when we had everything delivered straight to the door, when we had time for reflection and introspect.

So, technically at this point, I should be feeling feel like I’ve just come out from a blissful yoga retreat. Instead, I look in the mirror and it feels like I’ve just spent 24 months in a gruelling boot camp where I was always the one to arrive last, red in the face, panting and sore.

For example, pre-COVID, I never even noticed that muscles are involved in the simple actions of sitting down or standing up. Now, each time I do, I grunt an inner, silent, agonised groan of exertion, which startles me each time.

Another example: I have, um, ‘issues’ with my memory. So much so that I’ve become partial to online multiple-choice tests to check if I have dementia (“you don’t… yet”). The thing is, I barely remember my teens – I know this because I try to invoke them quite a bit when I am soapboxing the teens at home. My friend The Nurse remembers our O-level biology syllabus to the letter; my friend The Hippie can recall what she wore for every party she ever attended. While I, I can only remember the dreaded amoebae and tapeworms from biology; and can only recall my cringe social party dress.

And don’t get me started on passwords. The second I need one, it will be the very second that my brain decides to start projecting images of green, fast-scrolling, coded numbers like in The Matrix and I am left there squinting and gawping, with my finger hovering over the number pad and a frowning sales assistant.

Post-COVID, I can no longer remember book titles or authors. They are always at the tip of my tongue, mind you, but always elusive. Yet, I can instantly picture the book cover, design, colour and font and all – but what use is that for conversation purposes? “I read a book with a purple cover last week. I highly recommend it.” 

Up to two years ago, I used to be a champion of multi-tasking. I’d be typing out this column while feeding the dog, while chopping the veg, while texting my friends, while reading the papers. Now? I lose drift even if I stop, like I’m going to do right now, to sip some water...

Where was I? Um, I don’t know.

No matter, I’ll just tell you how post-COVID I decided to brush up my French – ‘brush up’ is, of course, a post-COVID fancy word for having to relearn it all. Forget grappling with an accent, my aging brain can’t cope: I now speak French like Alex Agius Saliba speaks English. “Wii, je swijs Kristina ett vwala Coco mon perrokett.”

I’ve become partial to online multiple-choice tests to check if I have dementia (‘you don’t… yet’)- Kristina Chetcuti

I’m also sporadically suffering from all sorts of weird ailments: acute cramped toes, itchy tooth (!), one-sided neck crick, eczema specifically on just a 1cm x 1cm patch on the back of one hand, one stubbornly blocked ear which only unblocks in time to hear tal-gas early in the morning and a punctual opening of the eyes at 4.37am (never 4.36 or 4.38). I mean, what, but what, on earth?

So, lately, I decided to carry out a little unscientific straw poll among the ladies and gents around me asking them if when they looked in the mirror they saw and felt a decade older.

The result? Most men seem to be happily oblivious: “What do you mean? I just see myself” / “I look in the mirror while shaving and I solve a work problem” / “I’ll say to myself that I don’t look too bad, given my age” / “Hmm yeah, sometimes I go, wow who’s that chap looking back at me?”

The ladies on the other hand made a list of the things they see more than ever before: “the wrinkles” / “the office conflicts”/ “the grey hair” / “the wifi playing up for teleworking” / “parents getting old and less independent” / “Do I have long COVID?” / “Uff how I hate all the extra weight piled on since COVID” / “the children and their exams” / “Oh God I’m feeling so exhausted” / “Should I do a blood test” / “How much will it cost?” and so on, so forth.

So, it was not just me. And if you’re feeling like this too, it’s not just you. Sheryl Sandberg, the super woman of Facebook, resigned this week after aeon years because she was too “tired”. Anne Peterson, an American journalist, whose hair started falling out post-COVID, asked readers if they’d experienced any atypical physical manifestations since COVID and, in a matter of hours, she had thousands of responses. These included the familiar neck pain, eczema, insomnia, brain fog, greying hair, tinnitus, eye-twitching, clutching hands during sleep, unshakeable exhaustion. This is more than growing old, she says, this is our bodies catching up with the age of anxiety. 

I read this and I nodded to myself (small mercies: nodding is still painless). It felt a relief of sorts: so that’s why I feel a decade older.

Then, I did like all Maltese do when they want everything to be well. I opened a packet of Twistees.