Over the course of February I set out to untangle my crooked body. January had been difficult. I crashed early and appeared unable to recover from this latest bout of PEM (post exertional malaise). I laid in bed. I laid on the sofa bed. I laid on the sofa. I sat at my desk, at home, in the office. I hunched and curled. My body fossilised. My eyes ached from permanent close focus, from permanent darkness.
A friend pointed out that maybe I was suffering from seasonal depression. I could not quite agree. My mind was fine. Surprisingly I remained in good spirits even as my world shrank to the house. I crocheted. I read. I learned. Still, I felt she had a point when it came to my body. Sure my mind was fine but my body was not, so I took her advice and I stepped out of the house.
My footing was uncertain, my scope no more than the exit of my dead end squiggle. It was a start. I repeated the exercise as often as I felt able, gradually expanding my range to the very end of the street where the main artery joins the road full of cars and noise.
I walked and noticed the first signs of daffodils, the timid colour sploshes of crocuses. I heard pigeons and robins and tits and as time went on blackbirds and their deafening arias in the still wintry air.
My body unfurled with the first openings of blossoms and tentative green buds. My mind burst in an array of colours I had forgotten. Maybe I had not been all that well mentally after all.
My back hurts. I have found the upright position once more but it is often fleeting. I find my way back to the curved back of laptop work, of crochet work. Hours go by with my pelvis too forward, my shoulders braced inwards. Every muscle aches with the conscious effort of blossoming, opening, straightening to the sun.
Last night, my partner and I walked to the Chinese restaurant, went for a lap of the cricket pitch as our order cooked. Magnolia scented the air sweet, daffodils circled tree trunks in technicolour defiance of their bare branches, and I dreamed of a little warmth, of players on the pitch, of ice-cream dripping on my hands as I reclined in my chair, crochet work on the grass, book discarded, and eyes open to the blue blue sky.
