This text was written as I learn to live with Long Covid and attempt to regain my creativity. All the posts and some more info can be found here.
All week I dance with fatigue. My work days are filled with a head of fog that steals away my attention. I collapse on the sofa at home and on the rough carpet under the stairs at work, my legs tucked clumsily under the coffee table. I know where this fatigue comes from, I know the only remedy is time and rest, yet my brain insists on seeking other solutions. Maybe it's my hormones. The pill I'm taking isn't quite right and I need to speak to the GP about it. Maybe it's fasting. It's early days of me being more dutiful about it and it could all be side effects. Maybe it could be a mix of all this. Maybe I'm getting sick. My throat is inexplicably prickly in the morning and I am blowing my nose far too much. Maybe...
I recognise the loop but cannot stop it. I unlock my phone and flitter between WhatsApp, Mastodon, and my e-mails. I don't actually want to check any of them but they keep my brain distracted, unthinking, if only until it becomes acceptable to go to bed.
I collapse then, attempt to read but the words refuse to make sense. I fall into unrest, my brain still wired from all the effort to appear functioning.
'Can we go to the arboretum?'
'Mmmmh?' My partner is half listening, her attention on a book.
'This Sunday. Can we go to the arboretum?'
'Sure.'
I return to sleep as she eventually slides out of bed to get ready for her work day. It is Friday and I have nothing to do, nowhere to be. Later, I will awake and manage a couple of chapters of the book I have on the go before extricating myself from bed to occupy the sofa, horizontally.
A visit to the arboretum is not a clever idea. In the state I am in, I will not be able to walk much, nor will I have the energy to deal with the rumbles of the car, but it is also exactly what I need. I am stuck in suburbia, full of constant noises from traffic, from lawnmowers, from loud music, from screaming children, from reversing delivery vans, from ambulance rushing by our streets whilst the works on the main road shut them off from that easy artery. I need to see the plants. I need to sit in the hush of the trees and listen to the rubbing of their leaves, to the songs of the birds, to the rustle of squirrels. I need to be reminded of what life is like outside of the four walls of my home.
Sunday comes and I awake with a now familiar headache. It presses at my forehead, digs into my eyes. It is growing far too familiar and I hope as hard as I can that this is a temporary phase. My partner is thankfully well enough to drive us to the arboretum so I pack my things, groggily, messily, my body sluggish, my brain forgetful. I climb up and down the stairs far too many times, forgetting this and that and having to backtrack again and again for it. We make it out, the car on, and the roads flying by under the wheels.
We park as close to the gate as we can and slowly, carefully, we walk to the old arboretum, the one filled with the arrogance of wealthy British landowners who thought a good hobby included importing trees from all over the world to plant them in a corner of England.
We walk across the faint lines out of the main paths and under the shelter of a larch, I set up my camping chair and tea paraphernalia. I sit down and breathe. In front of me is a maple with a full crown of burgundy and green star shaped leaves. Next to them is a magnolia with fading flowers and then three old yews that can provide shelter should the rain come. Pine trees launch into the sky, their canopy so far up, I have to crane my neck backwards to see them. The sky is full of greying clouds, the air thick with humidity.
My partner walks away in search of blooming rhododendrons and other spring delight.
I am left with the birds. I open the Merlin app and wait to see familiar names appear. I struggle to recognise the voices of birds but I am growing familiar with some. I know the robins I cannot see, I guess at the chiffchaff that always seem to appear in the app but that I never see, I love the flow of blackbirds' voices, and I effortlessly know the rasp of crows in the distance. Familiar friends are here with me. I smile and greet them one by one as they talk and chase one another across the grass, flying low, beaks full of gathered food. In the larch at my back, a crow settles in and crackle the dry branches. They do not mind my presence, my gestures of pouring and drinking a tea brewed at home.
It is minutes into my settling in this spot with long grass, dangling bluebells, and bright daisies, that I feel my being loosen. It's effortless. I did not have to try any of the relaxing exercises I spend so much energy on in my daily routines to quieten the spinning of my head. Here, I only need to be and I am light. My feet are rooted deep in the earth, tendrils growing in search of mycelia, my heart has slowed to a quiet beating, my breaths gentle and measured. My chest is wide open to the friendship of my kin and I forget that my head hurts, that my body is wracked by fatigue, that pain and fog plague my days. Here, I am well. It doesn't matter that it is only for a moment. I will have to return to the centre of human activity soon but for now I am a feather, unguarded, and it is easy to stop the whirring of my brain.
