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.
I broke the rule, the one rule never to break: to pace.
Shortly after being diagnosed with long covid, this became the guiding principle of my life. It's a simple enough idea. If I want to be able to live at all, I need to pace myself, to rest plenty, to do little. This has been forced on me for months. I used to be unable to go through a day without tremendous effort, dissolving into pain and inertia as soon as my work day was finished. I got better. Slowly, but I got undeniably better. I managed to read more, to watch new to me shows on television and branch out from endless reruns of Murder, She Wrote. I started to cook again, to be able to hoover the house once a week. I walked a little. I walked some more. This April, I even returned to my bicycle. This is when I broke the rule.
It's a well-know formula: when I cycle and it doesn't wreck my body I instantly want to do more. I know I should not. I should confine my rides to what I know is safe. I can go to the GP. I can go to the local shop. I can go to my local park.
On Sunday, I went to the local shop and returned under the sun with these words to my partner. 'Do you want to take a ride to see the blossoms?'
I knew it was a stupid idea as I first thought it and then voiced it. There are blossoms at the very end of my street, blossoms by the pub near the local shop, and then... and then blossoms further than the perimeter I can safely ride within.
I strapped my camping chair and stool to my bicycle rack and we pedalled away. We stopped often, scanning trees with the Seek app to learn their names. We gawked and I photographed. I dropped my gears at the slightest sign of effort and I was fine. I knew this to be a lie and I did not care.
We rested on a bench in the local nature reserve, munching on crisps and drinking so called healthy fizzy drinks. We watched the ducks court and love, we spied on a grey heron fishing, we basked in the sun.
I was fine. I was still fine the following morning when my alarm rang. I expected my body to be rooted to the bed, my head dizzy, my chest tight, my legs cramping but there was none of that. I felt more refreshed than I had in over a week. I swallowed my beta blocker, a gesture I barely have to think about any longer, and got ready for work. My partner drove me to the office and I dissolved.
The computer screen turned on, I deleted the slew of automated e-mails that had landed in my inbox over the week-end and promptly my mind softened and mushed into a blanket of fog.
'Ah...', I thought. 'There is it.'
The day ticked along with the most menial tasks being accomplished with extreme slowness. A ten minute job transformed into a three hours job. It is okay. Thankfully there was nothing urgent in my to-do list, a quiet calendar, and the luxury to be ill.
The following day and then the next, I stayed at home, booked off sick from work. I laid on the sofa or in the bed, slouched in the garden chairs, and waited. Fatigue engulfed my body, took over my mind. My world vanished to the simplest actions: to drink, to rest, to eat, to wait, to wait, to wait.
It is Thursday as I type those last paragraphs and I am better, just about. I have returned to work (from home) and I can manage little tasks, slowly, gently, carefully. I lie on the sofa a lot, stare at the world outside and wait. I pace. I pace. I pace.
When I close my eyes, I can see the blossoms, my legs turning the pedals as if they were a part of my body, my partner and I smiling. I think that if the choice was available to me again, I'd make the same mistake. Sometimes, just sometimes, the pure unadulterated joy of these memories is justification for a crash.