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.
CW: in this post I mention blood (menstruation).
First comes the sharp sudden pain in my ovaries, the one that steals my breath away, the one that creates a pause in my sentences and would bend my body in two if I weren't used to it.
Then nothing. I know better than to think it is the end of it.
The inexplicable sadness sets in and engulfs my brain. Irrational and utterly uncontrollable, I can do nothing but give into it, let it spread. This is the true start of the tangled hold of hormones on my body. Long Covid has given them free reign, released the bonds of controls that used to exist.
My brain is fog and every thought has to be extracted from a deep well of treacle and yet I cannot rest. Thoughts spiral and blur out of my mouth in words diarrhea that lose sense as I speak. Knives and forks slip out of my fingers. I am held prisoner inside my own body.
Finally the blood comes. I am released from the stasis of contradictions but the price is pain. My legs grow heavy as lead, seize up and cramp at the slightest movements. My uterus spreads out a dull ache that radiates to my jaw, steals my sense of taste, and every now and again stabs my body in unexpected places.
My partner asks. 'It's difficult to know you're in pain.'
It's been two years of this. I know this pain. I live with this for half of every month. 'I'm a six out of ten, verging on a seven.'
I do not welcome it per se but it's a part of me I have learned to get along with. 'I'm a four now.' I tell her later.
It passes as all things do. Eventually.
'I'm an eight verging on a nine.' I do not want to grit my teeth. I do not want to open my eyes. My back rests against the front door. I focus on the cool air breathing onto a spot of bare skin on my back. It is soft and fresh unlike the fire of my hormones. I know I will need to rise, to walk up the stairs to the bedroom but right now my legs are seized and it is far easier to let the pain consume me, steal my thoughts, and incapacitate me. It will pass. As all things must. As all things must.