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.
This is a lightly edited copy of a handwritten text from my diary. I could polish it but this is not what these entries are about.
I am coming to realise once more that I fill my time with an endless roll of YouTube videos. Today I turned off the computer after a while and turned on the radio instead. Silence would be nice to return to but I am a little daunted. I know I have the ability to enjoy it. I know I need it but I have grown unused to it, and I am a little afraid. What if my mind let free spirals anew? Of course it is silly because if it does spiral the solution is silence not noise, silence and rest and breathing.
Rest cannot come from the noise of YouTube and mindless scrolling. I need to police myself, to slow, to let myself return to a quieter, peaceful inner life. I need to make the leap to trust myself. I am too easily distracted and forget what it it like to focus deeply, to lose myself in one task. I am no longer able to do so as much as I used to but I can at least be available to it when my energy levels allow for it.
I need to reintroduce rituals to my life, slow, considered. I want to truly notice, to connect to the world and all of my kins within. Yes I still notice but it is out of habit. I pass through this world like a ghost. I think this relates to the disconnect I feel with my body. I am so little in it, it is dissolving into a foreign tongue, a map I cannot decipher. I forget to inhabit my spaces, to find the rhythm of my life. I wait. I am afraid of a relapse and do not want to believe I am okay at the moment. I wait. I am afraid of any misstep between now and my trip to France so I do not let myself live. I block all thoughts. I disengage with the world. I forget I can live within a set of safe parameters.
The last two weeks have not helped. The heat and then the illness of the cold forced me to put all of my energy into surviving. Two weeks of life on hold and it is easy to follow these patterns.
I have been stuck for so long on what to write here. I refused to let my brain ponder for too long. I let my mind fill with mindless content and it was all because I did not want to face the truth of this stasis that holds me tight, the fear that lets it. Here, in the pages of this journal, to the slow movement of the pen and the flicker of candlelight, I find the truth. I let it bubble to the surface, give it space. I feel lighter as I write. My breathing rises and falls from my stomach. I am beginning to connect to the contour of my flesh, feel it rise and fall. It is slow. It is clunky. It will take a long time to shift the distrust I have developed of this body. This is a start. Notice. Connect.