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.
One night, before the turn into June, I explode and scream and cry and collapse into sleep with my jeans still on. The next day, I tell my partner again of my anxiety, only this time, I feel the words ripple through me. I have told her earlier in the week of my anxiety but the words did not take hold in me.
It is Sunday night and I take a deep breath before falling asleep. Monday will come and give me an arbitrary chance to start anew.
I'm supposed to take the train to work but the mile between the station and the office feels insurmountable so my partner drives me to work.
The lights are too bright, the noises too loud, the office too full. The sales reps are in, the big boss is in. I look very intent at my computer screen where words and numbers dance a blurry jig I struggle to decipher.
Remember to breathe. Remember to take it easy.
I do. The screen unscramble a little and I set to work, one very slow task at a time. I punctuate each line of my to-do list with a video about Reynard the Fox. This is not paid work but personal work. I need it to tether me into paid work, to relax the tension that grips me, to remind myself that I do indeed still have a life outside of paid work and lying on sofas, eyes glazed in front of old TV shows.
'Can we stop by the plant table,' I ask my partner as she picks me up from the office.
'Sure.'
'Thanks.'
We stop by the effervescence of flowers in bloom and check the young plants together. I used to stop here every working day, peruse the plants, say hello to them, and on occasion stow one or two in my bicycle bottle cage or shirt pocket. I miss this. I look ahead, to the continuing road that peters out into a footpath where a woodpeckers hammers an old oak trees. It has been over a year since I steadily cycled these paths and yet I still haunt me.
'Do you fancy fish and chips tonight? In the park.' The car starts and we return to the main road I loathe so much.
'I thought we were having a chilli.'
'It'll keep until tomorrow. I just thought, it's sunny, relatively windless...' my sentence trails. I just thought it'd be nice not to stay inside the house, not to be lured by the television, not to cook, not to pile up dishes in the sink.
'Yeah, sure. It'd be nice.'
We sit on our usual bench, greasy boxes stain our clothes a little darker. Our fingers are sticky with oil, salt, and vinegar. The clouds roll in but we linger. We talk of this and that. We laugh and pet passing dogs in search of treats we have eaten without saving them any morsel. My anxiety loosens for a while.
My anxiety returns. It swirls in a lump that nestles large and comfortably in my body. I write of it in my diary. I write of the day with the plant table and the fish and chips. I write a list of all I remember being taught to manage the ripple of fear that my anxiety is so adept at. I let it be. There is nothing more I can do for now but set in motion the tasks that will eventually soothe me if I adhere to them, if I let them.