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 lay on the sofa and watch the rain fall outside. It hasn't come alone. The wind howler in the garden, attempts to shake loose the last leaves of the forsythia. On the TV, the credit rolls for yet another episode of series 4 of The Legend of Korra. This particular series deals with trauma and healing and I need to see it again, to remind myself that I can heal too. I don't believe I'll ever recover from long covid. After two years of living with it, it seems unlikely it's going to depart, but I can heal the gashes in my mind. I know this. I just need to see it, however fictional the story may be.
The following day the rain still falls but the wind has abated. The weather is warm and for no other reason than I need to put some iron in my body, my partner and I drive to the shop for some lamb. We step into the layers of hell of the local shopping centre until we find the relevant section of the shop, grab a bar of chocolate on our way out, and exit back to the car, to the safety of our home.
In the garden, the rain falls on me. It's almost cold. A robin flies away from their shelter under the sky blue chair. I had not seen them there, too intent on my path to the rosemary bush. The clay in which they grow is saturated with floating water. I nearly pushes my hand into it but I am afraid it will swallow me. I slide my pinched fingers upwards on rosemary twigs and return to the house barely wet and with the scent of lemon and grass twined in my fingers.
The lamb cooks in the oven with no impetus from us. I am drowsy as we watch the endless rerun of Murder, She Wrote. I get nostalgic about this show. It permeates my life from childhood to this day, an easy escape where murder is clean and confession civilised. The order is always restored, the balance easy and happy.
We eat at the table cleaned of laptop, books, magazines, and other daily paraphernalia. My partner arranges dried flowers in the vase, chucking away the brown faded lilies. I've always liked lilies. They're an easy flower to like, they're pretty. Now they remind me of my grandmother, her coffin was hidden under the weight of those flowers, her grave surrounded by their large petals. They're not just pretty anymore. They're a little bit of her.
I light a candle, arrange the plates, pour a glass of wine I'm not supposed to have, and we settle to dinner. I can't tell you what we talked about. This and that and nothing in particular I'm sure. Our bellies full, I brew a cup of decaf coffee and snap a square of chocolate to have on the sofa as we return to Murder, She Wrote. Sundays were once dedicated to Columbo but we got tired of those reruns, too many of the same too often. At least Murder, She Wrote seems to go on forever before they loop back to the original episode in Cabot Cove, long enough to forget half the plots.
My body slouches until I'm sprawled all over the sofa, eyes barely open. It's not even 6pm but bed calls. My body sleeps and sleeps, over ten hours a night and yet I awake endlessly groggy. I know more sleep will not help this kind of tiredness. I don't even want to sleep this much but right now my body asks for it. Maybe it's the pull of darkness, the world under clouds, the northern hemisphere under shadows. I don't suffer from SAD but I do sway to the rhythm of the seasons and right now the season is slow, tired, and muted.