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 have not posted a 'Life this week' update in a month. A couple of posts have been started but never completed, a couple of others have lived solely in my mind.
I am no longer drawn to weekly words. It makes sense. I write compulsively when I am not well. I can only understand what happens in my body and mind if I spend time to write it out. Through the spread of words I seek my own way, meaning in something that does not seem to bring any. I am less unwell and so I write less.
I do not believe long covid has slithered away from me, instead it seems to have abated, to have become manageable. I can read again, voraciously. I can spin and weave and crochet and mostly be fine. I can walk every day to the end of the street, to the nearby park and mostly be fine. I can break the rules and go out into town when I should rest and mostly be fine. I can push a little at the old boundaries and feel the tendrils of brain fog tickle my brain. I can smile at the fog now for I know if I breathe, if I sleep, it will dissipate. The fog was once a stealer of life, dissolving my entire being into its embrace. Now, the fog is a warning system, a friend that helps regulate my being.
The medicine I swallow every day helps. There are the beta-blocker that keeps me steady, the pill that bluntly grind my hormonal system to a halt and allows me to live pain free, the herbs I drink twice daily that strengthen my body, the supplements I am told to add to my diet to help various bodily systems along.
Then there are the fuzzier medicines, the daily sessions of breathwork and meditation that keep anxiety at bay and keep me on an even keel. I am less prone to rash outbursts and find more energy in the calm that lingers after breathing and sitting still. New obsessions keep my hands busy and help me explore my own creativity. I spin, I weave, I crochet. Slowly I create in the hushed rhythm of repetition and quiet. And of course I read. I read Middlemarch by George Eliot and nurture a low lying obsession about the author. I read Yvain ou le chevalier au lion by Chretien de Troyes and savour the words I had to give up back in March.
I find myself to be okay. I even enjoy my work during the hours of the day I am paid to glare at a screen. I cannot remember the last time I could work with such ease as I can now.
I do not believe myself to be healed. I only need to accidentally forget my beta-blocker, to take a break from the pill, for all of my symptoms to return. They remain manageable in those times but they remind me of where I was, where I can so easily slip back into.
Of course, there is also the matter of luck and of no longer wishing for my old life. It seems impossibly far from me, an illusion that once happened in a dream. I miss my bicycle still. I always will. I may attempt a slow return to the saddle this week. I am bittersweet about it. Yes, I want to sit atop the saddle, to remember I am a modern centaur made of wheels and cogs and heart and lungs, but I am afraid too. The last time I attempted to cycle I crashed for months on end. Back then so much was different but the pulse of fear does not want to acknowledge this. We will see. It is easier to be quietly confident, to tentatively offer optimism to the world these days. I am less unwell.
I am less unwell and through the tears and anxiety of the past year, I have found a new path to pootle along. It is littered with fibres and words. It is bathed in breath and stillness. It roots itself in the endless belief that I will be okay eventually. I always will be because the magpies screech, the robins sing in the darkness of dawn, the foxes trot on by, and the moon shines above the house.
