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.
We enter the tea house and find the room heaving with people, the few empty tables still carrying the leftover cups and trays of occupants just gone. I am taken aback for a second. I did not expect the tea house to be this busy. It has never been when I have come on a Friday. The tables were clean then and the space mostly empty save for a regular or two and the breeze that’s let in from the drafty door. I should have expected the difference today. Folks are here for the same reason we are: tomorrow, this place is closing their doors. They will remain online but none of us will be able to savour moments of peace at this location.
My partner and I look at each other. We consider aborting the goodbye mission but in the end we choose to remain. Every now and again, we take a gamble with our health, an educated guess that we will be fine. We should not, we know this, but we've also both learned that for our mental health, we sometimes need to break the rules. Today is one of these days. At best, the price, for me at least, will be a couple of weeks of constant worrying, of monitoring my body, of analysing every ache and new or unusual symptom, hoping that this gamble does not lead to illness. At worse… well I do not linger on the potential setback when my everyday life is still very wobbly.
We grab a couple of menus and settle at one of the only free table, nudged by a pillar. R., one of the owner, is almost running between tables, carrying trays of dirty dishes and trays full of water and leaves. Soon he comes to our table. I ask for an oolong, one I haven’t tried but have been meaning to. It is sold out and so are all the oolongs I usually order. So I order a Yunnan tea instead. My partner orders the same. We ask for some food too. I sway towards something new but predictably I stick to what I know and love.
The tea arrives. The food comes. We drink. We eat. We talk.
It isn’t much but it strikes me that this is the first time in over six months that we have been together so effortlessly. Every outing, every stay at home, every trip to work has been defined by long covid. My partner has cared for me, often to the detriment of herself, and along the way we forgot how to be us as a couple. But here we are. We are not talking about long covid, we are not talking about what we cannot do, we are not talking in the past tense. Instead, we consider the tea and food in front of us, wonder if we could make gyoza this good at home. We talk of our upcoming holidays in France and what we will do there. We talk of a future in which we adapt to the two of us being disabled, in which we make it work.
Later, after we have paid, after we have stopped by a few shops, after the bus has carried us back to the park and ride, after we have made it home, I soak in a hot bath filled with magnesium and essential oils to soothe some of the aches around my body. Phone in hand, I browse the Eurostar and GWR websites for their accessibility pages. I read through their services and text my partner.
Could you push me in a wheelchair if it's an option at the Eurostar security line?
This feels like a big ask but she responds in the positive. I smile and set to filling out the Eurostar form to ask for help. I do not know what will come of it. I do not know if their accessibility support is given on trust or if I need to prove my disability. Those questions are for later. For now, I seek solutions and new ways to navigate travel and holidays. I attempt to envision a future recalibrated and possible.