Rain, Escape, and Afterwards

I have reached a point where I am beginning, with some reluctance, to accept that my body may not simply be a decorative transport system for my opinions.

This sucks. I had hoped, perhaps naively, that I could continue as I always have: doing too much, sleeping too little, eating way too many sandwiches, and saying yes to everything that comes along because it sounds interesting. I've spent my life believing that nothing can't be solved by a good cup of tea, a little stubbornness, and a few good biscuits.

Apparently, there are limits to how long that works for before something in you creaks, snaps, or falls off.

The terms and conditions for this meat vessel I call home have been changed without my knowledge and, frankly, I'm annoyed. It's like waking up and finding a U2 album on your iPod that you didn't ask for, only instead of Bono and The Edge I've got neck cramps and digestive issues.

It's not been fun.

For the last month and a half, I have been... unwell. I was in hospital for a bit. There were tests. There were more medical conversations than I would usually choose to collect in a six-week period. There was also the food, which I have already written about with a level of attention that it absolutely did not earn. Mostly, though, there was a strange narrowing of my usually vast and varied world.

For more than a week, I was barely able to get out of bed. Not in the romantic, chaise longue kind of way, but in the profoundly boring sense where the day becomes a battle between needing water, needing the bathroom, and needing to lie very still for a bit because verticality has developed an attitude problem. Energy disappeared. Balance became theoretical. Dizziness arrived at random intervals and behaved like a badly trained dog.

And there was no quick fix. No doctor saying "aha, yes, this test tells us you have [thing]". There was just uncertainty.

The unsettling thing about being ill is not always the pain or the fear, although both are obviously keen to be involved. Sometimes it is the indignity of scale. Your life, which has been full of plans and people and writing and errands and books and admin and ideas, suddenly becomes very small. You become aware of the distance between the bed and the sofa as though it is a mountain pass. You learn exactly how much effort it takes to wash your hair. You discover that replying to a message can require a recovery period, which feels rude to everyone involved, including the message.

And, because I'm me, I spent part of this time feeling faintly guilty for being ill, which is both deeply unhelpful and extremely on brand.

There is a voice, a really horrible voice, that creeps in when your body stops behaving. It asks whether you are exaggerating. It wonders whether you should be managing better, or tells you that it's your own fault for being a bit overweight. It compares you to some imaginary version of yourself who is handling all of this with greater elegance, and ate way less sandwiches over the last decade. The thing is, I would never speak to someone else that way. I would tell them to rest, to take it seriously, to be kind to themselves, to stop measuring their worth in output. Apparently I am prepared to offer myself the same wisdom only after exhausting every less useful option first.

Some lessons don't learn easy.

Still, eventually, there was a kind of escape. Not a particularly cinematic one, sadly, but more of a sequence of small victories. A bit more information. A bit more wellness. A bit more belief. A sense that things were, finally, moving slowly forward.

So, now I am "recovering".

What does that even mean? Back to normal? Back to myself? I am glad to be returning to what feels more like wellness - but I think the big lesson for me here is that recovery doesn't have to leave me looking exactly the same.

This period of illness has taught me where the floorboards creak. It's shown me which parts of my life are load-bearing, and which are decorative but had, somehow, become my main focus.

I am not completely better. I am better than I was, which is different and worth honouring. I can do more. I can think further ahead. I can imagine leaving the house without mentally drafting a risk assessment first. The dizziness is still making occasional guest appearances, and my energy remains a creature with a flair for the dramatic, but the horizon has reappeared.

And July is starting to look properly bright. There are events like EMF coming. There are bookish things afoot. There are friends I want to see, restaurants I want to visit, plays I want to see, and guests I want to welcome into my home.

I wondered how to approach talking about this odd little month-and-a-half blip in my life, where I've barely been on social media, have skipped events and occasions, and had to say a begrudging "no" to new opportunities. I didn't want to make some grand announcement, or focus on symptoms or sympathies or anything like that. For someone who talks a lot, I can be pretty private sometimes.

So I think that, really, I'm sharing something that this whole period has taught me: that I am learning, possibly later than I should have, to recognise care as part of every day life, not just something curative when the proverbial hits the other proverbial.

Rest is not the opposite of creativity. Preparation is not a betrayal of spontaneity. Recovery is not wasted time. My body is not a nuisance standing between me and the life I want. It is the means by which I get to have one.

And I bloody love that life.

So I suppose I’d better start treating the thing that carries me through it with the love, attention, and care that it deserves. I'm not giving up sandwiches though. Ever.

Until next time,