I don’t usually come here when I am so sad I can’t think straight, a ball of iron in my stomach, but I find myself here with the last reserves of energy I can find.
I feel a fool to think I could go back to college and maybe the actual act of vocalising that has set me back weeks. Or maybe it was sitting in the hair dressers. I don’t know, and I will go crazy if I continue to try and find out what made my body slam its brakes on with such force.
I am being horrible to those around me, because I don’t know where this virus is to shout at it. I wish this didn’t mean I shout at the ones I love but it doesn’t seem to be something I can control.
People refer to getting over illnesses as “fighting” them. I wish it was. I feel it is attacking me and my body is rolling over in defeat. If I knew how to fight it I would. I want to do nothing more than defend my body, its newly painted nails and dyed hair and burning soul ready to rejoin life. Lying on the sofa for the 5th month in a row does not feel like fighting. It feels like giving up.
I want to disappear into the wings of life for a few months and return like the old Billygean that people knew. The one who could go jogging, collapsing with laughter at how unfit she was, or stay out all night, swatting away mosquitos and drinking wine and snogging MindReader. Whose only frustrations were not being able to pirouette perfectly and not being able to remember the precise provisions of the Civil Procedure Rules. This feels like decades ago, something I remember fondly. Imagine: remembering life fondly. For feeling rain tangle in my hair, cut grass spike sharply in my back, even for overhearing things said about me in the dimness of a pub, for having ex-boyfriends stare at me accusingly across a room. That implies I do not have a life now which is closer to the truth than I ever imagined it would be. Because these things did not happen to me, you see.
A family friend on Sunday night said I needed some fresh air and why didn’t I go on a walk. I gripped the duvet so hard I almost drew blood from my own palm. If you know me at all you know that I would not go down without a fight. I would not walk out of exam rooms. And I would try fresh air before I tried lying down for months on end.
I want to tell the virus it has won. To leave me alone. I am tired of charting my progress only to see it fall away like torn pieces of paper. I am tired of crying tears over this thing. What is making me depressed, though, is not the virus. I think it is the hope that I will one day get over it.
In my own way, with my own very different struggle, I empathize more than I can say. I’m here if you need to shout at someone.
Hugs. From the Internet.
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