happy new year xx

I vanished again. I’m sorry. I seem to be in the middle of some kind of burn out / chronic fatigue / long covid / post viral fatigue situation. I started acknowledging this to people in October, when I had to explain why I couldn’t do, well, almost anything - but it’s been going on for a lot longer than that.

I have not wanted to admit this to myself but over the last couple of years I have been feeling unwell more than I’ve been feeling well. The illness takes different forms - colds, coughs, swollen glands, weird sore mouth, aching bones and muscles - but mostly it is exhaustion that doesn’t get better with sleep. And God knows I’ve tried to sleep it away! My naps are now taking naps!

It is hard to explain to people what is going on because I don’t really know. Is it long covid? Chronic fatigue? Depression? Hormonal? Burnout? A mixture of all of it? I’ve gone on HRT, take antidepressants, chuck bankrupting amounts of vitamins down my neck - and still I’m like this.

I haven’t wanted to talk about it (or write about it) because I have felt so much shame around being this way. It feels like a failing. Like I’m not managing life well.

As I seem to sink further and further into fatigue I marvel - honestly marvel - at friends who seem to be able to go places and get on planes and manage families and… bloody hell. All that doing! I tried to go for a walk yesterday, got to the edge of the park and felt so exhausted I went back home and fell asleep for two hours.

Some days are better than others. Some days I wake up and think ‘Oh, I think I feel ok! Maybe this weird thing is over?’ I get quite excited! I see friends for coffee, get a flurry of work done but a few days later I’m hit with another wave of fatigue.

I have periods of being patient and accepting but yesterday when I woke up at the start of the new year with swollen glands and a sore mouth, feeling like crap, despite being asleep at 9pm on NYE, I had a little cry. I felt sorry for myself. It sucks for life to feel like such a physical effort as it does now.

Other people don’t get like this, my little evil voice tells me, but a wiser voice says, that’s not true, everyone has their struggles. And right now, this is yours.

This weekend I tried to do my usual assessment of the year before and set intentions (spiritual word for goals) for the year ahead. As I looked through photos of last year, I could see how little I’d done. I had dozens of screenshots of Holistic Psychologist quotes from Instagram, hundreds of chip shop photos (my true love!) and photos of my wonderful neighbours. I barely ventured away from my street for all of 2023.

I didn’t shame myself for this I just saw it for what it was - a tough year in which I spent a lot of time at home. It didn’t make me feel sad and I didn’t feel like it should have been anything other than it was. Aren’t I lucky to have a home I love so much? And neighbours I adore? And the most beautiful chip shop in the land?!

I tried to think about what I might want for 2024. Health of course. And ease and joy and cash and all those things. But for some reason these ideas didn’t excite me. I don’t want to make my ‘health’ or my ‘body’ another project to obsess over. Of course I want to feel better but wanting to feel ‘better’ feels like a mean thing to do to my body right now. It’s saying that how I am now is not good enough - and that doesn't feel kind to a body (and human) who is already doing their best.

On NYE I lay in bed scrolling through Facebook, reading other people’s assessments of the year gone by and for the first time time it struck me that it’s an odd thing to assess our years. Do we assess our kids? Do we assess a sunset? Rank it out of ten?

Of course it’s natural to reflect but it seemed to me that we are acting like ‘customers’ of life, demanding our refund when things are not up to our expectations. Giving it marks out of ten.

But we are not customers of life. We are life. And life is everything, it’s joy and pain and doubt and love and grit and beauty and struggle and sickness and health…

Often it’s our expectations that are the problem. As my friend G said last night, we’ve been sold this myth of happiness, we have this idea that life should be a certain way and that’s not how life is. Our parents and grandparents understood this better than we do, I think.

So while the drama queen in me wants to stamp my feet and announce that 2023 was terrible (and let me use that as jumping off point to rant about how much I hated lockdown!) - that isn’t the truth. It wasn’t terrible. My body and mind might not be what I think they ‘should’ be but I am the pinnacle of health compared to billions living with life-long illness, disability and injury. I might be back in debt but I have a roof over my head and am surrounded by people who I love and who love me. I am rich in all the things that count.

My ‘terrible’ year would be many people’s idea of heaven, pure utopia compared to millions in war zones, abusive relationships, fascist regimes.

It seems ungrateful to start a new year determined to improve a life that would seem miraculous to many.

Maybe this is the the human condition. We worry about our lot. We compare ourselves to people who seem to have more. We find fault.

Or perhaps this isn’t a human thing but a symptom of a privileged individualistic western way of life.

Whatever the cause, as 2024 starts, in grey clouds and messy drizzle, my only goal/intention is to do my best to accept how things are right now this minute.

It’s all life. Happening, as it wants to happen.

And what a privilege it is to be living it, in all its colours.

Alongside each other.

Love to you all,

xx