On getting angry before getting well

One thing I forgot to write about in the previous post about recovering from Long Covid

This week my sister sent me a post which explained that for a well person to understand how fatigue feels they would have to stay awake for three days and nights. That was a very satisfying thing to read.

Fatigue is such a woolly vague term and it’s hard to get it unless you have experienced it. For the record fatigue means a tiredness that does not go with sleep. It means waking up after twelve hours of sleep feeling such extreme tiredness that every bit of you aches and the thought of having to get through another day is devastating.

Some days it means feeling like your whole body is burnt rubber. As I write this, I think steady on, love, that’s a bit dramatic. It’s also true.

It’s only now that I feel like I’m getting better that I can see how hard the last few years have been. To wake up every day and feel like your body is being crushed by a wall, and to have a brain that some days cannot string a sentence together, to feel like you are failing on every front constantly… it’s been heavy going.

And I realised, after sending the previous post, that acknowledging this has been part of getting well.

In one of my craniosacral appointments (I feel like a w*nker writing about my alternative health treatments) Louise was suggesting that instead of listing all the ways by body hurt, I focus on what felt good. She explained that her approach is to orient towards wellness. This made me livid.

I said something along the lines of: I don’t want to orient towards wellness I want to be honest about how f^cking hard the last few years have been. I’ve been trying to pretend they haven’t been but they have and I’m fed up of keeping that to myself. It has been hell to feel this bad every day, to not be able to earn money, to not know when this will end. To wake up everyday and feel like I’ve been run over…

I kept going. She was quite taken aback. There was such force in my voice.

But after my rant was done, I felt my body fizzing with warmth.

Thank you for telling the truth, it seemed to say to me.

I’ve realised that one vital step of recovery for me has been getting real with myself and others about how sh!t I have felt. Not sugar coating it, not down playing it, or saying I’m fine when I’m not because I don’t want to be that person that’s f^king tired again. I am that person. END OF.

So be it.

Woohoo, even typing this I feel that flood of warmth again in my body.

Maybe all this stuff is my body’s way of saying please listen to me, please pay attention, I’m trying to tell you stuff.

And if I’m busy pretending my body is just fine, I’m missing out on the message.

Which is what? That can be another post.

xx