Chapter 2: Not Your Year
Mini Memoir
«CHAPTER 1: WORLD SPINS MADLY ON
Scattered showers on a wall, you watch long light fall.
Some impressions stay and some will fade.
Tattered shoes outside your door, clothes all on the floor.
Your life feels like the morning after all year long.
-Not Your Year, The Weepies
It has been a long year. One thousand six hundred and twenty-three days long. One thousand six hundred and twenty-three days since that first tickle in my throat. One thousand six hundred and twenty-three hazy days. One thousand six hundred and twenty-three days separating what once was from what is. World’s longest hangover. One thousand six hundred and twenty-three days and counting.
What’s in a year? A day? A minute? No matter. Time has no meaning anymore. What matters to me now is breath, light, relief, joy, love, grief, pain, beauty, justice, peace, compassion, laughter, thrills. I measure life by the moments I am able to either avoid or immerse myself in units of these things. They come and go at their leisure. They may have an agenda or a plan or a schedule but if they do, it is a mystery to me. I am at their mercy.
I try to will the good moments to me through pacing and meditation. Sometimes it works. It is nearly a full-time job to manage this. A few hours on the front stage, an hour or two to lay down, then meditate; engage, tune out, tune in; repeat. Engage, disengage, re-emerge carefully. It’s a level of consciousness this absent-minded professor and those who know her best have likely never believed achievable. And DAMN it’s exhausting.
I thought 2020 wasn’t my year. It wasn’t. But then it turned out 2021 wasn’t my year either. Then 2022 came and DAMN what a year that wasn’t. But then in 2023 my beloved employer of 20 years threatened to fire me simply because I’m sick (this despite the fact that my performance record shows only exceptional reviews) and that was most definitely not my year. I suppose the jury is still out on 2024 but we all know what direction this is heading.
And everyday it starts again
You cannot say if you’re happy
You keep trying to be
Try harder, maybe, maybe
This is not your year
-Not Your Year, The Weepies
As the five year anniversary of my journey with Long COVID approaches, I’m beginning to wonder if maybe this isn’t my decade. Or maybe it isn’t my latter half of life?
The first half was pretty good. I know how lucky I am. I have loved deeply. I’ve been loved deeply. I have laughed ‘til I’m gasping for breath - more times than I can count with more people than I could count. I have faced my demons head on, even slayed the lion’s share of them (many with aplomb, if I do say so myself - yay, therapy!).
I have fought the bad guys when I felt they were doing wrong; not, to my shame, every single time or as skillfully as I’d like but increasingly with more finesse and regularity as I’ve aged and given fewer fucks. There is power in the ability to limit your fucks.
Breathe through it, write a list of desires
Make a toast, make a wish, slash some tires
Paint a heart repeating, beating “don’t give up, don’t give up, don’t give up”
-Not Your Year, The Weepies
I can breathe through it. I can make a toast.
I can most definitely slash some tires. My list of deserving candidates for said slashings (of TIRES, people!) grows each day another friend or acquaintance loses their health care because their employer fired them for being sick (yup, I can tell you stories), every time I hear about someone being denied the SSDI benefits or ADA accommodations that they are LEGALLY ENTITLED TO (I’ve got plenty of these stories), each time I travel and my requested wheelchair either doesn’t appear or I’m told I look like I don’t need it so maybe I can just do without it (gee, thanks?), and when I hear the stories of those so much younger than me suffering from post-viral conditions and denied the full first-half of life that I was able to enjoy.
These things I can do. Making a wish is much harder. And that list of desires? Ugh. It’s too hard to hope. But I can persist. Don’t give up. Don’t give up. Don’t give up.
Love your fierce-no fucks left to give attitude. I too care less and less about what others think of me. I do my best work when outraged and sick, apparently. 2024. Not my year either. But we are both the lucky, unlucky: on Ltd and SSDI (if I read correctly). But of course, we’d rather be the version of lucky where we weren’t sitting all day, fighting mad. Thanks and appreciate your writing.
Thank you so much. Here's to doing the good work inspired by outage! Hang in there ♥️