I have Covid.
I found out I had got it when a PCR came back positive about 5 days ago. By then I could feel I had the shivers, a splitting headache, tight chest etc.
I took myself to bed and cut myself off from the rest of the world. My kids and wife moved their bedrooms downstairs, I retreated into a new, Covid world upstairs.
For the last few years I have been an inhabitant in another world where one of the moral components of that world was the absolute adherence to idea that I should avoid contact with the Coronavirus at all costs.
This virus, and anyone carrying this virus, have become the great other, the persona non grata. Every now and then a narrative would emerge which would be much discussed, where there was the possibility that someone I knew had actually come into contact with one of these persona non gratas. This story would create much consternation and their would be the hope that it wasn't true. Or if it was true the there was the hope that the persona non grata had not managed to infect any of us. And the logic of this hope would be discussed to a great end.
Lateral flow tests would be taken. PCR tests would be taken. Results awaited. Great sighs of relief would be huffed.
Then you finally get the news. And as you walk up the steps up to self isolation, you enter another world. You become the persona non grata.
As I'm writing this I am feeling better but I'm still half way through the self isolation period. A man called me up this morning and told me this. He asked a lot of questions too. No one called to see if I was ok. All the questions were about strategies for me to maintain my persona non grata-ness. And then he told me when my persona non grata-ness will end.
He told me that everyone has their own personal set of symptoms. But he agreed with me that many have described a strange psychological shift that I think has been under reported.
Maybe only a few have this change. But whatever...I'm writing this to work this out for myself, so let's keep going....
Maybe only I had this, Maybe others had similar experiences. But I'm here to tell you what is happening to me. And tell you whilst I'm still experiencing it, like writing the contents of a bad dream before those contents drain away like smoke into the realm of the forgotten.
The night before last I experienced real terror. I felt confused and cut off. I could not ascertain if I was getting better or not and had no idea what I would do if I was not. In fact the very concept of 'getting better' had lost it's meaning to me. Was I really 'better' before I got Covid? Will I return to that old 'better' or another, new version of it?
Last night I awoke and I could not recall who I was for a few brief seconds. Once I reconstituted who I was it was me but many years ago. I then tried to locate in my mind where my family were and what house I was in. I then realised my father was dead. I panicked but then remembered my own kids and slowly the current me took shape again.
Yesterday I got up, had a bath, got dressed and tried to do some jobs and I felt better for that. I tried to feel normal and a part of my little household. But later my kids played up. I couldn't cope with this and I felt myself collapse inside. It was as though I had uncovered the true reality of the situation. That I was powerless and better off dead. That all life was suffering and there was no escape from that. Just a great self con that this was not the case.
Today I am lying in bed awaiting that strange little message from the beyong to tell me to get up. It won't come. I just really want to do nothing. My real goal in life, beyond just staying alive, is to curl up in a ball somewhere. To avoid as much of the pain as possible. That is the truth and pretending it's not won't help.
But in this strange place I inhabit that truth is upside down, and inescapable.
We come from nothing. Our consciousness is a mystery that emerges in the womb. That consciousness does not reconstitute itself until we are about three years old, when we have lived enough life to look back and imgaine what we did before.
And that is all wrapped around the developing story of who we are. And that is where all the problems lie. We seek away of avoiding the pain caused by that very story. We want to return to that great female realm of the womb. All mothers are the envelopers of sleep, and more fundamentally death. Now there is a contradiction!
Oh, to be back in those dark surroundings. We are frightened. Our fears all point to death. And fear's strategy is to avoid this at all costs.
But we all really crave death. By trying to avoid the pain and suffering that will lead to our death we aim at a place with no pain, which is of course is death. I think it has been that awful contradiction writ large that I have been plagued with over the last few days.
The answer is to get out of bed and face the day, even if it is mostly over. The answer is to then make that bed and tidy up. It's to look in the faces of those who you know and accept we really are not in control of ourselves like we think. That our lives are so much more than we know. That there is no easy solution, no cute aphorism, that will make us truly feel any better when we realise this.
There is the choice between doing and not doing. And doing will always equate to some sort of pain. And this cannot be avoided. Avoidance will only create some other pain somewhere else. This has never been more true than our solution to this epidemic.
Perhaps we just need to accept the pain and realise it's the sign we are alive. And remind ourselves an eternity of no pain awaits us all in our future, but that thought is in no way consoling.
So let's all get on with it....there that lovely little ephemeral voice has finally spoken....phew!
