What happened was two and a half years down the pandemic road, I got covid. I stared at the two emerging red lines in the home test kit labeled C and T, thinking, 'you've gotta be kidding me.' I'd been carrying around the silent arrogance that I'd dodged the viral bullet until I didn't.
I'm six weeks down this covid paved path, and I'm grateful I got vaxed, thrice boosted, and able to get prescribed Paxlovid early. And grateful, too, that I don't have a 9 to 5 job to drag my butt to when my body still needs a serious nap after human activity. But I’d be lyin’ if I said I’m all gratitude.
The first week there was no arguing with my body. She was down for the count, plain and simple. I was sleeping more than awake. Around day ten, I could feel impatience laced with frustration winding its way up my spine, making my jaw clench, eyes squint, and heard my internal critic, Pacasandra, chortle, “Enough already. You going to let this virus stop your life?”
She said a lot more though mostly; it sounded like a cross between a growl and a hum. And it was familiar. When I boil it down, it's a garden variety form of self-blame. I probably don't need to tell you, dear reader, the debilitating consequences of self-blame. But I will. For me, anyway, it stops me in my tracks.
I embarked on my healing path four decades ago when I determined it was where I would recover from the incest and move my life and creativity forward. I do all I can to stay on that path because life and shit happens. And when I contracted Covid, I knew it had to join me on my healing path for me to recover from it. I knew instinctively, and from both my medical team and Posse, that rest with a capital R was necessary. But there can be interruptions.
The worst interruption to rest is when the toxic smoke of self-blame envelops me. Whatever degree of energy resides within me revs up and marches up, and down the list of all I have done to cause said illness. When I'm done with that nasty list, I construct the indictment of my inability to overcome said illness – or worse – my deliberate disregard for my responsibilities which I am not just failing to do but wantonly shirking.
One might ask, “Why, dear Donna,” no, “Where dear Donna, did you learn to be so hard on yourself?” I welcome this questioning because it is a surefire way to snap me out of it. What do I mean by “it”? The internal activity of blaming myself.
Luckily, I have my Posse – those dear beloveds who, in many ways, throw roadblocks onto this activity of self-blame. Usually, one of them will ask, "What does this questioning remind you of?" In a millisecond, the echoes of my father and his mother's response to any level of incapacitation jump forth. They both had plenty of blame to spread around and believed compassion to be a weakener.
When I came up for air, I gave my head a shake, took a few deep breaths, and told myself, 'Do not go there again while you're sick.' I also told some posse members of my detour off the path and into the self-blame quicksand and asked them to keep an eye on me. I am happy to say I spent less than 24 hours goose-stepping into the quagmire of self-recrimination.
I'm rounding the corner of a month since I tested positive, and I'm proud to say I've not gone down the rabbit hole of depression again. Of course, it helps that my symptoms are receding. I'm coughing less, and while the fatigue can still come knocking – it doesn't knock me out as it did three weeks ago.
Last week two dear friends tested positive, and all my messages have been, one way or another, 'REST!' I surrendered to rest. Not usually one of my go-to activities, surrender. But in the face of this illness, I believe my surrender to resting is what’s helping me to heal. Deep rest.
I am privileged to be surrounded by nature as I travel this covid journey. I've spent every available sunny hour stretched out on a lounge chair on the deck off my bedroom doing nothing but tracking clouds, slow-moving clouds. For variation, I let my gaze move to the trees below the clouds: pines, birches, and one colossal sycamore. I'm sure it was a meditative state I was in though I didn't initially set that as an intention when I laid my body down. I was laying down – to rest. To not think, worry, plan, or bitch and moan. Just rest.
There is a tickle of a question that has started to bubble up. What have I learned? What am I learning? Maybe it will become, "What do I notice about this time and experience?" As I walk this path, I’m not just the walker but a watcher. What will the watcher have seen, noticed, or taken in, once the walker is through this patch of her journey?
Thanks for reading,
Donna