I started feeling unwell a few days ago.
I started a fever 8 days ago.
I tested positive for Covid-19, 6 days ago.
I’m still testing positive today
It’s back.
It’s fully symptomatic
It’s not just a cold
It’s back-to-back with my Long Covid almost-recovery
I'm still on a mental tightrope
I still plan to fight it.
I will win.
Yesterday, The Husband came back from work and immediately isolated himself. He had a running nose, and felt terrible. He took the covid test twice, and was positive. He'd had his 4th jab in November, just as the booster programme started.
After the Great Disaster of November 2021, when we isolated as a family after Tara got Covid, and I almost ended up dead, and suffered the ravages of post covid complications thereafter, we had agreed that next time we would isolate independently. So The Husband is in a room with a bathroom, while I'm sharing the rest of the home with Tara…while providing room service. I don’t resent doing it. To me, the act of voluntarily isolating oneself to prevent harm to others is very rare in these times. Last year (when I was at my most vulnerable) was an eye-opener. No one - my own parents, siblings and other family members - adjusted their lifestyles to accommodate me, even a tiny fraction. I felt vulnerable and irrelevant, and was even judged for my choices of distancing and masking.
I realised in that moment…this was not my herd .
It had taken me a lot of courage, and suffering to make the journey to see my family after some of my post-Covid conditions subsided. I assumed they would be happy and grateful to see me alive, maybe fuss over me, just a little. But no, none of that. In an instant, my lifelong attempts at getting affection from them vanished. Just like that. Sometimes it takes decades to arrive at the realisation that people are the way they are. You cannot work your way into their lives. No matter what you do. This time it was different when I left them. I spoke my mind, clearly and calmly for the first time in my life, and left feeling light and liberated. Their herd can think what they like, and say what they like. I’ve walked, and the view ahead is brighter than the shadows I left behind.
No matter how much or how little solitude we like as people, we all eventually belong to a herd. Not necessarily a biological herd. The person who says hello to you at the library, the young lad who makes your morning coffee on the way to work, your partner, your children, your pet dog/cat/ferret, your friend who you only meet to go on a walk with, the un-named parents at the school gate, your yoga teacher, the regular robin/magpie who visits your garden. They all are the herd we develop over a lifetime.
Much as we annoy each other, The Husband, Tara and I are a herd.
So I'm preparing a tray of hot food and drink for him, even as I’m recovering from a nasty vomiting bug from a week ago. I assumed it had cleared up, but it’s not gone fully. Luckily the crushing abdominal pains that had me writhing in agony for 2 days, disappeared after a day of vomiting. Now it’s just a confusing low grade state where I know Im not fine, but I am functional.
In all this Tara is unimpressed and uninvolved. I will say this emphatically. Upbringing is not only about telling a child what is right and wrong, or telling them what they should do - their rights and responsibilities. There is a very large part of any child that is inherent and inborn. We, as parents cannot beat ourselves up over it. What we can do is continue telling them about the rights and wrongs, but more importantly showing them through our actions what love, caring and sharing looks like in a herd. That is all we can do.
