What I Did This Summer

This has been a summer of settling, I think. Accepting? Surrendering?

It’s not been great, whatever it is. There’s an overall sense of having less strength, less endurance, and that’s not the status quo I anticipated. I'd come around, I think, to understanding my new limitations and how to cope. I didn’t expect it to get worse.

Because no one knows! We’re in our sixth year of Covid (and long Covid) and it’s still a mystery, at least in terms of course. Over 80% of people who self-report long Covid symptoms recover within one year. The ones who still linger at two years have uncertain futures, it looks like.

It used to be that I'd have Symptoms of the Week. I'd be dizzy and off balance a lot, but better the next week, when my joints and muscles started screaming, and so on. Always exhausted, always achy, always foggy, but it came and went.

Now maybe it's here to stay, dunno. My moods are a little fluid now, less pleasant. My days are usually blurry, and almost always involve a spontaneous nap that leaves me disoriented. I'm constantly negotiating with gravity. Sparing you the details, I'll just say that a constant worry is that I will pass out in the bathroom.

At least I don't have to worry about decades of disability. And who knows? (answer: No one) In two years I might be hiking on Rainier. Or at least getting to the mailbox on my own.

We've had contractors in and out of our house for six weeks, a simple project in mid-July that just blossomed (I'll use that word instead of "snowballed" but, y'know...).

A lot of what they've been doing, actually, is just sprucing, painting and putting in new flooring/carpeting. The only real construction was building a new bathroom downstairs – the rest has been overdue maintenance and, as I said, sprucing up. We all wander around with our mouths open, staring at this new house.

It's taken a toll on me, for sure. I did a lot of moving and minor lifting back in July to empty out the basement, and that one day just did a number on me. It felt necessary, as if we couldn't start improving without some sweat on my part, and even now it feels like I had no choice.

So I'm done now, just enjoying the newness. Nothing about this feels particularly fair to me; I don't feel picked on, but it just doesn't seem right, as if I stumbled into the wrong timeline. Help, Mr. Wizard.