Today is a classic British February day – grey. Grey, drizzle, damp, mild then cold, bleak – bleh! And, of course, we are in lockdown. There is much talk of lockdown fatigue and finally I really get it. I have to admit that in lockdown one, I was so busy with the garden and working from home, that aside from the miserableness of not being able to physically see family and the rather over-zealous sudden plethora of on-line meet-ups, I didn’t feel the effects too badly. Certainly there was fear, worry and a kind of dazed incomprehension, but I was busy.
This time I often feel it is not just groundhog day, but groundhog hour, perhaps even minute. Firstly, the weather is not conducive to gardening – unless you like bog snorkelling your way around the borders, that is. Walks are getting trickier too as the Suffolk clay, mixed with huge douses of rain make for incredibly slippery and unmanageable paths (on our last mini walk, my mum and I each accrued a good two inches in height with the mud which accumulated on our boots – which yes, brought us to the grand heights of five foot-three and five respectively). And the grey – eugh – the never ending bleakness that stretches from supposed sunrise to indeterminable sunset.
But this time round I also have the added open-endedness of being signed off sick. I had had hopes of keeping my hand in a bit more than I am managing but I have to admit, that having chemotherapy every week is harder than I had anticipated – it is exhausting. Apart from the fact that chemo day itself can take a good six hours out of the day, there never seems to be time to recuperate from one round before the next is upon me. I had to have a sit down the other day just from putting the washing up away.
I had also had visions of me indulgently focusing on my art and crafting. Of channelling healing through creative practice, but I don’t seem to have the energy or focus for much of that either. It doesn’t help that my eyesight is fuzzy from the chemo and that loss of mental focus is another very normal side effect and, due to hot flushes coming and going at will, I sleep very badly and sporadically, leaving me constantly tired but never able to properly sleep.
This all leaves me, grudgingly at times, having to accept that more and more I need to do – nothing. And that this is okay. And I want to say that it’s okay for everyone else too. Some creatures hibernate over winter, others go into a sense of torpor. When faced with huge negative events, our brains will often naturally shut off from these things which lends us into a strange, almost dissociative state which in itself causes unease and tiredness. At the moment, we are a nation, a world that is – coping, a word perhaps undervalued. To cope: to deal with difficulties in a calm and adequate manner. It has no bells, the whistles would be more like a party blower with a hole in, but it is a quiet strength – getting on with things in the face of a difficult or unpleasant situation. Let’s have some synonyms: manage, survive, get through, carry on, subsist, endure, withstand, bear – these all sound pretty strong to me.
To avoid any further feelings of conflict I am starting to learn that acceptance is a key part of being able to positively cope with what is. Accepting that all I am capable of at times is rest, is making resting more effective. It is hard when I want to be doing, but I found that I was neither doing or resting when I was fighting my need to just stop. I was, instead, being physically still with my brain being annoyed – not helpful. I think a key thing to remember is that accepting a situation as it is at the time, is not giving in to the idea that that is how it will be forever, it is for the time only and that change will come.
I guess I am hoping that anyone who is feeling lock down fatigue, tiredness, confusion – the good old malaise, can be kind to themselves by accepting that, that is what is happening for them at this moment but that the moment won’t last for all time and that things will change. And to also feel very proud of themselves for coping because to cope is in my mind more than amazing, it is strong and it is withstanding, it is moving steadily and it is okay.
*I have no relevant images to go with this post as I have had a very hard week from the chemo and have done pretty much nothing of note. So instead, just a few nice ones from better times, times that I know will come again.
