Yikes

Written on Tuesday 27 October

I haven’t written a blog post in a while, which I suppose is a good sign, as I normally resort to this when I’m not feeling okay. I have been feeling better recently but today I’m not again. I felt tired and run down yesterday and I still do today, and my throat feels a bit scratchy, and I can’t stop thinking about whether it’s Covid. For a brief glimpse yesterday I managed to attain a normal, non-anxious, fact-based response to this ‘what if’ situation. I thought, I hope it’s not Covid because I don’t want to be ill because being ill is at best unpleasant and at worse horrible. This was quite a refreshing change from the feeling of, I hope it’s not Covid because then I will die.

It's true that Covid is to an extent unpredictable, yes, and it’s not certain that I won’t die if I get Covid. Nothing is certain!!! Ever!! But it’s also not a probable outcome. I’m not in a high risk group, I’m young, I’m female - if I asked a clinician what they thought the outcome would be, they wouldn’t say I was likely to die of Covid. On the other hand, there is a likely chance that it would be unpleasant or horrible to have it. This would be a reasonable thing to worry about, if you thought you might be developing symptoms: I hope I don’t, because I don’t want to be ill. 

Unfortunately, this isn’t where I’m at. Yet. For some reason, my anxious brain thinks that I could calmly embrace any ill effect as long as I knew that afterwards, I would still be alive and would eventually recover. As if, if I knew how long the effects would last, I would be fine to sit through them, as long as I knew I was going to survive.

But I think this isn’t actually true. It’s just a weird bargain - ‘I don’t mind if it’s horrible as long as it’s okay in the end’. Because no! I do mind if it’s horrible. Of course I do. Everyone does.

And you can’t know the outcome while the thing is still happening - that’s not how it works. 

What you can do is be hopeful and keep going anyway. 

I’m struggling with that part at the moment. When restrictions started up again it was almost a relief for me, because I want everyone to stay at home and be safe until there’s no more Covid. Ideally no one would be going out at all. So tightening restrictions pushed us closer to that helpful and attainable goal. But sike!! This ‘goal’ is actually an anxiety response, and it’s not how we should live our lives in the long-term. I do know that, I think.

To end on a fun note: if I do end up dying of Covid - or dying of something else, which (spoiler!!) will happen at some point - I’m fairly sure that I won’t think, gosh I sure am glad I spent all that time worrying this would happen. I feel so much better prepared. Nope! I’m willing to bet that instead, I’ll look back at the things I was able to do and enjoy anyway and feel glad about them. So let’s try and do that, ey? We’re allowed to still try and do that, even if we’re anxious. Even if we do have Covid.