Not been myself recently. There are days you can’t tell the difference, I’m sure…And on the writing whether or not you feel like it, not feeling well means you still have to write. But I am grateful that, for now at least, I’m feeling like I can concentrate a bit.
I find myself thinking of creatives who kept going despite illness, and am so impressed. I’ve been lucky enough to spend most of my life not ill, and not often ill either. The last couple of years have seen rather a spike in illness and injuries, minor and medium. So I am valuing my health more, which is good.
Some of the injuries meant I could think straight but not lift a full kettle of water. Annoying, limiting, but still able to function. Finding it hard to think straight, feeling dizzy, it’s much harder. You know that the cut on the hand will heal. You know that the break in the finger of the other hand will also heal, particularly if you keep going with your physio.
But dizziness that comes and goes is insidious. You don’t know how long it’ll last, and you don’t know whether to rest, or whether that will help or not. You don’t know whether or not to keep writing, or whether you’re overdoing it, and the dizziness will increase.
Lest I worry anyone reading this, I am trying again with the doctor tomorrow, and I am feeling a bit better tonight. But when writing depends in part on a clear head, finding the thread of the writing, sifting the words, it’s a whole heap harder when your head is like mince.
On the plus side, I am in the moment more. I am in the moments, long moments, of dizziness, praying for them to lift, and praying for strength to get through cooking the pasta, and then to be able to make conversation while we eat it.
I am also in the moments of looking at tiny details – light coming through the leaf etchings on a window, patterns in a woman’s coat on the bus – as a way to distract myself from physical symptoms.
Suddenly, when my head clears, the moments are less long – but they are less noticed too. So I’m grateful tonight for the words trotting on by themselves, while I walk behind them. Whatever tomorrow’s moments are, I want to see the little things that are out there to be seen, and if I’m lucky, to see them for their own sake.