is sometimes the very one that heals it... ."
~ Nicholas Sparks
At First Sight
Nope, demonstrably I am not dead, although sometimes I truly wonder why I am still moving. The last 6 months have been an epic shitshow. So much so that I never finished my annual autumn leaf project. I probably should have been blogging about what had been going on for me, but I was too busy nursing emotional distress AKA depression, and then eventually Covid-19 ( Omicron ) to make any real effort at actually being alive. The one thing that kept me going, by a tiny thread, was the fact that Alan contracted Covid-19 just before I did, and there was no way I was going to give up as long as he was ill.
We got Covid-19, the pretty much right at Christmas. If you've been reading me any length of time, you know we have been ill every single Christmas, with mostly head colds, since we moved to Stockton in 2015 but this past Christmas was a whole other thing. What had become a silly joke, a coincidence we kinda looked forward to, turned into a fucking nightmare that is still haunting me. Alan made a full recovery, I am left with some lingering effects, known as "After Covid". My hair is falling out, and my taste buds are acting like everything tastes like a piece of metal. Although I actually do better with sugar than with salt. Sugar is at least tolerable.
I'm okay. I really am. I am much better off than most who got covid. I am alive, so I really am counting my blessings, but the depression I feel... the sadness lingers and manifests in strange ways. I will share more about that at some point, but believe it or not, there is more to share about the last 6 months than getting Covid, you see, Alan retired, quite suddenly, and I am a bit thrown off by that, but that's a good thing. It's healthy for him to have finally pulled the plug on that place he worked for. 32 years of the stress is enough. He made the decision while recovering from the virus, and I am not all together sure that was the best time to make that kind of decision, but whats done is done, and as the saying goes.... "and away we go."
So, as you can see there is life after covid. Bald Eagles, and Mute Swans, and retirement and lots of good things, but there is the lingering fears that haunt me and there is nothing I can do about it but try to pick up the camera as much as possible and focus on everything I was ever taught about depression. I just wish I could sleep, but again, life is about retraining the mental tapes to play the music that makes life worth living. And I'm trying. That's why I am back to this blog. My goal is to post several times a week, so if you are still out there, don't give up on me. Although I will admit that I have been writing this post for 12 days.
But at least I am trying and I'm still me.
Stay Tuned!
Me
