finding peace in your mind, when your mind rots
I've been living with long covid and its incipit destruction of the self since 2020. It's gotten better, it more often gets worse. The brain is not a plastic organ; it can only suffer so much, and it being the witness to its own slow depredation is kind of a thing.
I lost so much of myself that I simply don't have the capacity to grieve. There's enough loss for a post. I hope that by posting about it, in my experience, I can work through forgiving myself for their loss -- I need to just let it go, for now, until I'm permitted by fate or time to have those things back.
I used to be able to pay attention long enough to read a novel. I used to care about the newest novels and the newest authors. That piece of me feels as though it's gone, maybe forever, and I can't even muster the rage at its passing that it deserves.
I struggle with language. It's not just losing words, it's losing the ability to recall how to form them on paper using a pen. I was writing with a pen today, and I forgot how to form a cursive P. It's literally in my name, I've written it so often in my life that it should be in the deeper parts of myself, a place I cannot lose. It feels like it might be gone this week.
I notice other changes, changes that might in another context may point to growth but in this context points to loss. Namely, I'm more patient concerning what would have been previously rather distressing. Common stressors don't phase me as they would have in the past -- instead, I fail to recognize them. It would be nice, if my body had a functioning sympathetic nervous system and those stressors wouldn't be creating problematic panic symptoms later in the day or week -- like a set timer, ready to randomly set off my response when and where it has no place.
Then there's the lack of patience when I would have previously found it. I'm more short-tempered, I am less in control of my immediate reaction to things that are difficult -- specifically in child rearing. I know that, when the fog settles in my mind, I am less inclined to give my eldest the love he deserves when he decides randomly to play keep-away with me as we are trying to leave for some planned thing. It hurts me, it hurts him. Then, I struggle to forgive myself for failing in those moments.
I feel so god damn old, mentally. I hate it, I struggle to live with it, and I don't know what to do or where to go as I settle into this living hell of the mind.