This has been a challenging week. Lock-down is easing and folk are returning to an almost normal existence: visiting friends, going for walks and picking up plants at the nursery. For a few days, I too ventured out into the world. And despite the low level hum of anxiety, it was exhilarating.
Then I spoke to my lovely new MS nurse on the phone. She urged me not to risk infection, since it would invariably cause an MS flare up and quite possibly a relapse from which I may or may not recover. Since I am functioning at the very edge of normal, I certainly do not want to tip over to full disability. I knew all this, but the lure of ordinary existence and connection with friends made me wish to disregard it (and at some level still does). How strong the siren song to meet up with those we love; how strong the voice that whispers that there really is nothing to fear.
Except for me, there is. My husband has to work, but I do not have to socialise. Worse still, if, through my ignoring my nurse’s advice I fall ill, it is my husband who will have to deal with the fall-out. We are not old enough to retire and I’ve volunteered long enough at Citizens Advice to know what life is like for those who are forced to leave full employment to become carers.
Which leaves me here. Literally.
How long?
Of course, no-one knows how long this pandemic will last nor how soon we can hope for a viable vaccine. As a result, my self-isolation could last 6 months, a year or even two. When I first noted the 12 week lock-down in my diary, it seemed an eternity. Now it seems like a brief break. Hence the difficult week. There are no good options here – only risk assessment.
The spectre of depression hovers always. The best way to send someone mad is to place them in solitary confinement. In my bleakest moments, that is exactly how this feels. Except, of course, my situation is hardly like that. I have a comfortable home, a fabulous garden, the company of my husband and via technology, all my friends. What I need is the energy and self-discipline to turn this around. What is ostensibly most people’s worst nightmare, could equally be a dream come true. Lock-down is an opportunity like no other to do all the things you plan to do before life gets in the way. It is a sort of enforced sabbatical.
Glass half full
Once I got over feeling sorry for myself, I started to think of this as a gift of time. How would I spend it? Following the advice I would give my students when planning an essay, I embarked on an elaborate spider diagram with each leg representing all the things I like to do (and including domestic tasks, which no-one can escape from!) My diagram included eighteen distinct categories with everything from gardening to calligraphy. I then translated this into a sort of schedule with hourly slots only to discover that there were not enough hours in a day. My slots would need to be vague enough to include a number of activities. So the creative one might mean art, or sewing or writing a poem.
Then I started thinking in blocks of time. What if I made Tuesday my teaching/volunteering day and Wednesday my writing one? What if I gave myself goals such as make an entirely new dish each week? Or finally work out how to join together all those granny squares I crocheted and which are now lying mournfully in a basket?
My days are already book-ended with morning exercise /meditation and evening Swedish and journal writing. These long days are beginning to look shorter and more precious.
Some of you reading this are over-whelmed with work and no doubt would love the luxury of time that is available to me. Many of us have a great deal of time. If that is the case, and this is a sabbatical from normal life, what would you like to do with it? Answers on a postcard please…