The fortress of solitude

Hours after I posted that last piece, in which I kind of castigated myself for being felled by a run of the mill cold, I tested positive for Covid.

Since then, I’ve been watching the seedling of a lesson try to emerge. I knew it was something about believing - and not judging - myself when I feel terrible. I didn’t have it in me to extract and examine it last week, when the world really did feel bleak and I thought I might only ever exist crawling the 30 feet between our guest bedroom and my home office. 

Now, on week two, I’m not feeling quite as dismal. But still, not great. Coughing and stuffy and tired yes, but more generally (and more frustratingly) just not up to things. Struggling to rise to the occasion of just every day work and life and adulting in the world.

Not capable. I think that might be the crux: my sense of self kind of gets lost when I need to be cared for.

My identity is in many ways formed around always being fine, always able to care for and focus on others. To maintain perspective and a positive outlook. To handle things. So, when I lose that perspective and that ability, even for a short time, it seems to throw me for a loop. To disrupt what I know and understand of the world and my place in it.

I am married to a wonderfully kind and capable man, who thankfully did not get as sick as I did, who can take care of me. But it pains me to let him do it. Even when I do, the guilt and self-judgment are palpable enough to make it feel not worth it.

This extends to friends, to family. I tend not to lean on people. I tend to be leaned on. Usually because it seems to me that everyone else is struggling more than I am, has more on their plate, needs more support. I am fine. I am always fine.

Until I’m not.

But thinking about what it means to live in community with people, to be vulnerable and honest, I see I’m shortchanging myself. I see there are so many people who not only can care for me, but want to do so. Caring for people I love makes me happy, why would it not be the same in reverse?

The middle class American values of hard work and individual achievement, the feminist notions of independence, the eldest child patterning of responsibility, the Type A success-as-tied-to-productivity. It all gets mixed up into a cocktail that I drink in a strange fortress of solitude.

And then you get sick, or you have a bad day or a few bad weeks, and you feel uncertain, and suddenly it’s not just about the sickness or the bad day or the uncertainty, it’s about who you are as a person. And then you’re trying to break that cycle while also hacking up a lung.

This is me trying to break that cycle while also hacking up a lung.

Welcome to my de-conditioning.