The Answer Wasn't What I Wanted

 This is going to be an emotional post. I am processing something I don't even want to tell my friends and family (so if you're reading this, I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but please do tell me when you read this). This week, I didn't get an answer I wanted.

After about 6 wonderful months of relief from a decade of anxiety and depression, things got worse again. Around last September, things got worse. Upon reflection, what really started it, what my first and only infection with covid-19.

Since then, I've struggled with what I've come to know are many of the symptoms of long covid. I didn't think this at first. First, I assumed I was tired, that my mental illness had come back, that I wasn't caring for myself properly and it was my fault. Then it was work stress that I blamed, the things I was asked to do, and the hours that I worked. I said, this will get better, if I can force myself to do all the right things.

Well, I've been doing all the right things. It hasn't gotten better. I asked my NP this week, does she think it's long covid. The answer was, oh, probably.

I know what long covid entails. I know it's months, if not permanent. I know that the changes from the covid-19 virus will be in my body for years to come. I know the research, that some people get better in 12-18 months, but that's just an average. Well, I'm coming up on my 12 months, with no end in sight.

So, I'm faced with the possibility that I may have this forever, or at least a long time. I turn 30 next week and I'm facing a lifetime of fatigue and mental health symptoms and all of this.

I know it might not be forever. But I also know there aren't a whole lot of treatments. There aren't options for what is wrong with me. I try to do as much as I can to care for myself, but it's difficult to still do everything I need to, and it doesn't help as much as I wish it did. So I'm stuck.

I want to have hope, but it's hard when there aren't a whole lot of things I can do. I don't know how to accept that this might be my life for quite a while. I've been mentally ill for a long time, and that's a reality I never fully accepted, and in fact still feel a lot of resentment and frustration about.

So how to I accept that this might be my life now, and I can't do anything about it?

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