Another day, another COVID test.
As the world seems to be ablaze, another fire is burning inside my heart. The balance is lost, as I am drawn into a dark tunnel of negative emotions.
It’s an unusually warm Tuesday morning, as I open my eyes and look at the deep crimson sheet covering my body up until my neck. A few seconds of ignorant bliss run through my body before the feelings go back into their place, after an eight-hour intermission. My brain wakes up and goes, “oh, right, we’re sad. Still.”
That’s a lie; a part of me was excited this morning. The thought of getting dressed and getting outside and looking at the flowers and driving my car and getting mad at other drivers with possible crude gestures and swear words involved and getting a swab deep inside my nose was exhilarating, almost salvaging. I am a creature of habit, after all, I murmur to myself as I put on my seatbelt and fantasise about an imaginary classical music background to accompany my little solo excursion.
As the destination is coming closer and closer, I find myself looking forward to feel something intense other than sadness, other than numbness. I learnt to embrace the pain as a reminder that I’m still alive, that I am still able to use this body and convey feelings that are sometimes hard to express.
It is in the cracks of this unspoken intensity that I often find myself lately. I sit on the mat and I try to convince myself that I’m going to feel better after an hour of exercise, and I do for a while; I bring myself to the limit, to the point I can hardly breathe, to the point my mind is foggy so I can no longer think of those thoughts or feel those feelings, and it feels good for a little while – a few minutes of meditation, of a clear mind. But then, as my heartbeat returns to its normal rhythm and the sweat starts to dry on my skin, I return to that all-familiar place that I got to know oh so well.
The fight to fight it.
It goes a bit like this:
Go outside, get some vitamin D, get some steps going. Talk to that friend you miss, reach out to the people that will probably get you. Stop feeling so self-conscious! Don’t overthink too much. Focus on gratitude. Express yourself, don’t take others’ opinion about you so seriously. Don’t be dramatic, do this, do that, don’t do this, don’t do that. Be like this, not like that.
Consumed by all these instructions, I sometimes forget what I really want: Peace and wholeness with myself. I want to feel like I am home when I am by myself, I want to let the sun pour into my soul and cleanse it, and take away all the toxicity that I allowed inside. I want to say what I think and to mean what I say. There are a few rare moments of clarity when the unnecessary noise suddenly stops and I get a glimpse of clarity, uncontaminated by toxic thoughts.
I cling onto those moments and I collect them like precious flowers. I promise myself to make a garden out of them. My precious, chocolate cosmos garden.
It’s almost 17:00.
“Dear Anastasia, ID XXX, the result of your PCR COVID-19 test with date 4/5/2021 is negative”.