Truly does NOT make us stronger. This is a furphy of royal proportions. The last several months have found me fighting invisible battles with unknowable foes. My MUEs have been struck down by the malaise of COVID restrictions and my local supports have dwindled into oblivion. That said, I am still here. I remain in the battle posture of a monty python knight, suggesting that despite a laundry list of likely fatal injuries, I am prepared for the skirmish. ‘Tis but a scratch!’
Of course the truth is anything but that.
And so, for the time being, I subsist with survival in mind. Not for the first time either, but there is no benefit to having been in this poisition before. There is no real learning curve that Ive discovered. There is very little I know from previous mental health crises that I find of use in my current circumstances. I am perhaps more accepting of, and patient about, my predicament, but the daily proposition of yet another battle for wellbeing has lost none of its sting. The mountain I am yet to climb is no smaller and the sherpas continue to elude me.
I draw my strength from the tiny moments in life; the smiles on my children’s faces when I can make them laugh, the attentions of my dog in the second between her starting to lick my face and me remembering she ate cat vomit earlier, and the beauty of an empty street where birds frolic and bugs are killed by them (I know bugs are important, I just dont like them–they are akin to koalas on my scale of loathing).
What is luck, anyway? 