My Year with Covid-19

There are anniversaries that I can’t wait to celebrate and there are ones that I wish I could forget. Today belongs to the latter category. This is my one year anniversary of contracting Covid-19. Honestly, I have thought about this day for weeks on end. I could feel March 24th mocking me from the sidelines. I could feel it hiding from me and showing its ugly face all at the same time. Now it is saying, let’s see how you do, Lauren. Good luck trying to have a normal day.

I have wondered what March 24th would feel like in my body. I don’t think my body wants to remember the acute stages of this illness. It doesn’t want to remember how it all started. How feral it was. How terrifying it was. My body doesn’t want to remember the way that my chest began to tighten. It doesn’t want to think about the slow and silent takeover of my lungs. This disease felt like a sniper hiding out in my body as it multiplied. I could feel Covid-19 gaming my immune system; tricking my body into thinking nothing was there.

The worst part about the beginning of this illness was that I knew Covid-19 was taking me down. I knew it was going to be really, really bad. But, I was left alone to fend for myself with a novel illness and no medical support. A year ago this week, my doctor told me to stay home and treat it myself. Since I wasn’t completely gasping for air, my case was considered mild. I remember thinking that there must be an ocean between mild and severe and I was lost at sea. Even then, I knew that I was in for an epic battle. It was just me and Covid-19. Only one of us was going to win.

Now, my hands are shaking. My body is remembering too much. I don’t want to ask myself to go there anymore. Because the truth is, I am not where I was a year ago today. Processing a traumatic anniversary can be tricky. It is important to allow the memories to come up, but there is also a line. There is a point where it is time to pull the body out from the hole of remembering the past so that it can live in the present.

So, let’s talk about where I am now. I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m alive. As I type that, I can feel my chest begin to relax. The silent sniper has retreated. The threat is over. I won, but there were so many losses. Sometimes, it’s hard to distinguish between my own PTSD symptoms and long Covid because my body feels everything.

So, now it’s a year later and everyone wants to know the answer to the same question: “Am I better?” Guess what, fuck that question. There is no way to answer that.

If you really want to know how I’m doing, here it is:

I am in awe and in trauma. I am healing and I am hurting. I am grateful and I am extremely pissed off. I have discovered incredible parts of myself that I didn’t know existed and I can’t believe I had to almost die to see them.

I am so mad at people and I also get it. I wear long Covid like a badge and I wish I could just take it off. I want to go back to living my life and I know I will never be the same.

So, that’s my year with Covid-19.