How does it feel? This -I gesture vaguely to my last half-decade - is normal now. This is what everyone's going through. This isn't what anyone else is going through at all. How are you doing? Are you okay? Our world isn't built for this. Staying at home. Why didn't you put supports in place when it was just us sick people? I want to cackle as you find out first hand that housebound doesn't mean sitting around watching TV all day. I envy you for your ability to watch TV at all. Thank you for the free resources. I hope they help thousands of people. Why weren't they there before. Over the years I've slowly, thoughtfully, desperately discovered how to cope. I want to teach you all of my coping strategies. My coping strategies aren't for you. I want to listen while you vent about how hard it is for you. What's your problem? It'll only be for a year or two at most. You can still do everything except go out, so what are you complaining about? I want to cup your face in my hands and tell you, softly, that it'll be alright. That it's not so bad living like this. I want to smugly proclaim “see? It's terrible living like this”. I want to sit you down and make you sign a legal document promising you won't forget about me when this is all over*. *for you I want to care for you. I want you to care about me.

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I’m having a lot of feelings about watching abled people respond to covid. Not just the way some people are making it extremely obvious whose lives they feel are worth living, but also their response to social distancing measures. Things that society, as a whole, didn’t care about pre-lockdown (when they were only happening to disabled people) are suddenly A Big Deal. I saw an article about the government being deeply concerned about the mental health effects of being confined to the house for extended periods, which was incredibly weird as someone who has been housebound for 3 years. This poem was an attempt to capture my confusing and often contradictory feelings about the whole situation.

#poetry #mecfs

If I do it, will I regret it? Afterwards, will I find

That the frenzied buzzing of thoughts gives way to a mind devoid of anything?

That coordinating every single muscle required to stand up is too much effort?

That, if I try, I can wrangle words into a sentence in my mind, but as soon as I open my mouth to speak they disappear?

That, at dinner, when I drop peas all over the floor, I break down crying because it's all too much, wordlessly screaming at reality to stop because I don't have the energy to deal with this on top of everything else?

That at night I'll lie awake because I'm too tired to sleep?

Is it worth it?

#poetry #mecfs

A book, a sequel to a series that I'd never finished. Posters, ripped at the edges blu tack bleeding into the paper. A temporary tattoo, that I'd wear when I got around to it. Remnants of a former life tucked under a bed covered in layer upon layer of dust.

#poetry #mecfs

The background of reality didn't load today. The world cuts off at the end of the garden. Glitches pass by – the fronts of cars, with their lights cutting through the fog, appear and disappear at random. Mum tells me that, if I travelled to the fence where the world stops the field beyond would load like normal and the sheep would pop back into existence. I have no way to verify this.

#poetry #mecfs