Too far, too tired

Last year a friend who lives close by messaged me, after four years during which we weren’t in touch. Four years during which I got significantly sicker, crashed out of work again – permanently this time, ended my career and became medically retired, had other severe, acute health issues, had major surgery, became almost entirely housebound for over two years – none of which they knew. I was moved, and admired, that they got in touch. I know the barriers to getting back in touch with old friends you’ve grown apart from because of circumstance; not least the guilt I know I feel for not being in touch with friends going through hard times. It takes strength and care to reconnect. 

And yet, I couldn’t get over the distance I felt between us. 

They said, ‘those covid days seem like so long ago, and yet, their presence still lingers everywhere, doesn’t it?’, and I wondered if they realised how jarring that sounds to me. If they realised that covid ripped my life apart and left it utterly changed; that covid’s lingering presence, for me, is 24/7, 365 days a year: it’s the reason I’m severely sick and disabled; why I’m so isolated from the abled, normative world; why I can’t now interact with that world in the ways I used to, in the ways they still can. They can’t know, of course, that I still wear a respirator mask to protect myself, the few times I’m able to go into the outside world – the more so because almost no one else wears a mask to protect me, or anyone else vulnerable, anymore. That active care for others we all learned in the early years of covid, to protect others by making small changes to our own behaviour – wearing a mask, staying home when sick: it was so short-lived. I don’t see that lingering in abled society. That world returned so quickly to its old normal, seemingly desperate to forget any lingering presence of covid. And that old normal isn’t mine, anymore. For me, ‘those covid days’ aren’t long ago, but now.   

They asked if I was up for visitors, and made an offer that I know was thoughtful, and that would have been kind in my Before times: they asked me to let them know if I ever wanted to catch up by walking around the block with them. It’s the kind of thing I think they know I would have enjoyed, Before – being outside, getting exercise – and I think they might have thought a walk around the block was low energy, an accessible replacement activity for the more active outdoor pursuits we used to enjoy together. But their low energy activity was way too much for me, at that time. I’d been too ill to walk around the block for about 2.5 years, even solo, and definitely not while talking with someone (physical AND cognitive work?! Double the exertion!). And didn’t know if I’d ever be able to do it again. 

I kept their message, marked up to remind me to reply, thinking again and again about how to explain my inability to do what they suggest, without rebuffing their kindness. Thinking about the heaviness of that explanation, the weight of trying to tell abled people how little I can do now, how tiny are the limits of my capacity. Even how to explain when those limits are expanding again and are currently significantly (for me) bigger than they were, say, a year ago, but are still so much smaller than my abled friends can conceive of; without my explaining, which I haven’t the energy to do.  

Thinking about how I don’t want to have to explain. Wanting them to understand without my explanation, wanting them to offer to show up for me in ways I am capable of, without my having to ask. And knowing that no-one knows how to do this unless they’ve learned from experience: their own, or someone very close to them; or someone like me explains to them. I don’t judge, don’t blame anyone for that. But I’m so tired of explaining the extent of my disability to abled people. Tired of trying to build bridges over this yawning gap between my experience and that of the abled world. And so I keep not answering the message; and months go by; and eventually I give up even the intention to reply, lose the message, squash down the guilt that comes when I remember it and my old friend. 

This hasn’t only happened once, with only this friend, of course. There’ve been similar experiences with other friends who’ve reached out, tried to reconnect, and I’ve struggled with the same distance, same gap, same heaviness; and I’ve laid down that weight in similar ways. Given up, because I’m too tired to explain. I don’t feel good about it. I don’t blame myself for it either, just as I don’t blame anyone else. But I’m sad about it. I want to have the energy and capacity to build bridges back to these parts of the abled world, these people, these friends, that I miss. Maybe, one day.