I don’t like this journal. The thoughts didn’t come out very clearly or satisfyingly, and it didn’t feel good to read. But I figured it might still be good for me to put it out in the open anyway.

So, back in February, just a few days after this journal, I caught covid. Go figure it would be immediately after something like that. I didn’t have it too badly, and frankly I didn’t even realize it was covid at first, I just thought it was stress related illness from the things I mentioned in that very journal. As time went on, I continued having more and more problems that I was unable to resolve and cope with, until eventually it was confirmed that I did, in fact, have covid back then. It has now been nearly nine months, and my “long-covid” symptoms have been unrelenting. My lack of updates, difficulty with producing art, struggles on my streams, and far more that only my friends have witnessed in private, have all been part of it. I’ve had lots of really bad, difficult times in my life before, and I’ve struggled with depression, anxiety, and more, for many years, but I’ve never experienced it so severely in such a prolonged manner as these past nine months. Every single coping mechanism and self-care technique I had come to rely on for my “usual” depression (many of which were only minimally effective in the first place) has been proving completely ineffective. In spite of how bad things already felt, I once again find myself feeling even more stuck and hopeless than I’ve ever been—something that, somehow, I keep finding myself able to say over and over as my life goes on. I never assume that things can’t get worse, no matter how bad they get, and I repeatedly keep learning just how much worse that can be.

The closing segment of that last big journal read:

“I feel very defeated, and I don’t have much faith that I’ll make it over this hurdle when I was already still caught on the last one (or five). I am trying, and so far in my life I have never stopped trying. I can’t promise I’ll always be able to keep trying, but for now at least, I am trying in the greatest capacity I am able, even if that capacity may be severely diminished.”

(right from one hurdle smack into another, it seems)

I’ve always thought the worst thing anyone can do when they’re in a bad situation is to stop trying, and that’s why even back then, I still tried to keep going. But I don’t think I have the will to try anymore. I don’t see any point in it. It’s not simply an emotional state that I need to learn how to deal with and figure out a way through or around. It’s not something to be coped with and managed as my life otherwise proceeds just fine. It’s a limitation. Nothing I do to feel better works, because I can’t feel better.

It’s weird. I talked in that last journal about how hopeless I was, and about how difficult it was to cope. The things I’m saying now seem so similar, and yet my life and situation have gotten even worse. The first couple months when I didn’t know it was covid, I was stunned at how bad my problems suddenly seemed to be and how horribly ineffective my usual tactics were. Unaware that anything had truly changed, I still kept pushing myself to try, pushing myself too hard at times, and it wound up not making a difference.

Ultimately it doesn’t even seem up to me. What I’m experiencing is not unique among covid survivors, but most who recover from it tend to have already done so by the point I’m at, and for those who haven’t, there seems to be no cure, treatment, or even understanding of why it’s happening at all. Either I’ll recover from this and go back to the previous near-hopeless “normal,” or I won’t recover from this and there will be no chance left for me at all. The question I’m asking myself now is if I am able to stick around long enough to find out, and the answer is that I don’t know.