Sometimes I wonder if there will ever be a time where I won’t be stressed. It feels like it has become a natural state of being and that my body doesn’t even remember what life could be without it. I am tired, though, so very tired. I don’t think anyone can live a life like this for very long.
I feel like I tried my best, but even now when I had assumed I would feel better, my body is still the same – in a constant state of tension. It feels like I can snap and break completely at any time with no warning. Not snap like get angry or frustrated, but that the tension in my body is too much and when it breaks, as it surely will, my body breaks with it.
Realising that I was stressed and struggling to deal with it almost made it worse, because I felt embarrassed and helpless. I hadn’t really noticed how my body had reacted to feeling stress either. Now, I can feel the tightness in my neck and shoulders, a tightness in my throat, all the time. It almost makes me feel more stressed out being aware of the changes it has done to me physically. I try doing sports, stretching and meditating, but so far, the tightness in my shoulders is yet to dissolve even a little and my breathing still feels like I am breathing through an old, dirty filter.
As I said, I am tired. So very tired. If anyone had told me the most difficult part of dealing with stress was how it stays in your body after it should by all logic have started to go away, I would have thought it a joke. I knew stress stayed in the body long after stressful circumstances are gone, but I had no idea it would be like this or how it would affect my life.
What I have since come to understand is that I am probably in the early stages of depression. I have struggled with depression since I was a teenager and have over the years learned how to read myself well enough to recognise the signs. Really, it’s no wonder – rather more surprising that it didn’t happen earlier. I returned to work full-time before I was ready and struggled to balance work and studying in the only way I could while I was still sick from covid-19, because I thought I would quickly get better.
The only way for me to survive it was to sacrifice all that I love in my life. It is hardly surprising that I started disliking my change in career. It was not because I didn’t enjoy programming or coding, it was because I had sacrificed all my free time interests and any chance of a social life to go to work every day. I had very few friends to begin with and most of them live abroad – now I have barely any left.
I have not had time to write, practice playing music, read books as I used to or play video games. I have not seen friends or been on dates or done anything that wasn’t related to work, studying to do my work or pass my exams. I did start worry that I wasn’t getting better and so a year ago I started trying to find a way to get healthy again, but that added more stress, not less.
Now, all that is not entirely true, because I have been a bit social with work colleagues and people from my class, but a handful of work/study related social events over the course of 3 years doesn’t really mean a happy social life to me. However, I am grateful I to have had those, at least.
So, I was stressed and now I am feeling quite sad, doing my best to not get pulled back into a depression. I am not sad because I am lonely, I am sad because I miss doing things that make me happy instead focusing only on things that make me money or on how sick I am. I know in my mind that I used to enjoy programming, but now all I see when I sit down to work is something that isn’t what I love and feels a lot more like something that is actively taking me further away from all that I love.
I think, if I had waited to come back full-time until I was actually well enough or if the general understanding of covid-19 and the long-term effects it has had on some people were better, I would not feel as sad and tired of everything as I do know. But, once I came back to work it did not take long for everyone to expect me to work like everyone else and I felt so guilty because I was sick that I pushed myself too far and pretended everything was fine.
People seemed to almost refuse to believe that I was still not getting any better and now, 3 years later, I am still sick every single day and most people, even if they hear it, don’t understand or maybe don’t even want to believe I can really be as sick as I am.
It’s too late to change anything now, however, and all I can do is get through the next year and a couple of months to finish my apprenticeship as well as my degree. Once I finish, I will look for a part time job instead, try to focus on getting healthy again and use the rest of the time on things I love – such as writing.
A year and a few months will go by in no time. I feel far more confident facing the next period of my life than I was at any point since I returned to work after becoming sick with covid-19. It doesn’t make me happy to face a future where all that I love will have to be sacrificed only to survive work and getting my degree, but I know I can handle it. I can get through it. I don’t need to be rich, but I do need to become happy again. Sitting in an office every day between eight and four was never my kind of happiness, but I thought it could be a fun path towards freedom. Then I got sick. My days are shorter than most people because of the constant fatigue that doesn’t go away no matter how much I sleep. I suffer from all the usual covid-19 symptoms. It might never get better. I might be over it tomorrow. No one can tell. Most don’t seem to care.
While figuring out how to deal with stress, I decided not to take work home with me. When I am in school, I study at school after classes end, but not on weekends or in the evenings. I don’t study for work in my free time or work on my assignments when I am off.
I do try to learn and improve my programming skills when I have the energy, but only through things that I think are fun – I want to remember why I wanted to learn programming in the first place. These decisions have made a big difference and mentally, I feel much better. I have yet to remember or to find joy in my work again, but I hope it will change. I wanted to become a programmer once, I just forgot why because I pushed myself too far.
I try to treat myself kindly. I may not have a social life, but I am probably too tired to make the proper effort now. Maybe one day I will be less tired, or someone will be willing to make an effort for me, but until that happens, I will do the only thing I can do.
I will do my best to start doing the things I love – doing the things that make life worth living for me. Things like writing a sentence here and there, like practising playing go, reading about history or a great piece of fiction. I might even start playing guitar again, although it has been so long, I am almost afraid to pick it up. It might not be a lot, because I leave for work before 7 in the morning and I am not home until 5 or 6 in the evening. There are practical things to do, food to make, clothes to launder and all that stuff. Because of the constant fatigue covid-19 has left me with, I go to bed at 8. I don’t go to bed at 8 because I have to get up early, I get up early because I have to go to bed early. It might not mean a big difference to you, but to me it means a lot. In fact, it means everything.
The point is, I don’t have as many hours in a day free to enjoy the things I love as I would want – but let’s be serious here, who does? I am lucky, in a way, that I know what matters to me and can make an effort to do just a little bit every day.
Feeling as sensitive and vulnerable as I do now, because I have been less than good at handling my stress which has led me towards yet another period of depression, makes it extra important to take care of oneself. I must say, rather than struggling against dealing with my stress, I should have made more of an effort to change my situation than I did.
I am doing that now. I have to. If you are in a similar place, don’t believe you can get through just a little longer of pushing yourself beyond your limitations. Be honest with yourself and treat yourself with the love and compassion you would your very best friend in the world.
You deserve it.
