Context and Content
Context: This was written in small fragments in my journal and on my phone across many weeks and then pulled together in late April (2025). I wanted to write about how my love for Spring has been mixed up with a lot of other emotional messes since being unwell. The quotes from people are amalgamated and don’t reference a specific person or interaction. Edited and proofread by my dad.
Content: This piece discusses Long Covid symptoms as well as mental health complications. It specifically addresses isolation and the difficulties of being mostly housebound. There is also mention of formalised treatment/support I received.
Special thanks to S– for the memories and the photos.
I’m thinking too much about Spring.
Spring is happening, but not for me. Not how I want it to be.
I don't even know how to write about spring. Not anymore. I used to instinctively rise with it, seasonal depression lifting with the budding crocuses, snowdrops and daffodils. But it's different now. It holds more. A devastating mix of grief, loss and frustrated resignation that haunts those of us stuck inside.
"I needed to get out. I'd been inside for 3 days!!" I don't answer. I can’t.
“I just find myself going crazy if I don’t get out of the house.” I want to scream at them. I don’t. Part of me wants to ask, do you know who you are speaking to? Can you even make a cursory attempt to understand how that might seem to someone who literally can’t leave the house.
“I feel so much better when I get out into the fresh air.” No shit. “If I am not careful, I won’t go outside for days”. Um sure, try and see how your sanity stretches over an entire month. Try and see how thinly your sanity stretches when you realise three weeks into February that it is unlikely you will be able to go outside in the next week.
People think it is easy being forced to stay still. In fact it is really hard.
And a big part of it being so difficult is the lack of choice. Yes, feeling crummy and feeling the need to get outside is something we all experience but ultimately there is a choice in that. It becomes much more complicated when you don’t get a choice. You just can’t.
The flip side is sometimes you do have to do more than you can. What did you do in March? I went to the dentist twice. And that was pretty much it. The rest of it felt like a desperate scramble of constant symptom management/mitigation and trying to be grateful for the change in season.
I’m thinking too much about spring.
Full of sunshine and the promise of a magnolia tree, I risk walking back from the first dentist appointment. It takes me well over 40 mins and in the spirit of ‘silly mental health walks’ and ‘getting out of the house’ I have to stop so often I literally do smell the flowers. I also realise about 1/5 of the way home that I’ve hit what would be my limit.
Now here is a choice. I make what is probably the ‘wrong’ one and continue walking – with my crutches home. I take many rests and many photos. I sit on walls, I go so slowly and I sleep all afternoon but sure enough, the PEM (Post Exertional Malaise1) hits. I realise that I might not even be able to make my next dentist appointment in a fortnight.
🌸
The next week someone sends a photo to our Street Whatsapp Group. It’s of a tree in full blossom. It’s my favourite tree in our street. I realise I will not be able to see this tree in blossom. I know with absolute certainty I won’t be able to make the few hundred meters while it is in bloom.
This is the third spring I have been unwell. Everything in my life has been getting smaller since June 2022. At the moment my life feels so small and the fatigue so big I can’t even visualise getting to this tree.
I am crying too much about Spring.
"I don't think I could cope". It really isn't about coping. It is about wretched, wretched, wretched survival. And that reality isn't coping. It's barely managing. It's such a complicated mess of acceptance, determination and frankly, grief. There is a dullness in grieving what you’ve lost. It is blurred by fatigue and faded by brain fog and honestly you feel so unwell, what does it matter. But this year, this Spring brings me a new fresh, sharp grief. Because I really want to be out there. I want to see it. Something has shifted and I am able to want things again. But it hurts. So much. I so want to see that tree. It is not even halfway along my street and I can’t.
And I don’t have a choice in that.
The day after this particularly acute mental health nose-dive I have an appointment with the OT at my post-covid service. S– listens as I cry about not seeing this tree how and how much I feel Spring is hurting me this year. She suggests a values exercise to reframe the situation. About how I feel about being outside in Spring and drilling down into that. ‘Expansive’ is the surprising answer and we then spend time thinking about activities that might achieve this.
Like most people who have lived with ongoing and often debilitating anxiety it takes me a while to not fixate on the tree. I try to think less about what I am missing and focus on what I can experience. Gently expansive in the following week, I take photos of the violets in my garden. I decorate my Easter tree. I am delighted by the small tree just outside our front door suddenly blossoming.
I don’t get to see the tree. But the sun shines for seven days straight and my cat opens up. Her soft belly stretching out towards Spring. Her name is Persephone, so she knows. She knows and it is as if she is in active worship. I know how she feels. Finally, it feels like the whole of the country tilts a little towards the sun. Face up. Eyes closed. It's here. It's almost here. It almost feels like it is everywhere. Even here with me.
I plant a grow bar on the windowsill in the lounge. I buy a pair of shorts on Vinted. I switch my house slippers for Birkenstocks. Once again, a version of acceptance softens the pain of it all.
I’m still not sure how to write about Spring.
I remind myself and my blossoming brain that I promised myself I would not feel the pressure to write seasonal pieces for this platform. This is after I have dug through my Instagram and Google Photos for daffodil pictures in St. James’ Park. A further deep dive into Spring melancholia.
It is so hard to see. February 2020, one of my closest friends is visiting from Canada and this is the last time I will see her til 2024. I did make it back to see the daffodils with another close friend in 2022 but that feels too close to what I’ve lost. 2020 feels a whole other level of ‘before.’
It’s a reminder that experiencing the seasons hasn’t really been the same since pre-pandemic. Though my lockdown Instagram is all blossom as I walked my local area more than I had in all the years I lived here. That time really felt expansive, even if we were all so restricted. Not being able to even experience local parks, streets, cafes etc during this more recent isolation has felt like such a cruel betrayal.
At some point I’ll be able to write about the early months of being unwell when I had no idea what was going on or how to even begin a recovery. Every step I took ‘forward’ was consistently throwing me back so much further into being unwell. I couldn’t understand what was going on but it became quickly clear that it wasn’t safe for me to be outside. Unbalanced, unable to breathe, heart racing, exhausted and an increasing panic that never fully settled.
There is no choice in that. Sometimes I’m afraid there never will be.
Stoic is not an aspirational word but it is what is expected when you are chronically unwell. At the moment I am just fallen blossom and tears, so I’m not sure how to respond to the world opening up. Missing something while you are in it is such a weird feeling.
🌸
I am thinking too much about Spring, but I am crying less about it.
Ironically April brings more appointments and longer taxi rides and what helps me is noticing the blossoms. I can’t count them as I can’t keep track but I notice. Spring is happening.
I’m noticing Spring.
The bluebells in my garden are out. I eat lunch outside. I talk to my therapist. I pat my cat’s belly. I buy more shorts on Vinted.
And I did it. I’m holding it. It’s beautiful, meaningful, expansive even. I can feel that. But I still haven’t been able to go see my tree. I’m trying really hard to not think too much about that as I work out how to write about it. Much like everything in trying to (re)build a life when unwell. It is not how I want it to be.
Spring after all is happening. Everywhere else, yes, but also here.
Thanks for meeting me where I am at.
(Currently wearing my new shorts and watching Persephone snooze in a patch of sun).
Tilly x
PEM (Post Exertional Malaise) is a term used to describe the (often fully systemic) response to activity. An example would be experiencing overwhelming debilitating fatigue that feels disproportionate to an activity. It can involve intense symptom flare ups that last a few days or much longer, sometimes triggering a crash over multiple weeks/months.
Beautiful piece - so important to have your experience out in the world 💚
I shared this one with Cyndi and she told me you were already connected. Ha - small village.