Writing after illness

My newsletter is back and so am I. Here’s what happened.

Early this year, on the heels of a bout of chronic bronchitis, I contracted COVID for the first, official time. It was a severe case, as I feared it would be. As a person with persistent breathing issues, I thought the virus would go for my lungs. It did not.

It went for my brain.

I experienced, as millions of people have and will: aphasia, brain fog, confusion, insomnia, and terrible headaches. I said the wrong words. I fought to remember names, including the name of my own child. Once I blanked on my birthdate. Twice I couldn’t remember what our car looked like. I had a brain MRI to make sure it wasn’t actually a stroke (it wasn’t).

Months later, most of the symptoms have resolved or lessened greatly. I still have a headache, but not every day.

Just most days.

It’s in a different location than any headache I’ve ever had: at the back and top of my head. When I get stressed out, it comes back, instantly aching like someone has poked at a bad bruise, reminding me: You were once brought down by your body. You might be again.

I made some changes in my life, always keeping in the back of my mind (yes, the hurting part) the experiences of being sick and my work as a writer. I quit my job and started a different one. I bought a typewriter to cut down on screen time. I started acupuncture and returned to taking long walks as soon as I could. Like most people, I have some stresses I can’t make immediate changes about, but I’m doing what I can.

How does this impact the writing?

My vintage typewriter, all the way from Italy.

It terrified me, that COVID came for my language, my story-making ability. My whole world.

I tried to apply for a few jobs at this time, and looking over those materials now, I’m ashamed at all the typos. Not like me. I had edits on my next novel DUST due, and I had to take a break from them. I blew past deadlines for the first (and only!) time in my life. Not like me.

But COVID made me not me.

My agent reminded me that a big part of his job is to be my advocate. I think he really means champion. He spoke to my next publisher, Wednesday Books / St. Martin’s Press, about giving me extra time. Right away, they put my health first and prioritized me getting better. The book will come out, but a little later than we planned.

It will be better because of it.

I made other changes. At the height of my illness, reading on screens made my symptoms worse—reading at all made them worse (a nightmare for a full-time writer). So, I started listening to audiobooks. The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz got me through the hardest, longest nights of my fever, pain, and insomnia.

I changed too. I used to feel like my communications had to be perfect, even to close friends. But another thing that got me through? People checking in on me.

Every single day, someone reached out casually, in friendly, low-pressure ways. Friends from high school, readers, people I know only from the internet, people I hadn’t talked to in years, talked to me. Just to say they were thinking of me, I wasn’t alone, and offering advice if I asked (I asked!). They didn’t feel their emails, texts, or notes needed to be perfect—why had I? The most important thing is to make a connection, to reach out to another person, even in a rush, even imperfectly.

After the third blood draw in as many weeks.

COVID felt like a fire under my skin, in my blood and through my brain. I think it burned away certain parts. I think some of them were bad parts. I’ve stopped caring as much what other people think of me. I’ve stopped assuming everyone will try to relate or even have empathy for an experience, especially an experience of disability or illness (they won’t and it’s not your fault—that’s on them). I’ve stopped doing more than “just good enough” when just good enough is just fine. I’m trying to reserve my energy for what really matters.

One of the many people who reached out when I was sick was someone from back home, recovering from a stroke at the same time I was recovering from COVID. He said to think of the new, slightly different me, the me after surviving severe illness, as a collaborator: my current self working with my old self. What will be my future self be? I don’t know but I no longer fear them. I don’t think I really fear change anymore.

Art is the consistent thing. I had to step away from it for a while, but once I returned, it did help me, working on DUST again (and now, revising my next secret book … ). It gave me something to look forward to every day. It gave me a world, as it always does, where I could be what I wanted. It helped my brain remember how to feel, how to see. And how to believe in something better.

Something better is coming.