Well, friends, I wrote to you last time about a stormy February. By the time I sent out that newsletter, the storm had already grown stronger. At the end of last month, the UK government suddenly removed all social distancing requirements and other COVID-related restrictions. In April, we’ll no longer be able to get free lateral flow or PCR tests on the (rapidly privatising) NHS. Unfortunately this isn’t anything new for my American pals but it’s terrifying for me, someone who relies on free healthcare. In fact, the people most vulnerable to COVID are also the people most likely to need these tests for free.

Despite all of this, at the beginning of March, I slowly felt myself coming out of the storm, as much as that’s possible when the entire nightmare island you live on is the storm. I felt February’s extended flare slowly easing up, giving me a few, brief days of feeling able to plan again and catch up on chores. Only for a few days, before some bad work news and a traumatic incident at home triggered another flare, the worst one of the year so far (and they’ve all been pretty rough).

I’m writing this after a big panic attack yesterday evening. One of those panic attacks so intense that it scares you, the kind that convinces you that how you feel in the (long, stretched out, neverending) moment is how you’ll always feel: eternal panic and despair and self-hatred. When I came out of it, I disassociated, unable to “reconnect” with myself without crying again. I feel less detached today, less like my brain is full of lumpy sewage, but fuck. I’m so tired.

Did you know that any pressure on my skin feels like I’ve been bruised? Did you also know that this has slowly become worse since the start of the year? Alongside feeling bruised, I experience dull pain, aching pain, deep muscle and joint pain, stabbing muscle and joint pain, and sharp needle pain every single day. When I’m flaring up, my fatigue intensifies, making it difficult just to sit up if I’m lying down, let alone to stand up if I’m sitting. Walking any distance, say from my bed to the bathroom, makes me feel like I’m about to collapse. However, this month, the most frustrating part is that I cannot nap. Any time I lie down to try and recover some spoons, my heart starts racing, my anxiety flares, and I can’t even snooze.

Yesterday’s panic attack, then, maybe isn’t such a surprise, though it felt like it came out of nowhere at the time. The thought that triggered it feels silly to admit: I want to go dancing again one day but, between my disability and the way this country is responding to COVID (or, more accurately, the way it’s not), I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to.

Such a big reaction to such a small desire—except it doesn’t feel small. Because it’s not just about the dancing or going out, although that’s part of it. It’s not even just about disabled grief, about mourning what I’m no longer able to do, although that’s there too. It feels so big because it feels like my agency has been removed, like I’m trapped with this “no going out to dance” future because the government actively wants to kill disabled people and an awful lot of non-government, pre-disabled people are happy to go along with it just so they can keep pretending that Everything’s Fine. There’s a Venn diagram where those two groups overlap, and that section is quite large and it’s labelled “ableism”.

This is not the worst way in which disabled people have been treated as disposable during the pandemic. Being unable to go dancing is something I can live without—being unsafe going to the hospital or to work is not. But dancing is the thing that sent me into a spiral because I’ve already spent so much of this year being unable to do much of anything and I’m starting to feel like a ghost. It’s the thing that got to me because of the constant, rampant ableism on display, that big “fuck you” from the people who can go out dancing and to the hospital and to their office.

I’m sure there are some smaller venues out there doing their best to uphold safety measures, although we’ll see how long that can last when we need to pay for tests. I appreciate the folk still wearing masks even though they/we are now very visibly in the minority. And look, none of us know the future, no matter what panic brain (and depression brain and chronic pain brain) try to tell us. I do think it’ll take seismic changes for this hell island to improve, but seismic changes remain possible. And in lots of places around the world, it’s been safe to go out dancing for the last year and a half. Maybe Britain really does only offer me a “no going out dancing” future but that doesn’t mean that has to be my future.

For now, I remain unable to do much. I definitely can’t do any dancing—it hurts just to stand—but hey, I’m writing this newsletter. That’s one thing more than I was able to do two days ago. I feel a dull pain in the middle of my back, with stabbing edges. I feel deep pain in my wrists and forearms, and a stiff ache in my shins and knees. My fatigue is sitting heavy behind my eyes and at the base of my head. If I lie down to nap, I probably still won’t be able to snooze. I am deeply tired, so tired that I only feel a glimmer of anger at all this carelessness. Sometimes we need to sit with our exhaustion, which feels like despair sometimes, which feels like panic, which feels like giving up. Sometimes the only thing I’m physically able to do is sit with my pain and my fatigue, and it can feel like my body is giving up too. But it isn’t. It’s just trying to heal from the damage done to it by a world that wants to destroy it.

stuff I did this month

For Sidequest, I reviewed Haulways Trucking Inc, a super adaptable solo TTRPG where you play a long haul trucker in an alternate America filled with strange and supernatural beings. This game gave me both escapism and a way to poke at my own feelings of loneliness.

stuff I liked this month

I finished watching the entire Halloween film series (yes, including both Rob Zombie attempts, unfortunately) up to the recent “retcon”, which I still think is the best film in the franchise. Horror bros, don’t @ me. Halloween III: Season of the Witch is a close second, despite the gross romantic relationship, but show me a pre-2018 Halloween film with good gender politics and I’ll give you a gold star.

I appreciated this gal-dem piece by Aizada Arystanbek on the Soviet Union’s colonial legacies, and why western communists need to stop romanticising Soviet Russia. Those same people also need to stop saying Russia isn’t imperialist because that is some disingenuous, ahistorical, apologist shit. It is, in fact, possible to protest and criticise multiple imperialist and colonial nation states at the same time.

I’ve been listening to Love Trip (1982) by Takako Mamiya 間宮貴子. Give it a go if you want some excellent ‘80s sax and a bit of pep in your step.

Heavy Machinery is written by Zainabb Hull and powered by chip shop chips in the sun and crying at work.

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