I was standing at the window searching for the ice cream truck, which wouldn’t be so strange, but I was naked, and it was 4 a.m.
“What are you doing, love?” asked my wife, Lauren, in the pre-dawn haze.
“Thought I heard something,” I said as I returned to bed, deciding now probably wasn’t the best time to admit I had been hallucinating.
When the Covid stay-at-home order took effect, Lauren and I joked that nothing would change for us. As homebodies in East Hollywood who spent absurd amounts of time together, it seemed as if we’d been waiting for this moment our whole lives.
We coped by cooking elaborate comfort-food meals and adopting a rescue Chihuahua. Everyone we knew had survived Covid without a hitch, so when we tested positive two years into the pandemic, we closed our laptops and curled up on the couch, wondering how many “Mission Impossible” movies we could knock out before we were back on our feet.
Then, 435 days of illness later, I told the love of my life to find another partner.
Weeks after our acute infection passed, I realized my brain couldn’t process the most basic movie plots, which posed a bit of a problem for my screenwriting career. Lauren suggested we watch nature shows, but my nervous system was so raw that seeing an orca hunt a seal left me weeping.
I figured some exercise might get me feeling closer to myself, but I didn’t know that the virus had left me with post-exertional malaise, a hallmark of long Covid, where even mild exertion can disable you for days. Or weeks. Or permanently lower your ability to function.
My Peloton ride had lit a fuse. The next day, like some horror version of “Freaky Friday,” I awoke to a body I didn’t recognize.
I had heard of the life-altering fatigue of long Covid, which turned doing the dishes into a marathon requiring several breaks and a nap. I didn’t know, however, that the illness would trigger in me a painful allergic reaction to sunshine, or trigeminal neuralgia (imagine wearing an electric fishnet as a mask), or the dozen other bizarre symptoms that left me feeling as if an essential screw holding me together had come loose.
I became housebound overnight. I was 37.
Loving your partner “in sickness” sounds noble, romantic even. In reality, it’s gut wrenching. For Lauren, it meant having to smile through a Zoom meeting one minute then talk me down from an epic anxiety spiral the next. It meant becoming our sole breadwinner while also taking on the cooking (which was my thing), cleaning and everything else. Sometimes I would hear her in the bathroom, door shut and faucet running to drown out the sound of her crying. That’s what loving me in sickness meant, too.
Confined within the stucco walls of our tiny bungalow, we longed for our illness-free lives. Desperate to get back there, we threw my body, and most of our savings, at medical specialists.
Doctors tossed out several acronyms I’d never heard of while assuring me my health looked great on paper. It felt like being high-fived while drowning.
What they meant was that I was dealing with a chronic disease that didn’t show up on tests, that no one really understood, and for which there was no known cure.
Adjusting to chronic illness is a slog. Light and sound gave me migraines, so no more trips to the Silver Lake Dog Park. No more culinary adventures around L.A., as most foods destroyed my gut. Sex became painful, so we stopped having it.
Worst of all, though, we stopped talking about becoming parents or traveling or planning for anything beyond what we would have for dinner, because it was hard to believe in a future where any of it was possible.
At night we would hold hands, a familiar comfort in a life that had become foreign to us. Lauren’s fingers, intertwined in mine, were an anchor keeping me from drifting off into the world of my illness. In those moments I would forget about the pain and limitations and catch myself smiling, lost in the halcyon days before everything changed.
But long Covid is, well, long. Months, maybe years. Or possibly forever (again, no one really knows). The Groundhog Day of it all — managing the same symptoms day after tedious day — breaks you mentally. Then it breaks your heart.
Over time, my thoughts began to darken. When Lauren felt unsafe leaving me at home while she left on work trips, we knew we had to move in with my family in Northern California. Lauren’s parents helped by flying from Colorado Springs to L.A. the next week to pack our life into boxes and drive them north.
And so, just after my 38th birthday, I found myself sobbing into my parents’ couch in Marin County.
The first thing you see when you enter the house is our wedding photo. Lauren’s arms are wrapped around my shoulders. She’s looking at me with joyful tears, telling me this is the best day of her life. I’m smiling at her, about to say the same.
There I was — the healthy, promising man she had married. The guy who, during one of our early dates at a piano bar, watched her sing “La Vie en Rose” in perfect French, and fell madly in love.
At 20, Lauren was like a mystic to me. She was so secure in her skin, preferred reading a book to going out, and fell asleep the minute her tight, glossy curls touched her pillow. I was neurotic, prone to insomnia, and liked to party. It was a perfect mismatch.
Over the next 12 years, our bond carried us through the highs and lows of grad school, cross-country moves, the deaths of friends and family, and eventually down the aisle.
Our wedding day, colliding with this moment — the day I admitted defeat to chronic illness — was a wallop. I no longer saw myself in that photo and began turning away from it whenever I passed it in the hall.
Then I turned away from Lauren. I had lost so many parts of my life that I thought were secure, I had convinced myself I would lose her next. I had become more burden than partner. How could I, in good conscience, expect her to endure my frail health for a lifetime?
So one night, I told the person that means more to me than anything in the world that she should move on. It wasn’t the first time I’d said it, but it was the first time I’d meant it.
Lauren set down her book and turned to me in bed. “It’s not up to you to decide how much I can take. That’s my choice.”
“I don’t know where this will leave me.”
“I know.”
“If you found someone else, I’d forgive you.”
“But they wouldn’t be you.”
You. Her words made me see something for the first time. Where I saw a person I no longer recognized, Lauren saw the same man she loved, who happened to be suffering from an illness. She reminded me that, beneath my symptoms, I was still me.
I had projected my worst fear onto her. Yes, my health had dragged her through hell. But she was steadfast. She was by my side through the multiple trips to the ER. She was there to rub my back when my pain flared, to pull a blanket over me when my fatigue glued me to the couch.
Lauren had already grieved our old life and opened herself up to the possibilities of our new one. She was just waiting for me to catch up.
I was so terrified of losing more of my life, I had dissociated from it entirely. And in the process, I had numbed myself to joy, to heartache, to any feeling at all. I finally understood that my illness wasn’t the threat to our marriage — it was me, turning away from Lauren’s love.
Eventually, I stopped grasping for my former self. At a time when I hated my body the most, I began practicing self-kindness, and the consistent, hard work of trying to love my body as it is gradually has led to an acceptance of my condition. We have dropped our old mantra — “We’ll get our lives back” — and replaced it with, “We’re managing.”
In the end, my illness has brought us closer to our humanness, and in turn, to each other. Instead of waiting for my good days, we try to savor them all, even the ones where I’m horizontal and the only thing we can do is watch a movie in bed.
In case you’re wondering, we’ve seen every “Mission Impossible” several times over. These days, I can even follow the plot.
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