Saturday, June 03, 2017

Lost month

My month of May passed in shock, sickness and the slow-motion of watching the self from another place. After collapsing in the forest when out with my dog – who incidentally probably saved my life by licking my face until I recovered consciousness - I was diagnosed with heart problems, taken into intensive care for an operation and eventually sent home for the beginning of a long recuperation which will include weeks in a special centre in Roscoff. I don't have the results of the latest tests yet, I don't have the strength to do more than stroll a few hundred metres with a companion, I no longer breathe easily and I can't face visitors. I don't work or drive, and cling obstinately to this shrunken world. Alongside this torpor, there is a strong element of unreality and separation, a sense of observing the struggles of someone else. To be inactive, fearful and mentally unfit is so alien to who I have always been. Now what, I wonder constantly. My personal landscape is destroyed.
Out of the many upheavals and changes that have ensued from one sunny Saturday afternoon, the worst is knowing that I will never again set off light-heartedly for a walk in the forest.