Well, this has been an awful day.
I've been ill for a month. Initially I thought it was a chest infection. I live like a hermit, so the chances I caught something contagious must be very small. Non-zero, but very small. It'll pass off soon.
It didn't pass off. Every time I think it's on the wane, it comes back with a vengeance.
Today I was so confident that I went to the Queen Victoria Market to stock up on minimum dietary requirements. I was still coughing and a bit sniffly, but otherwise feeling much better. Wearing a mask, of course. The residual coughing I could put down to wear and tear over the last month. And I'm always somewhat sniffly, due to being pale, shy, and bookish; not at all hardy and replete with stout British character.
It was good to be out in the sun, but I found myself physically trembling and cognitively struggling with the task at hand. Over the last couple of years I've made a fine art of the QVM run, so this shouldn't have been such a struggle. Nor should the uphill walk home. I'm clearly not yet well. After a month.
I can't afford to be ill. I'm out of safety nets. As a practical matter, this is a worry.
More fundamentally, because I'm not a sociable person, I can't afford to be out of the company of others for too long. It's taking a toll. Without incidental interaction, it's too easy to lose touch with who I am. I revert to being an undressed mannequin. A lump of human tofu, devoid of colour, shape or texture.
My metaphorical and literal nightmares revolve around the winding back of the last few years, and having to go back to where I was. Losing myself.
I don't have much, but at least the restaurant touts on Lygon Street know not to bother with the enormous old trans lady on her way to the supermarket and/or off-license. And I know that I can on a good day draw a laugh (intentionally or otherwise) from my U3A classmates, who have never known me as anything other than Katy, the enormous old occasionally funny trans lady.
The fear of illness, especially as you get older, is not about the illness, however horrible it may be. It's the fear of being robbed of yourself.