Hello Again

(10-15 min read)

I couldn’t really think of a good way to start this so I think I’ll just dive in.

It’s been a long time since I last wrote anything that I shared online. I’ve barely posted anything at all on social media for years. My last blog was in early 2016 where I was writing about how I felt I was on my way back to health, which I found amusing given what followed. And my social media timelines started to get very quiet after then too. One of the reasons I’m writing this is to explain why that is and where I’ve been.

I’m not sure who will be reading this, but those who know me may be aware that I become unwell at the beginning of 2014 with what I understood and accepted at the time as chronic fatigue syndrome. I worked to get well again on the basis of it being that, but I began to realise during 2016 that while there were some improvements, on the whole I seemed to be somewhat stuck. That, alongside some really difficult things that went on in other areas of my life in 2016 led to my health deteriorating (and my psychological health along with it) such that by the winter of that year I was extremely unwell to the point of being of being pretty much unable to look after myself anymore and feeling like I had essentially had enough.

Given that after two to three years of following a (fairly comprehensive) chronic fatigue recovery programme and not really seeing significant improvement (despite what I was telling myself at the time), as well as the fact that I had started to developing a bunch of strange, new, mostly neurological symptoms, me and my parents started looking at other alternatives to explain what was and had been causing me to be unwell.

Long story short, we came to the conclusion that it was potentially Lyme Disease (something I had never heard of before). We had some blood tests done which came back showing very high levels of bacterial infection indicating Lyme Disease, and then started treating it on that basis and over the next couple of years I gradually improved – with a lot of help from others.

By the end of 2019 all but a few of the symptoms had cleared up. Lyme Disease is a complicated condition and difficult to explain, but I’ll say that totally eradicating it from the body seems to be a tough ask and so my aim was to essentially get on top of it and keep things that way. It has still on increasingly rare occasions popped up and prompted a few symptoms, but thanks to my body being a lot stronger now and the Lyme protocol I have, it has always cleared up very quickly since then. So I would say by the end of 2019 I was no longer ‘unwell’ for the first time since the end of 2013.

However this was far from the end of the recovery slog, as the six years of illness had taken an enormous toll on my body and mind. Realising that I was finally no longer unwell and didn’t need to be in survival mode anymore (and desperate to get away from Newbury, where I had spent the entirety of my illness), I managed to get my ailing body on to a plane to sunny Egypt. Once I got there I realised how thoroughly exhausted I was at every level from what had happened, as well as how much there was that I needed to process and integrate.

So in the four years since I’ve largely been a recluse and not engaged much with people or the wider world at all beyond where it couldn’t be avoided. I basically just wanted to be left to it.

The above feels like an almost comically crude summary to me of everything that went on, but I don’t want to spend ages going over it at the moment and it felt like an important piece of context to give. I quite like the thought at some point of sharing my story in more detail, given that so much happened and I learned so much from it – there’s a lot to tell. But not yet.

A couple of years ago my interest in things started to return, and I began paying more attention again to what was going in the world around me, which I didn’t have the bandwidth to do while I was dealing with illness. Two years later I’m now at the point where I’d like to start writing about it.

So why now? Well of late I’ve been getting increasingly bored and restless (and feeling purposeless), and there are a couple of things I’ve been finding myself yearning for. One being more connection and conversation with people (my interactions with people have essentially been limited to a few close friends and my parents), and linked to this I have a lot of thoughts – a lot to say – on what I see going on at the moment which I’d like to put out there and talk with others about. I’m kind of fascinated by what’s happening here at the moment, but my enthusiasm to participate in it is still pretty low. I also need to kickstart my finances, which have been basically on life support recently (illness was very tough on them, unsurprisingly) due to my general apathy/lack of enthusiasm and I’m hoping that this will give me the impetus I’ve been missing.

Unlike most people, I’ve had something of an extended ‘break’ from the world. It has felt a bit like I left it 7-10 years ago (I disengaged a lot when illness started, but then really shut myself off a few years later in 2016), and then started to ‘return’ a couple of years ago (late 2021) and it all looked so different to me. It prompted a lot of reflection about how much it was that the world had changed and how much it was me who had. I’m not who I was, which will probably become more apparent. I may end up writing about this more and my disbelief at what I was seeing going on around me, which prompted a lot of research, thinking and talking to people. I came back to chaos – of which covid was only one part. I think even if nothing else had changed, simply unplugging for 5+ years would have given me a very different perspective on things when I returned – I think about what I hear people say when they just take a week’s retreat from the wider world. It’s striking how heavily socialised into ways of being we all are.

So there we are. I have a long list of topics I’d like to write about, and I don’t know what order I’ll be doing them. I have no plan here. I’ll probably do it one step at a time and see what I have enthusiasm for, what responses I get from people and what conversations I have and then figure it out as I go along. Broadly I look at things through the lens of psychology, sociology and spirituality/consciousness (I don’t particularly like using the term ‘spirituality’ but it’s probably the one people are most familiar when it comes to describing what I’d be talking about). Some of the more specific things that have been on my mind of late are: what’s going on with masculinity and femininity (and between men and women more generally), the trend I’ve been noticing of referring to people as ‘NPCs’, psychological manipulation (as conducted on a wide scale), what I’ve noticed happening to a lot of pop culture (eg sports, film, TV, music, games etc), how remarkably childlike people have become and some of the parallels I’ve noticed between what’s going on currently with our society and ones in the past. I’m also weighing up how much to write about my experiences with meditation/awakening/spirituality over these ten years. By and large I’m happy to go with what people show an interest in.

I’ve been doing a lot of digging over the last couple of years and there’s plenty there I’ve found (as well as conclusions I’ve come to) that would probably make a lot of people’s heads spin, but I’m intending to start with stuff that’s a bit more ‘safe’ and that I expect people will generally find easier to engage with. I’m also quite interested down the line in uploading videos or podcasts too but I’ll start with this and see how it goes.

I probably should briefly mention where I am now. Weariness is one of the main issues, but appetite and enthusiasm are gradually coming back. There are still some leftover things on the physical side from the time I was unwell, with tiredness probably being the main issue (again, improving). And some psychological leftovers too. I’d recommend looking into complex-PTSD if you’d like to understand that a bit better; it’s quite common with chronic illness.

I think that about wraps up everything I want to say for now. If anyone wants to reach out, whether it be via social media, email (hopefully I remember to put my address on the blog) or by text (if you still have my number) then by all means. For now I’m intending to post stuff on the social media platforms I’m on and see how that goes. I’d welcome hearing from people – whether it’s reconnecting or connecting for the first time. Maybe something I’ve written here resonates or you just want to say hello again, or have some questions. Or it’s because of some of the strange stuff you’ve seen going on in the world and you want to discuss that. I’d love to hear about people’s stories and experiences as I’ve been learning a lot from that of late. I know things are very difficult for a lot of people at the moment and what you see on the surface with people can be very different to what’s going on underneath.

So that’s that for now. Thanks for reading.