What do we owe each other?

Newsletter #1

Detail from Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait (1434). Image description: An oil painting of two white hands, one laid palm-open and gently held by the other.

Hello, and welcome to my first monthly newsletter. Thank you to those who have paid to subscribe and access content like this - your support is so appreciated.

I’ve been sick this week, and the week before that. It’s a kind of ambient sickness where I’m not confined to my bed but am largely confined to my flat and can do one mild activity a day, such as coffee with a friend close to my house or having someone over in the evening. I’m having another chronic fatigue flareup (I’ve written about chronic fatigue before) and it’s dragging on, as chronic fatigue typically does. I may be better in a few days’ time, or I may be ill for another two weeks – who knows.

The most striking thing for me during chronic fatigue flareups is how isolating sickness can be. In my usual, non-sick life, I’ve been putting a lot of time and energy into building connections with other people and trying to find a place in some form of community. Long-term or recurrent sickness necessarily makes the trundle of normal life stop. Recent research around chronic fatigue posits it is an autoimmune response to stress that causes low-grade inflammation throughout your body, and anyone who has chronic fatigue will tell you that the only way to recover from a flare is to stop. Stop everything and lie down, eat lots of salt, ideally turn off the lights and wait for your body to rebalance itself, which can take days, weeks or months.

Of course, this process is intensely depressing. It’s isolating to drag my way through a remote working day, clock off early, then spend the rest of the day lying down for weeks at a time. The process can play into my underlying urges to self-isolate: I have historically operated myself like a fearful nation-state and built high walls to protect myself, but in doing so cut myself off from the rest of the world. It can feel safe and comforting to be alone and protected.