As I sit here snuffling with some sort of virus (no, it’s not covid), I’ve been in indulging in some sick bed reflection. Now when I get sick, I’m unable to continue with daily life as if I’m not. I watch everyone else carrying on when ill as if they’re not, sounding like absolute shit, out having coffee, at work, everywhere it seems. ‘You should be at home sick’ I think. Not just out of the kindness of my heart because they sound awful and I feel like they should be tucked up in bed with a hot toddy, my empath heart feels for them, but also they should be tucked up with their germs rather than spreading them to everyone else. I remember reading an article suggesting that with the pandemic we might change our ways and stay at home with a virus rather than going into work and spreading it. Ha! Change our ways?! No chance of that it seems. Have we actually learnt anything from the pandemic or are we just steadfastly and determinedly continuing on the same path as before- the self destruct path?
Now when I get sick, I want to take good loving care of my body and rest it in bed rather than forcing the poor thing to carry on as if it’s not at war inside itself with fighter cells and whatnot attacking and defending against the invasion in my body. My body is my life, without it you don’t have one, which I as someone who has chronic sickness and ended up bedbound know more than most. The body is the vehicle of my soul, if the car crashes and ends up at the garage, you ain’t going nowhere. So why would you not treat it as if it’s a Rolls Royce rather than some old banger; a queen, rather than a slave? Now when I get sick, compared to other women soldiering on (and I have to still do it too because my life doesn’t give me any other choice at times- note the ‘at times’ , not ‘all the time’), I feel so utterly awful. I feel like I’m dying. I want to have my brow mopped and be taken care of, god everything hurts and I feel so terrible, how could it all feel this bad? It’s almost as if I now suffer from… man flu. Was I always like this? No.
It was only a few years ago that I showed up to meet a friend for a drink complete with pneumonia, a temperature dosed up on antibiotics and steroids with a severe asthma exasperation. I didn’t feel that ill. I was so used to having to force myself to continue with life and my responsibilities, it was my (very sick) normal because as a single parent, I have spent years literally flogging a dead horse: myself. Whipping my body into submission. Not just a single parent, but a very very sick chronically ill one. Who at one point had a baby needing to be rushed into hospital in ambulances seriously and dangerously ill requiring endless stays foe several years, as well as a 3 year old trying to manage two children in two different places and an abusive alchoholic ex who saw hospital as the ideal opportunity to abuse me. He had the luxury of falling apart, I wasn’t that lucky. Someone had to hold it all together. But that’s another story. I remember vividly when my daughter was in hospital with influenza and pneumonia once, I had it too and was on antibiotics and had a temperature of 39 C and still couldn’t go to bed, I had to keep going and look after my daughter in hospital. Which was like a form of torture. The amount of effort I had to find over so many years in order to keep gong in the brutal life of a single mum was akin to swimming the channel 4 times I remember thinking after reading about the experience of a woman who did; it sounded so familiar, I could resonate with so much of what she was saying. She’s celebrated as a hero when everyday, there’s hundreds of single mums out there battling these extreme conditions on a daily basis, no one to step in when they can’t do it anymore. Shamed by society rather than celebrated, these women are heroes. As are many of the mums trying to keep hold of far too much, having to keep going with their responsilbities no matter what.
As you can imagine, all this relentless pushing didn’t end well- it ended with my body rebelling. ‘Fuck this shit’ it said. “I aint doing this no more.’ And it took to my bed without my mind or spirit having any say in the matter. Kind of ironic that I ended up with a chronic illness that left me unable to tolerate gravity, literally having to submit to it, being pulled down to earth and my bed. Something which is happening to many of us right now with long covid. And so began a difficult lesson where my bodies voice became the loudest and one I could not ignore anymore and I learnt that mind over matter isn’t always possible. Sometimes its matter over mind and you have to learn to accept that. It’s only fair after all that your mind and body are in an equal partnershiip of mutual respect, care and meeting each others needs, both having a voice that is listened to. Rather than the mind dismissing the voice of the body, dominating and abusing it which is the patriarchy right there because the body is feminine and the mind is masculine.
So where am I going with all this? This is The Rest Rebellion’s theory on man flu having read about the various possible explanations for this curious phenomena. Maybe we women have been forced to endure for years. Endure pain, endure suffering, endure the unpaid care taking role forced upon us, endure being dismissed, minimised and ignored in every arena of life, left to suffer with undiagnosed illness, menopause, and many other avoidable harms because we were, are, not considered of enough value for it to be otherwise, not of enough significance for our burdens to be eased. To carry on regardless unless we were gentry flower arranging in the drawing room. This hasn’t been the case for many men. Good old wifey will carry on holding everything together whilst they take to their beds, cooking them hot soup and nursing them to better health. Which is probably why they suffer from man flu, they’ve had the luxury and privelege of being allowed to. They had and do still have the freedom to be ill. We have not been so lucky and maybe if we stepped out of our roles of enduring and started taking care of ourselves for a change, we too would suffer from it. Maybe they aren’t overreacting, maybe we’re underreacting. Maybe they’re not exeggerating, maybe we’re mininising.
So treat yourself like you are of value. Say fuck this shit. Rest when you need to and treat yourself with the care and attention you deserve. It’s called being sick not doing sick. Ease your own burden where you can. Leave the kids, house and cooking to your other half and learn to have the expectation that you get the same treatment when ill. Enduring suffering and bearing burdens needs to stop going hand in hand with womanhood- it is not our legacy. The only award you’ll get is patriarchal martyr of the year. Is that really an award worth winning?
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