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STILL MOVING by Skyeris

STILL MOVING

by Skyeris

Publisher: manuscript

Skyeris presents an account of her experience coping with the effects of long Covid-19.

In this sensitive and revealing work, the author show how personal experience can shape one’s responses to illness. Wracked with undiagnosed migraine headaches as a child, she learned early in life to “keep moving”—that is, to not to expect sympathy from others or to assume that traditional medical intervention would help her. So when she fell seriously ill at an international meditation retreat in late 2019, she responded to her symptoms with a combination of denial and grim determination. Despite being feverish, unable to sleep, and in constant respiratory distress, she still insisted on learning how to surf. As months passed and the ailment sapped her strength, her social interactions ceased, and she fell prey to mental confusion, doubt, and feelings of alienation. As a loving, unnamed partner cared for her, she hid her illness-induced despair and often cried alone; her determination to “keep moving” gave way to a desire for stillness: “I felt like a wraith, a person made of smoke.” When Skyeris heard about the symptoms of long Covid in the summer of 2020, it gave her the language to label and understand the physical and psychological pain she’d endured for so many months. Although the illness did not disappear, her narrative effectively shows how she reclaimed her belief in the healing power of motion and rescued her identity. Readers who’ve experienced any form of chronic disease are likely to find this earnest, sometimes-blunt narrative very appealing. That said, the work feels unstructured at times, and some will long for a more organized and thematic approach to the questions the author explores. Still, Skyeris’ writing is clear, authentic, and deeply human throughout, often expressing her ideas and reactions in emotionally charged sentences that convey the intensity and confusion of the pandemic era.

A searing, deeply personal memoir of chronic illness.