When you ask me how I am today I am going to be honest. I don’t feel well either physically or mentally. I feel short of breath and like I have been kicked in the ribs, or as if something is sitting on my chest that I can’t shift. The sun is shining brightly and my neighbours are busy in their gardens, and for reasons known only to my head, which is not in a good place that is irritating me, which I know is entirely unresonable of me!

I would like to go out into my garden, but I don’t have the energy, and feel it would be silly to push myself so I have come indoors and shut the door for while to breeze outside is pleasant, inside it is too chilly…

I would like to eat, but when I do I feel sick, so I am sipping water…

I am waiting for test results from a Covid-19 self test kit, and as I have some symptoms of the virus, I am not going out, which only adds to the aloneness I am feeling.

Friends have offered help, I live in a comfortable home and don’t really need anything, which makes me feel guilty that I am feeling so down. I can literally sit and count my blessings, but today that is not helping me, so I am having to simply sit with how I am, and hang onto the hope that, this too will pass.

I was asked a day or so ago where on earth I might have gone to come into contact with the virus, well the truth is many places, I have taken funerals, been shopping for myself and others, delivered food to food banks, just for a starter, this is my work. I have been out for walks, though I avoided the Peak District last weekend because it was full of visitors, and I find the need to continually leap out of the way of joggers who seem to feel they have a right of way at all times exhausting. In fact going out is exhausting because of the continual wariness of the proximity of others some of whom get it, and others who don’t!

I miss swimming, I miss actual human contact, a coffee with a friend and more, although I know that these things would be too risky right now I still miss them. I have been involved in making hard decisions about not opening churches and not allowing gatherings in car parks and church gardens even if they do meet guidelines because we have decided the risk is too great…

So today I am struggling, I want to both head for the hills with my camera and curl up in bed, I want to go out, but I know I must stay in. I know I am on the edge of tears and am not entirely sure how to process that, except to notice it and let it be.

I know that I am experiencing grief, though nothing has died, yet much has been lost, the way of life that I lived only a few short months ago has gone, and I along with many others have had to readjust and reorganise my life, in the ultra busyness of the early stages of this reorganisation life was possibly more hectic than ever, but now it has settled into a pattern that feels to me today to be relentless, each day echoing the next in a frighteningly groundhog day like pattern with no ending in sight.

Am I feeling sorry for myself, well maybe a little, but I recognise that there are probably many others feeling similarly, and while it is true that all may well be different tomorrow, today for me is a down day and I want to record that, and say that sometimes it is okay not to be okay, and that some days you quite simply can’t pull yourself out of it and look on the bright side, and that is okay too.

I know there are others worse off than me, I know there are others who face loss of life, work, and loved ones, I know there are those for whom social distancing is impossible, medical intervention scant, and access to sanitation is a dream…

I know all of these things, but for me, today is a down day, and I can only hold that out as a prayer and say here I am…

This is me today! The way feels hard…