March was always going to be hard because it’s the anniversary of the first lockdown and the month that, the world properly woke up to the severity of Covid-19.
So I’m just sending love to everyone. Everyone whose lives have ‘gone to shit’ since then. Everyone who watched the world suddenly find ways to be accessible when it had always claimed that that was impossible. Everyone who had screamed about postviral illness for decades already. Everyone who lost a loved one. Everyone still in that first lockdown of March 2020 because they haven’t suddenly become less clinically vulnerable just because restrictions ended. Everyone whose body became more unwell after vaccination. Everyone who is still ill.
It just sucks. You can’t sugarcoat it.
And then we learn they won’t give us the funding needed for change. At least not without us making ourselves more unwell through advocacy that may or may not be successful. We learn that the vilification of disabled people hasn’t improved under a new government. We are reminded that the only people who see our worth, or even care about us, are other disabled people.
We learn that the benefits system, that already obliterates our sense of self-worth and our mental health, may well become even harder to navigate with an increased likelihood of not receiving the financial aid we need in lieu of being unable to work or earn as we would like to.
March was always going to be hard. But this is just ridiculous.
'M.E. myself and I' by Anna Redshaw 