There are about five voice notes on my phone right now, all saying the same thing. Croaky, exhausted-sounding friends uttering sentiments along the lines of “it’s so weird I feel like crap but all my lateral flow tests are coming back negative.” Each time I receive one I roll my eyes and record back “mate, you’re allowed to be ‘normal’ ill, it’s a cold! Please just stay home and rest.” But... I’m a hypocrite.
More than once in the past few months, I've found myself with a cotton bud up my nose at midnight, squinting at one red line on my lateral flow and thinking ‘weird, I must be making these symptoms up in my head… I’m clearly fine.’ When in a pre-covid world, I'd absolutely know that I wasn't.
Back in March 2020 to know someone who had the coronavirus, or be that person yourself, felt unusual. Now, if you haven’t had it, it seems you’re some sort of rarity. It’s either inevitable you will catch it at some point and if you don’t – well, get yourself to a lab! What can the scientists learn from your magical, super human immune system?
It’s a fascinating and terrifying but now common illness – affecting people in so many different ways, from those hospitalised or plagued by long covid to the asymptomatic, shrugging off this (at times) killer of a disease with no more than a sniffle. I'm baffled by how it's evolving. But recently, I’ve noticed that, for many of us, it can also feel as if it’s the only way to be sick these days (and, of course, I am talking your everyday, self-diagnosed sick day sickness). I feel like we are constantly having to remind ourselves that there are other viruses out there – and they're worthy of rest, recovery and time out too.
Does having a cold no longer 'count' as being sick?
In the time now referred to as BC (Before Covid), we got colds. We got chest infections, we had migraines and the flu. And we (hopefully though not all the time) listened to our bodies, rested up and looked after ourselves. Now? It seems, from my friendship circle certainly, that unless we have those two 'covid positive' lines we just struggle on.
We ignore the very obvious other symptoms and ways our bodies are telling us to take care because a home test is telling us we aren’t sick. Before, if I had a cold my default mode was to take one or two days off, chug fizzy vitamin C and sleep until my body had fought it off. I don’t do that anymore.
And it shows – I’ve had a lingering sore throat and cold for about a month now, partly I’m sure down to the fact I never allow my body the rest it needs to fully fight it off. I do lateral flows nearly every day and each time I’m almost hoping (and I’m aware this sounds insensitive to those who have had covid-19 on the more extreme level of the spectrum) for the second line to appear. Just so I can feel I have a ‘valid’ excuse to take some time off.
I should stress (and not just because I’m writing this piece on the website I work for…) this is not pressure placed on me by my employer. If I needed to take time off they would be supportive of that. This is all me. I’ve reverted back to how I was pre-pandemic when the pressure I placed on myself to be constantly achieving meant I woke up at 6am daily to write my book (gotta get that plug in there), working all day in an already demanding job (I’m features director here) and tried my hardest to never let my relationships slip.
It got to the point I’d (and God honestly what is wrong with me) find myself wandering along the street fantasising about a car hitting me, just enough that it wouldn’t be too painful or cause long lasting damage, but enough to give me a break in a hospital bed for a week or two.
When we went into lockdown I began to reassess how wild this was. I’m not someone who enjoyed or thrived in those months at all (I am an extrovert and struggled deeply with loneliness) but I did begin to question my old workaholic ways, clocked off on time and always took my full lunch hour. I vowed when things went back to ‘normal’ I’d carry these habits on. Yet now I’m right back in my old ways.
It seems it doesn’t matter how many memes I share stating that my productivity doesn’t define my worth – that shit is entrenched, so deep within my bones, that I won’t even take a day off when I’m bunged up and disgusting (made all the more easier by working from home/hybrid working culture as no one has to see me as I sneeze all over the place).
I also get paranoid to call in sick when working from home as my colleagues can’t physically see how ill I’m feeling/looking – if I could show a positive test it helps justify my day off. I know rationally presenteeism is ridiculous, that most people are just thinking about their own workload. I’m a manager and rarely question what work my direct reports are doing from home as I trust them, but still can’t grant that same empathy and kindness to myself. Confession: I partly wrote this feature as a way to convince people that even though I cancelled all my in person meetings today I AM STILL WORKING VERY HARD.
If you think I’m over exaggerating how much value our society places on working and struggling on, no matter what, just look at when the Queen had covid recently. She was praised by multiple media outlets for carrying on with her duties. She is 95. She had a very valid reason to stay at home and catch up on Love Is Blind.
It’s also not just work, with my social life I can also feel as if I’m making up for lost time – I don’t want to cancel any engagements as I didn’t see anyone I love for so long, didn’t get a chance to shovel pasta in my face and gleefully gossip about people I barely know. I want to relish in these moments so I often find myself using white wine as a cure for my sore throat, and espresso martini-ing my way to energy, only prolonging my cold and (sorry pals) passing it on to my beloved companions.
So what can be done? Of course companies need to reassess the pressure they’re placing on their employees (there’s been reports of some workplaces forcing their staff to come in even when they do have covid) and more needs to be done to quell the rising panic as to the cost of living (which will, no doubt, be also fuelling our need to keep working and earning constantly.) But all that can’t be done on an individual level, and perhaps we need to tune back into ourselves and listen when our bodies tell us to rest. Even if a cotton bud and plastic test tell us otherwise.
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Catriona Innes is Cosmopolitan UK’s multiple award-winning Commissioning Editor, who has won BSME awards both for her longform investigative journalism as well as for leading the Cosmopolitan features department. Alongside commissioning and editing the features section, both online and in print, Catriona regularly writes her own hard-hitting investigations spending months researching some of the most pressing issues affecting young women today.
She has spent time undercover with specialist police forces, domestic abuse social workers and even Playboy Bunnies to create articles that take readers to the heart of the story. Catriona is also a published author, poet and volunteers with a number of organisations that directly help the homeless community of London. She’s often found challenging her weak ankles in towering heels through the streets of Soho. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter.
