This is Unpretending’s Substack. Multiplicity: A Box of Odd Socks. This is our unique journey as we heal as a Multiple.
This episode is called: Of Course it’s Covid. I’ve decided to do this voiceover even though my voice box is still squeaking, please forgive the squeak and luckily you can read the discourse without our voice is you prefer on Unpretending’s Substack.
Of course we caught covid. But not while in the US and not on the flight home. We most probably picked up the ‘vid on the three hour coach ride from the airport to our city.
The morning was briskly cold as we waited in the fresh air for the coach to drive us the three hours home from the Sydney International Airport. While we waited we chatted with an older couple who were also waiting for the coach. They’d come off a cruise in L.A. and had arrived back early this morning after flight delays. Although friendly they certainly enjoyed having a whinge about the people they met on their cruise. I’m learning Aussie’s are rather a whinging bunch, yes I’m an Aussie and yes I whinge - a lot.
The gentleman was in his sixties I suppose and had a nasty cough, while trying to make a joke out of it we chuckled and said, “You probably have the ‘Vid”. They went on to tell us they’d been tested due to their friends on the cruise having Covid, but they themselves had tested negative. We wonder now if they had tested too early.
Maybe it was because of jet lag or exhaustion when the couple, once on the coach, began harassing the ladies in the seat in front of them. The two middle aged ladies had promptly searched through their handbags and each put on a mask as soon as the gentleman began to cough. Unfortunately I didn’t have a mask on me or I probably would have put on on as well.
However it wasn’t the mask wearing that made the couple irate, it was when one of the ladies reclined her seat back. The gentleman’s wife began to rebuke the lady in front of her for reclining her seat and a small argument broke out between the four passengers.
There is Someone in me that cannot bare to see injustice and as we were sitting opposite the two ladies and had already made acquaintance with the older couple we suddenly intervened.
Now this is where DID can get us into deep trouble.
We have this Someone inside, no name, doesn’t communicate at other times, yet they spontaneously and often recklessly come out in situations such as this, particularly if we are exhausted or triggered or doing rather poorly. In the past we have been unfortunate enough get ourselves into ‘none of our business’ situations, such as the time we accosted a bare footed drugged up hooligan at 5am outside our home. Fortunately we haven’t been hurt or killed during these times. The worst part is that anyone with cognitive abilities in us only realise what’s happening halfway through an encounter and we are left to sort out the situation ourselves.
So here we were, sitting quietly on the coach minding our own business when the argument beside us broke out. This Someone turns to the couple and in a laughing admonition tone says, “Now you two ought to know better than that! Leave these ladies alone, you know these buses are built to accommodate the reclining seats.” All the time we are waggling our finger at them. That’s when I, Unpretending arrive conscious and momentarily freak out while I hear the older lady say something about the seat, “Suddenly being in my face,” and one of the ladies in front say something to me, “Seats reclining and I’m going to recline mine.” I thankfully see the ice has broken for everyone and the older couple sort of chuckle, obviously embarrassed by the encounter and everyone goes back to enjoying the ride home.
We however are left with a barrage of voices inside our head, our heart is thumping in our chest and we try to calm down, appear normal, and work out what happened. Sure the situation was averted but, “Seriously People could we at least learn to have a conversation between us before we jump into someone else’s business?”
The rest of the coach ride home was fairly uneventful other than the older gentleman continually coughing. Another older gentleman, directly opposite asked the coughing man if he would put on a mask, but Sir Cough-A-Lot refused declaring he didn’t have Covid. I guess there is one in every crowd that thinks the way this man and his wife did, it fills us with sadness though that he was spreading germs, even if it wasn’t Covid.
Covid has not overly affected us personally in the past, especially living in a small city of around 450,000 people, in Australia that completely shut down in 2020, we only had 118 cases and 3 Covid related death’s.* 2022 was much worse with the Omicron variant and that’s also when this body first had Covid.
Throughout the news and social media, as you’ll remember, Covid was the big thing. Here in Australia, every tv channel had constant coverage, the media was doing its usual job of alarming anyone who would watch or listen. Although we kept information at a need to know basis, we could see the impact of Covid in other countries and we know some places are still recovering from the loss of lives.
The heavy lockdowns put in place in my city and around Australia were actually welcomed by our System, Covid was a good excuse not to go anywhere. We were still learning about being Dissociative Identities and there was a lot of hiding away from ourselves as well as from society around us. Lockdown seemed like the perfect solution. Our small children had extended time to be young kids and as a teacher, homeschooling the school aged child was simple.
Yet there it is, a fallout due to the lockdowns. Sure, we didn’t have as many loss of lives but we’ve certainly had loss of education. Parents with no teaching skills or experience who now had to work from home were suddenly in charge of their children’s education. The education systems tried as they may to make online schooling possible but it didn’t necessarily help and many children suffered, especially those in their foundational years of learning. Currently as a tutor I am seeing many children who are so far behind in school because of the gaps in their education during the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns. It makes me wonder how the standardised testing will look five, ten years down the road for these students.
My family didn’t get covid for the first time until the end of March 2022, we personally weren’t yet vaccinated as my System was very much afraid of the experimental mRNA vaccine. In fact my System is very much afraid of any thing being put into our body, something we believe is past trauma related yet we do not remember the actual trauma. Because vaccinations into the country were a requirement, we did eventually receive the two doses of the protein based Novavax before we went to Hawaii in 2023. Meeting our Multimes face to face for the first time was more than worth the risk of vaccine reactions.
Please note I am not an anti-vaxer. I believe vaccines have helped wipe out many diseases that has caused much suffering in the past. I am however for personal choice and for some people such as myself, having a vaccine injection can cause extreme complex PTSD and neurological symptoms that can go on for months. Fortunately with good research this body was able to do a heavy metal detox and immune rebuild which I am sure helped reduce any reactions.
When our family finally did get Covid the first time we were afraid due to everything we had heard, however we must have only had a very small viral load as our youngest child never tested positive for it and the second youngest was only sick for 24 hours.
(Either that or it was the ivermectin I put on the back of everyone’s neck that we usually use to keep the parasites at bay for our chickens, our hens, I figured it couldn’t hurt.)
The Covid variant we got in 2022 felt like a strange flu for me and I could feel the virus like an alien trying to attack my body, it wasn’t bad though and all up I was unwell for about two weeks. What we did find was that the Covid virus lowered the children’s immune systems and they picked up every germ and bug under the sun for the next year or so, including scarlet fever and our youngest recently had glandular fever at the tender age of five. The talk of the town is that while we were all in lockdown and were not getting the common viruses, our children’s bodies didn’t have the immunity as they usually would have and that is why all the kids were sicker than usual after getting a common cold. If you ask me, I say that’s bollocks, Covid lowered their immune systems and that’s that.
This time around has been completely different, I have noticed a trend that each bout of Covid a person receives is worse than the next. Of course I have no scientific evidence to prove that, it’s just a theory. In fact we have a Theory Person in us and they have remarkable theories, hypotheses and conjectures about all sorts of things with absolutely nothing to go by but our own imagination. Perhaps one day I’ll share some more of them.
So back to four days after arriving home from the U.S. we were still feeling a little tired which we put down to jet lag. We put ourselves to bed for an afternoon nap Saturday, and woke hours later with a sore throat, muscular and joint pain, particularly pain in the arm muscle where we vaccinated (you may wonder if that’s psychosomatic but that muscle had sharp burning pain let me tell you). As we lay there we could feel the virus taking hold of this body.
That’s another thing about this body, we are hyper aware of what goes on, to the point of obsession. It seems as if we have a “Body Person.” Literally, it’s a thing and can be completely frustrating but in some cases such as viruses, it’s kinda helpful.
It was almost instantaneously that people inside us declared it was Covid. We were going to test the next morning but someone inside said. “Test now,” over and over until we gave in and tested. Immediately the positive line came up.
Talk about much worse than the first time. If day one is considered day zero (I’ve never understood that concept) then it was day two that our lungs were burning and our breathing laboured. Luckily by that evening I was able to have a phone consult with our doctor and get an antiviral called Monupiravir or something like that. Even though this body can get adverse reactions to some medications, we figured it was worth the risk just to stop these lungs burning. After two doses, our breathing and lung burning eased, however I will spare you from the rest of the symptoms that we have had.
The interesting thing about being sick while having DID is that the ones who usually fight off the emotions and try to keep everything and everyone under control completely disappear. We don’t even know who they are, whether they are parts of Unpretending or the Body’s Name or whether they are their own people. Yet we have noticed that when the physical body becomes stressed the control people vanish leaving the lack of cognition and unexpected emotions all over the place.
The day after we were diagnosed we were trying to attend the Plural Positivity World Conference online and found we could barely navigate the technology let alone listen to the speakers. Luckily we’ve been able to go back and listen to the replays gradually as we’ve been able.
Then we watched an emotional video that started us bawling and we cried for hours, missing our Multimes and feeling very sorry for ourselves. I’m sure we cried off and on for two days.
Finally today being day five, we think we’ve turned a corner with this virus, although as you can hear our larynx and sinuses are still recovering. Hopefully we’ve kept the germs to our own body and not infected the family here. With no current Covid restrictions it’s strange to send the children to school not knowing if they are infectious or not. The nine year old’s teacher has let us know that Covid has been going through the school and the website suggests there are 1005 new cases in our city this week. That information is also from the ACT Health Website
And there you have it, instead of jumping back into the daily grind after our Midwest adventuring, we’ve been stuck in bed recovering from Covid.
Thank you for coming to our Substack.
This has been a very squeaky Unpretending for Unpretending Spontaneous.
We hope you have a wonderful day.