Tabula Rasa

Here I am. 33 years old, recently divorced and severely sick back home with my parents. Within the last few months I‘ve lost the ability to do my work, both on YouTube and in props, to live by myself and run my own errands and ultimately, to socialise meaningfully with anyone.

This is not the entry where I explain about ME/CFS or what else led me here. The time for that will come. Right now, in this moment, I keep thinking of this term. Tabula rasa. I have a rather useless degree in classics so I can explain to you where it comes from - it describes a wax tablet often used by students in the old, old Roman days that, after being written on, is then wiped smooth to make space for the next exercise, thereby erasing what was before and starting with a blank slate.

Except that‘s not entirely true. As is the nature of a wax tablet, you‘re only redistributing matter. Everything is still there, it‘s just going to take a new shape in the next round.

And that‘s what I‘m trying to do. Not that long ago, I had a life; I had hobbies and (multiple) jobs and friends and a marriage and countless random experiences. Me getting sick has been the wiping process - all meaningful bumps in my inner landscape reduced to a flat line, to the point where earlier this year many days consisted mainly of lying down with my eyes closed and without any distractions, because that‘s the only thing I could stand.

And now, there is nothing. To redistribute and draw new lines and form new words, I need energy, and it‘s not coming back quickly. I‘m no longer in the business of wearing a sleep mask all day but I am also still housebound most of the time. These have been the toughest months of my life.

Since I can not currently share all of this on YouTube, as I normally would, and since these times command changes anyway, I‘m now, and with a pain-ridden grin in my face, returning to something I have loved forever and had to abandon a bit for a while for various reasons: writing.

I‘ll turn this new space here into my journal, detailing my recovery (I‘m optimistic) and probably many more things along the way. I can‘t do much right now, but this I can do and it brings me some of the much needed joy that keeps me going. May this, if nothing else, entertain you for a few minutes. I‘ll see you in the next one.