Party Tricks
Eternal sunshine of the spotless Instagram
A few days ago, I posted photos from my 40th birthday party, and in them, I do not look homebound.
“You look so not homebound!” were the exact words of my little brother in his excited text to me, which made me laugh.
The cost of looking not homebound for several hours ran me into the hundreds- if not thousands, including lost income- of dollars, and my recovery took 96ish hours which felt significantly longer.
I did not, in fact, leave my building during my “big night out” or rather “big night in”- I merely used my cane to access the roof deck. The night sky made a fair backdrop for Instagram - I might’ve been anywhere, not just, as always, at home. I didn’t drink any alcohol- those wine bottles on the table were 0.0% proof rosé.
A few days ago, I posted photos from my 40th birthday party, and in them, I do not look homebound.
“You look so not homebound!” were the exact words of my little brother in his excited text to me, which made me laugh.
The cost of looking not homebound for several hours ran me into the hundreds- if not thousands, including lost income- of dollars, and my recovery took 96ish hours which felt significantly longer.
I did not, in fact, leave my building during my “big night out” or rather “big night in”- I merely used my cane to access the roof deck. The night sky made a fair backdrop for Instagram - I might’ve been anywhere, not just, as always, at home. I didn’t drink any alcohol- those wine bottles on the table were 0.0% proof rosé.
I didn’t do my own hair or make-up; I paid a woman to come to my home and do my hair and make-up because this was a milestone birthday, and I’d always envisioned some big to-do somewhere. The woman I hired kindly agreed to wear a KN-95 mask and we chatted away about all sorts of things as I fully reclined in a new, fully reclining office chair which I also purchased for the occasion.
It was a problem that came to me only after I’d booked the hair and make-up lady: how exactly would this hair and make-up be done? I didn’t have the energy to sit upright for the multiple hours required, much less would I have the energy to sit up for hours prior to an evening of planned activity. If I had that kind of energy, hell, I might as well do the make-up myself!
Enter: the fully reclining office chair, promptly delivered, courtesy of Amazon, assembled by a friend’s boyfriend.
Now, I don’t mean to come off as some sort of COVID-safe heiress at this point, solving problems as easily as I can throw cash at them (more fatigue, more surfaces to lounge on!) After all, the reclining office chair was long overdue. I’m using it now, in fact; I no longer have to do all my writing from bed half propped up on pillows in a decidedly poor arrangement for my back.
I justified the other expenses as, well, no more than I’d likely have spent on an evening out on food, alcohol, Ubers, new clothes (I wore a jumpsuit circa 2018, and my mom’s engagement ring on a chain around my neck) in the beforetimes, plus the extenuating circumstances of well, a once-in-a-lifetime birthday (although, aren’t they all?)
Everyone at my party- all six of my guests- was COVID tested on my Pluslife Altruan machine. One of my guests cancelled because she was ill with symptoms. It wasn’t exactly the rager I’d once envisioned as a younger woman, but nothing in my 30s has gone quite how I’d envisioned them as a younger woman.
During this tremendously tiring night, I did a few major activities: the aforementioned walk to the roof deck, a hike up one (1) flight of stairs, socializing among friends while mostly reclined but sometimes sitting, and then standing up for photos. I did stay up and participate in these activities, to be fair, until around 2 am.
For these activities, I was, unhappily, condemned to a brutal 4-day crash. I woke up the following morning feeling unable to move, as if lifting my head was impossible; I didn’t even want to sit up. The first day of the crash, I felt nauseated and put off by food, but knew I needed calories. I decided to order a giant protein-packed peanut butter-based shake from Smoothie Hut.
This is what I sipped on and off throughout Day 1 of the post-birthday crash, as I scrolled through my photos and carefully hand selected 20 pictures to post to Instagram.
I accompanied these photos with a long-winded caption. I declared it was, indeed, my 40th birthday celebration, but then attempted to temper the celebration with everything I’ve just described above: a flavor of the time, preparation, work, money, dedication, and difficulty that went into just a few hours of seeming “normalcy.”
If people were going to see the magic, I also wanted them to see the trick.
Is this a photo of a woman turning 40 with her close friends at sunset?
Or is this a photo of a chronically ill woman turning 40 with her close friends at sunset?
Can you find the difference between these two photos?
What does chronic illness look like?
Long COVID is sometimes called an “invisible illness”.
It is, at times, “visible” on me. It’s visible in the ways I can no longer keep up with the expectations of femineity; no more make-up, no more styling my hair. It’s visible in the days I must often go between showers, when I’m in a crash or simply hovering on the edge of one. It’s visible in the cane I now use when I leave my apartment, even to walk my own building’s hallways or climb the stairs to the roof deck.
It becomes visible, during my crashes, when dishes and trash begin to build up.
All of these visible signs of my illness are wiped clean in my birthday album. I look like “myself” again- like the girl in the previous albums, although the albums are becoming few and far between. When will I next be able to post an album like this? What will it cost me? How much?
I remember when the movie “This is 40” came out in 2012, that seeming like a tremendously advanced age to me. I’d have been 26. And was my vision of 40 similar to what was shown in that film? Somewhere between wedded bliss and domestic drudgery?
Well, not exactly. I remember being terrified of conformity, as a lot of mid-20-somethings are. I was bartending at the time. I dreaded the idea of having a “normal” job and of having a spouse that made marriage feel like “hard work”. I hated the idea of having to relive the drama of school through children; I liked kids as a concept well enough, but disliked that they were an inevitable attachment to “the real world.”
Waking up in the early mornings. Getting in irritating little arguments over homework. Constantly being responsible for a million things that didn’t really matter.
These were things that I feared.
Now I kind of feel like I was a tropical fish worried about being trapped in an aquarium and instead I’ve been eaten by a shark.
Turns out there are worse things than that tremendously secure, boring job that kills your soul slowly, worse things like being really disabled and not having health insurance.
I’m partially joking, of course. I still don’t think I could stay in a job that “kills the soul”; at least, I couldn’t work for say, a defense contractor. It doesn’t seem to be in me. But perspective is a hell of a thing, and the pandemic, and COVID, and Long COVID, have humbled me.
At 26, I wished to be free to live an unconventional life. At 40, I wish I had the freedom to live a conventional one.