Gaslighting:manipulation by psychological means to get someone to question their own sanity.
I learned this word a little too late in life when I heard it for the first time twice in one week when I was twenty-three (once from my friend, once from my therapist).
And at the risk of sounding a little out of mind right now, I’m feeling gaslit by COVID-19 test results. Negative, which is great. Seriously. I do not want to have it.
But . . . why in the world have I gotten sick for the first time all year after direct exposure to someone positive? Common colds are still a thing. Maybe that is this (normal illness) . . . I think I’d talked myself into it today after learning my result … until learning my sister-in-law tested positive after two previous negative tests, my same symptoms, and a pretty close timeline of exposure to the same person though hers was definitely prolonged. When she was also negative I could kind of reason out the last week and a half of not feeling great. But now I feel like I’m going a little crazy.
This isn’t a life or death thing for me, my symptoms have been mild (fatigue, achy, headaches, sore throat, and a little short of breath, but no fever and generally functioning), and I know I am lucky, but I do want to know what’s going on with my body even for context for future health. I only get one body, after all, as my mom so aptly put it.
I’ve decided to go get another test, hopefully tomorrow. And if that’s negative too I’ll look into the antigen test later to see if it was in my system. Again — it just feels important to me to know about my body when we’re still learning so much about this virus. It’s a little unnerving that we don’t have reliable test right now to catch all the positives . . . it certainly points to a lot more cases than we know about and the importance of maintaining the two-week quarantine no matter what the tests say.
Our immune systems are always funny by exasperating symptoms at night in the morning, and as I write with my headache and sore throat returned after what I would consider a gentle upswing today (I do think I’m getting better overall, not worse), gaslit is still the word that comes to mind.
I don’t know what I expected from the test results. I would have rather not have had it at all. But being told I don’t and feeling like this is somehow worse right now. That feels like an uncomfortable truth to admit here. But it’s what I’m carrying tonight. And I didn’t start this blog to just write pretty things.
With Love,
Natalie