The Missing Tooth #9
The missing, missing tooth
It’s been three years since I wrote something for Substack. It’s easy to put my absence down to ADHD fickleness. After seven missives, the shine wears off, and you just have to get down to the excruciating work of doing it.
There are tricks to staying the course, of course: Get yourself an accountability buddy to keep you honest, promise to donate $5 to the United Australia Party every time you miss a week, or find something new to be excited about—a method an ADHD coach once described to me as “resparkling.”
But the truth is, I can’t lay my absence at the feet of my neurological disorder. The last few years have been hard. While the world has been poking its head out of pandemic isolation and blinking at the new world like Tom Jones at the end of Mars Attacks, I’ve been finding myself sinking deeper and deeper into isolation.
Partly, there’s the fact that I’ve settled into middle age. Most days, I’d rather hang out with my kids than go out and see the world. What can my comedian friends offer that Bea—who is now an 11-year-old, non-binary, force of comic genius—can’t? This is a kid that was once referred to in the Guardian as “a true master of cutting lines, wild impressions and surrealist improvisation.”
Why hang out with my clever circus buddies when I have eight-year-old Edie twisting her body and brain with endless cartwheels and curly philosophical questions? What can the outside world offer that competes with doing Bandle with my whip-smart wife?
It’s not like I don’t socialise. That’s what my group chats are for: one for film, one for crime comics (coming up with the name “The Fabulous Brubaker Boys” is the best writing I’ve done this year), one for magicians, one for Long Covid, and one for writing. That’s enough, surely?
And while my anxiety is mostly under control, it often feels like a bear I don’t want to poke. Stay home where it’s safe, avoid the crowds, and don’t take on challenges that might trigger the tough times. Do less, worry less, be less.
The final nail in the coffin came last year when I was hospitalised for a week with a viral infection followed by an epic bout of COVID. I coughed so hard that I tore muscles in my chest, an injury that led to ongoing pain in my back and shoulder that I’m still seeing a physio for.
And Long COVID.
Bloody, motherfucking Long COVID.
It affects everyone differently, but for me, it feels like I’ve just gotten off a long-haul flight and hit the gym. I’m constantly exhausted, confused, and wobbly-legged. I can barely speak in the mornings, mumbling to the family and crashing into walls as I try to wake up my body and my mind.
If I don’t exercise, I feel exhausted. If I exercise too much, I feel exhausted. I’m not allowed to change my diet too much; a dramatic change wouldn’t be good for me. At the same time, there’s an endless list of foods I should avoid. Life is a constant attempt at balancing my body, my emotions, and my social life, where the consequences of going too far in the wrong direction are a week in bed.
Last year, I read fifty books. This year I’ll struggle to read fifteen, most of them accessible science fiction and showbiz memoirs. Even if the brain fog lifts, my eyes struggle to stay focused, the words blurring into oblivion.
I’ve always thought of myself as “lazy,” but, when face to face with forced rest, it’s amazing how guilty lying around makes me feel. My brain whirrs with all of the “shoulds” of a desperate-to-be productive mind. I have a mantra I repeat to keep me sane:
If you were lazy, you’d be having fun…
If you were lazy, you’d be having fun…
If you were lazy, you’d be having fun...
And yet, there have been positives.
For the first time in my life, I’ve been forced to slow down, to find some semblance of flow. I think about what I want to eat. I plan my days. I focus on enjoying my forced rest. Binge TV or scroll TikTok endlessly is a necessity, not a guilty pleasure.
I find myself taking pleasure in the smallest of accomplishments: riding my bike to Rat The Cafe, finishing my taxes, 3D printing a Halloween costume.
A 3D printer is an excellent tool for the production of minor achievements. I can tinker away in the garage printing toys for the kids, household gadgets and magic props.
I’m a potterer now. There’s no room in my life for rushing and crashing, crashing and rushing. As sick and as tired and as isolated as I am now, I can’t help but think about how unhealthy the manic life I was living before was.
I know this isn’t who I am anymore.
And I’m excited to meet whoever I become when I come out the other side.