On Wednesday I had new windows put in with only forty-eight hours’ notice.
I’d love to say they were a perfect metaphor for gaining a new perspective – but having your flat turned upside down with no warning rarely is. Instead, it was a full sensory hellscape while the workmen sang Adele. At least they provided free entertainment.

What Are Mornings?

I had to get up early for the installation, but my son – the absolute gent that he is – was already up for uni and woke me when the workmen arrived. It meant I could steal an extra hour of sleep, which I really appreciated. I’ve been running on fumes after everything that happened on Monday (read about that here).

The workmen said they’d mostly work from the scaffolding outside, so they wouldn’t need to walk through my flat. I was instantly much happier about the whole thing. As I’ve said before, I have terrible anxiety about people being in my space since an incident with my mother. It’s hard to feel safe letting anyone in when even family once felt unsafe.
But that extra hour of sleep my son gave me helped me start the day with a bit more grace for myself.

And still, hiding seemed like the most reasonable response to the chaos.

What Are Windows? (Again)

Having no windows makes a flat absolutely freezing, so I stayed in the warmest room – partly to keep out of the cold and partly to avoid the dust, rubble, and the chemical smell wafting from the living room. I’m still recovering from Covid, and even from my bedroom the smell was enough to make me cough.

Hiding was also necessary because these were the same workmen to whom I had, in my confusion, once asked:
“What are windows?”
instead of “Why are we having new windows?”

I’m not sure I’ll ever live that down. Shame requires hiding.

What are you even supposed to do in this scenario? I’m socially inept at the best of times, but what are the rules when there are workmen changing your windows? Am I meant to watch them? Is it rude to hide? I tend to half-hide and half-peer out from the corner of my room like a sleep paralysis demon – doing nothing but staring, yet somehow managing to look threatening.

The noise – even in my bedroom – was intense, but at least it drowned out the thoughts in my head initially. I’ve been fighting a lot of ED noise since recovering from Covid – I’m exhausted, burnt out, and my mental health has taken quite the nosedive. I honestly don’t know how I’m coping, because I am coping, but then I’m also not, and somehow I still get through it.

Every so often, the drilling would stop and the workmen would burst into song – Adele, then Pink’s Don’t Let Me Get Me. I couldn’t help thinking how apt their song choices were. They pretty much nailed it, too. It made me smile, especially when they switched to singing TikTok songs word for word. I started wondering if they were out there filming a TikTok, dancing on the scaffolding.

What Is Blogging?

While the workmen were busy in my living room, I thought I’d try to work hard too and write a blog post. Since Covid, though, my brain just doesn’t work properly. The fog still lingers, words slip away mid-sentence. My son’s been dealing with the same thing at university and he’s been so worried – assignments don’t wait for your neurons to reboot.

Even Minecraft has felt like too much lately. I’ve tried anyway, but when you can’t even manage the things that usually help – the things that are fun – because you have no energy or motivation, you know things are bad.

That’s what happened on Wednesday. I ended up posting some Minecraft screenshots for Wordless Wednesday and then started crying about it. I was just too exhausted, and I felt like I’d lost what makes me, me. I wanted the me back – the me I worked so hard to build in recovery – but with Covid and everything flaring at once, it feels like none of that hard work mattered.

I think part of me deluded myself into believing recovery would cure everything. I read the science, took the supplements and creatine, followed graded activity plans – and now I’m back to doing one daily task and crashing asleep for hours. With chronic fatigue and the rest of my health issues, you can do all the right things, but if you have to stop – like when you get Covid – you start right back at the beginning. It’s so demoralising to think you were getting somewhere and then find yourself struggling to walk again because your sacroiliac joint flared from too much rest and every activity causes a crash.

It isn’t just the fact that I couldn’t blog. It’s the grief of working so hard for what feels like nothing. I know I’ll have to do all that hard work again, and it might take weeks or months to get back to where I was. There’s no controlling something like Covid. I still wear a mask outside and still caught it – though my son and I have had it far less than most people, so I suppose that means the masks still work.

What Is That Smell?

When the workmen were finally done – thankfully right around the time I was done crying – it was about 1:30 p.m. They warned me that the sealant was still wet, and then I smelled it.

It stunk. SO BAD.

The smell hit me like a wall. It was so intense I just knew I had to get out of there. I cracked open the other windows and hoped that, by the time the sealant dried, it wouldn’t be as bad when I got back.

I hadn’t eaten all day from staying out of the workmen’s way, so I thought, oh, I know exactly where to go. My home from home: Greggs. A coffee and sausage roll could fix anything. Plus, I needed more sourdough for my soup – I still can’t eat crumbly food without coughing, and pea and ham soup with sourdough has been doing all the heavy lifting lately.

I managed to find my favourite Braces Welsh Wholemeal Sourdough, but Greggs were out of sausage rolls. Tragic. I settled for a black coffee and headed home – only to be greeted by a smell that somehow seemed worse after a break from it. I shoved my nose in my coffee to cope, but even Greggs’ finest blend couldn’t mask the intensity.

I started worrying about my son – his sensory issues are worse than mine, and I was already Googling hotels thinking, there’s no way he’s going to handle this. I’ve had windows replaced before and they’ve never smelled like this. Even the Evri delivery lady commented on it when she dropped off my creatine.

“OOF, what’s that smell? That’s SO strong.”

Me, completely deadpan: “Oh, that? Yeah, it’s my meth lab. Don’t tell anyone. OOH – my matches came, thank you!”

She laughed, thankfully. Then I added, “Nah, it’s not meth – but I do have glass. I just had new windows put in, and honestly, it’s far worse in here.”

She backed away, still laughing. “Yeah, I would not cope with that. OOOF.”

What Are These Windows? (Again, Again)

I hadn’t really had time to inspect the new windows yet. Honestly, I’d been treating them like bins on the street on bin day – stay downwind and breathe through your mouth. But then I saw them and they were very unexpectedly different.

I used to have windows that opened fully and turned my room into a kind of balcony. I’ve spent so many nights out there with my son, leaning out and watching the stars. We’ve stood there on Bonfire Night and New Year’s Eve, and I’ve even written about it here on the blog. I’ve spent countless nights watching the stars and thinking of my best friend, WeeGee. The light from stars takes so long to reach Earth that they’re a visible connection to the past – and in that past, WeeGee is still alive, maybe even staring at the same light as me.

My new windows? Instead of one big sliding pane that opened all the way, there are now three small ones that only open a little. You can’t lean on them and look out, which you’d have to do to see the stars given the design of the building. I won’t be able to watch the stars or fireworks anymore. I got really sad about it. I had no warning they were going to change the design – no one told me. Maybe that’s my fault for asking “What are windows?” instead of “Why are we having new windows?” but still, part of me must have known to ask, because honestly – what are these windows?

They’re not even the same colour as the others – completely mismatched. My flat now looks like something out of The Sims 4. The windows must have been made by EA; only they would give me an update where nothing colour-matches. Guess my windows were part of the corporate sell-off too. No wonder I now hate them and feel like they’re watching me.

I felt silly for being upset about it, but I texted my son, and he was upset too. We’ve spent so many nights bonding out there – hot chocolate in hand – watching meteor showers, fireworks, welcoming in the new year, and tracking the ISS as it passed overhead.

Now it feels like my connection to space has been taken away. And it wouldn’t be so bad if I could still see the trees – but I can’t, not with the scaffolding and netting – and now, even my connection to the stars has gone too.

What are the Silver Linings?

When my son came home, it still stunk so bad in here, but it was much better than it was. My son was able to cope okay with it, and i was so relieved. I told him how much worse it was and he said, “I’m so glad I wasn’t here, I think you’re right, I wouldn’t have coped if it was worse than this”. He inspected the windows, and agreed with me in their ugliness.

We both mourned the nights we spent out there, together. In our dismay we kept trying to come up with silver linings, but both of us stopped the other one, saying, “No, they’re just awful there are no silver linings”. At least we attempted. I felt less alone in my grief for my son feeling the same, and I felt bittersweet over it, that those nights meant as much to him as they did to me.

It was really hard eating in that smell, I couldn’t manage it earlier, but my sons dinner thankfully filled the flat with eau du chicken nuggie and that helped a lot. So I made my soup and we sat with our dinner watching Eastenders and commiserating about the windows.

What Is That Pain?

After dinner, everything caught up with me – and I crashed.
But I did not go quietly into that good night; no, my brain decided to put on its own firework show – the worst cluster headache attack of my life, courtesy of inhaling fumes all day. It was so bad I genuinely thought it was the end. When it finally stopped, I was so exhausted I passed out instantly.

My son told me later, “It was funny – I heard your breathing change and then you instantly started snoring.”

I didn’t wake up until he was getting ready for bed. That’s when I realised I’d missed snacks, so I grabbed some sourdough with pistachio crème, had another cluster attack, crashed again, and then was somehow wide awake by my actual bedtime. I felt absolutely rotten – and honestly, I still do. Hence why I’m writing about Wednesday… on Monday.

The next day I had to collect my meds, and I truly don’t know how I did it. It was stressful too, because they’d messed them up again. I spent the weekend doing next to nothing – and some days, literally nothing. I just couldn’t move. Lately, even eating makes me crash. The fatigue is so bad that my body treats a meal like a marathon, and my hip pain and cluster episode keep killing off whatever energy dares to come my way.

It’s made me grieve even more for how hard I worked in recovery, only to end up like this again. Now hard work is penalising me – it causes regressions instead of progress. And the worst part is, I can’t even go and stare at the stars anymore to remind myself that I’m just an atom in the universe – and so are my problems.

What Are Windows (The Chorus of This Post, Apparently)

As I said at the start, I’d love to say the new windows helped me gain a fresh perspective on life – that I can now see more clearly.
But they’re really ugly windows, and they’ve blocked my view of the universe. Instead, they feel like mirrors, because when you can’t look out, all you can do is look in.

And inside, I’m full of pain and fatigue, mourning the loss of connection with something greater than myself – the stars that have always guided me, and the people tied to them: my son, and WeeGee.

I knew I shouldn’t have let the builders in. Damn my compliance with the tenancy agreement.
They wouldn’t have sung Adele then though, either –
“Hello from the outside, at least I can say that I’ve tried.”

The song of the post is dedicated to the workmen. You seemed to enjoy this song the most and it feels the most apt for my post. I don’t blame them, they were just doing their job of putting in windows – no one chose anything it seems like. Thanks for letting me hide and I hope my sleep paralysis demon impression didn’t give you nightmares.