It was a difficult year. For all the obvious reasons. But 2020 was also a year in which I was laid low a number of times by a chronic health condition called BPPV which I've had for the last decade. I nearly wrote ‘suffered from’ but on a good day the suffering side of it is always up for grabs. What's this got to do with theatre? Nothing. What's this got to do with how to navigate uncertainty, the seas of which we're all afloat on and may remain so for a while yet? Hopefully quite a lot.
A brief explanation of BPPV or Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (even the name is dizzying, right?) for those of you lucky enough never have to encountered it. It's similar to Labrynthitis, which more people have heard of, and is an inner ear / balance disorder the primary symptoms of which are dizziness and nausea (friends who want to understand more READ THIS.) As I type this it's just come back in only one ear, my left, which means I can function pretty much normally. When I move my head at certain angles I'll have a wave of dizziness and nausea but if I return to an upright position it settles pretty quickly and I can still go about my day in a functional way. If that sounds a little dry and robotic it’s because when my health is compromised I revert to a kind of utilitarian calculus of ‘functionality’ in order to survive. Anything unnecessary, or which I no longer have the physical or emotional resource to realise falls away.
I've had maybe 4 or 5 bouts of BPPV in one ear at a time this year - I take magnesium (which supposedly helps) and perform the Epley manoeuvre (a series of head movements that repositions the tiny crystalised bit of ear stuff that causes the problems, which definitely helps, though it does make me want to vomit) once a day and it tends to go away after a week or two. But sometimes it's more acute.
In November, I felt the world tip and I was out for 3 weeks. In the first few days I tried to soldier on and sat through a few excruciating zoom meetings, but I quickly realised that was deeply unhelpful for my body so then I just stopped. Obviously the last year has given us all many opportunities to pause, to stop, to rest and that is a gift of sorts, of course, but it’s also bloody hard to do when you have two small children. That said children are a great reminder that you’re enough, even when you’re lying inert in bed (but sat up, because prolonged lying in bed is bad for the ear crystals!) Because even lying inert in bed you can still tell them you love them. And in the end that’s all they really need. They don’t care that you’ve missed your deadlines or had to cancel all your meetings. And, maybe because I preach the mantra of acceptance at them morning noon and night, they accept each new situation (both of my health and of the wider pandemic) very easily with grace and equanimity. In many ways they were gentler and more loving in those 3 weeks than they were at any other point last year, in part because they weren’t in a fight with reality about it.
After I had stopped fighting reality myself; rescheduling the deadlines and forgiving myself for cancelling on everyone I could start on the acceptance too. Matilda Leyser has just written (as ever) utterly brilliantly on how acceptance isn’t a passive thing but an active robust muscle. So along with starting PE with Joe again, I’m using 2021 to strengthen my acceptance and gratitude muscles. There’s no silver bullet to an ongoing health condition like BPPV (or indeed global pandemic) that can leave you incapacitated for weeks, or in 2011 months, at a time. But the physical symptoms are much easier to bear if you can meet your body where it is. And that doesn’t mean ignoring all the negative shit, I also try to meet my heart and mind where it is, sometimes crying, sometimes raging - all states are acceptable and accepted. Did it matter, really matter, that all those things got postponed or that I didn’t show up for a board-of-trustees zoom-away-day for a charity I sit on? No. It was fine. Were there other gifts in that time - silence, stillness, a greater appreciation of nature, 3 weeks of gentleness from my otherwise aggressive gun-obsessed children? Yes. And even if some days the fatigue was too great to write things down (turns out the energy required for your brain to constantly reassure your body that it’s not falling over creates mega fatigue) I could still maintain a gratitude practice of sorts, holding a few things in my mind each day that I was grateful for. There will always be something.
Another gift of BPPV is that it's provoked these thoughts and words which might, I hope, be of some solace to someone somewhere reading this in the throes of physical, emotional or existential pain. Otherwise known as 2021.
People who know my characteristically productive (or perhaps compulsively over achieving) self well will laugh that I've even turned a long term health condition into an act of creative productivity. But that’s how creative human beings make sense of the world, turning shit into compost, fashioning meaning from chaos, transforming darkness into light.
When the world tips things fall. And fall away. We can use our energy to fight that (and lose) or use your energy, and it does require energy, to accept. And some days even celebrate. Like many creatives my work (and seemingly my body) follows a cycle of famine and feast - I’m sure there are healthier ways to live, but habits are hard to break. So in the meantime when the world tips again, I’m going to try and heed that invitation to slow down. To simply meet each day where it is, and where I am. And let things fall.
Happy new year everyone, wherever you are with yourself.
P Burton-Morgan