One of the most painful aspects of Long Covid isn’t just the persistent symptoms, it’s the quiet, invisible erasure of your former life.
It’s not the dramatic, sudden kind of loss we see in films. It’s slower. Stranger. Harder to name. You disappear from your own routines, your roles, your identity, while the world around you carries on as if nothing has changed.
Where Did I Go?
Before Long Covid, maybe you were a teacher. A parent who never stopped moving. A hiker every weekend. The dependable friend. A nurse. The early-morning inbox warrior.
Then, suddenly or gradually, you’re not.
At first, you think: “This is temporary.” You rest. You wait. You hope. But days turn into months, and sometimes years. Life around you doesn’t wait and the gap between you and the world widens.
The Career That Left Without You
For many, work is more than income, it’s identity, purpose, and structure. Even small tasks can become a major effort when you’re living with Long Covid. Fatigue is constant. Brain fog muddles once-sharp thinking.
In the UK, a study published in BMJ Public Health (2023) found that nearly 1 in 5 people with Long Covid are unable to work due to symptoms. Employers vary, some adapt, many don’t.
You may find your name quietly removed from rotas, newsletters, or team chats. You’re still the same person. But your profession, your vocation, your financial security? Disrupted or gone. And with it, a piece of who you were.
Hobbies in Hibernation
You used to run. Paint. Cook elaborate meals. Read for hours. Dance to playlists you curated.
Now, energy is measured in spoons or teaspoons, a concept many with chronic illness will know from the “Spoon Theory”. You conserve it for basic care or medical appointments. The things that once brought joy, creativity, or connection feel unreachable.
Your trainers collect dust. The books remain unread. It’s not laziness. It’s neurological, immunological, and systemic fatigue. It’s grief in motion.
When Social Circles Shrink
At first, people check in. Some keep checking. But many don’t. Invitations dwindle, not always from malice, but from discomfort, misunderstanding, or silence.
You scroll past life updates like a ghost watching from behind glass: birthday dinners, group selfies, holidays.
You’re not in them anymore.
Long Covid can create invisible barriers and the loneliness is profound. A Lancet review (2024) highlighted that individuals with Long Covid experience higher rates of social isolation and depression.
The Identity Crisis No One Talks About
When your ability to work, move, connect, or create is altered it raises painful questions:
Who am I, if I can’t do the things that made me… me?
This is the unspoken grief of Long Covid. Not just illness but feeling unrecognisable to yourself. The version of you with plans, routines, and dreams feels distant. Your life doesn’t fit the old shape anymore.
Left Behind by the System
While the personal cost of Long Covid is immense, the institutional response often falls short. Many people find themselves lost in a maze of benefit forms, waiting lists, and disbelief. Government recognition has been slow, and practical support, from accessible healthcare to financial assistance, often feels like an afterthought. For a condition affecting over a million people in the UK, the silence can be deafening. You’re unwell, invisible, and expected to prove it, not just once, but over and over. The response feels buried, as if Long Covid is too complex or too costly to confront. And so you find yourself fighting not only your symptoms, but a system that often doesn’t want to see you.
And Yet… You’re Still Here
This isn’t a story with a neat ending. Long Covid doesn’t follow a simple arc. But even in the quiet, even in the stillness, something meaningful can take shape.
Survival becomes strength. Adaptation becomes a kind of courage. You start to rebuild, gently, patiently, in ways that may not be visible, but are no less real.
You rest. You recalibrate. You discover new rhythms. You might find unexpected forms of connection, creativity, or purpose, softer, slower, but still full of life.
Because here’s the truth:
Nothing and no one can strip you of your identity.
You are still you, even if the roles have changed.
Even if the world doesn’t see it.
You haven’t disappeared.
You’ve adapted.
And you are still here, fully human, in a story that’s still being written, one breath, one act of resilience at a time.
Long Covid Journey 