This essay is part of the Color of Long COVID series, supported by the Disability Visibility Project.
The sun feels like it’s screaming. Not like a fire or a flare, but more like static that presses into your bones. Like when a radio loses signal and hisses, except it’s your skin that’s hissing. There’s no burn. No visible mark. Just this overwhelming brightness that makes it hard to walk straight or think or breathe right. People call it fatigue. I don’t know. It feels louder than that.
I’m 31 and I live in Malang, Indonesia — a city flanked by volcanoes in East Java, known for its frosty mornings, old Dutch colonial houses, and streets lined with coffee shops open until the sun comes up again. I work in the field — sales coordination for motorcycle parts, mostly dealing with mechanics, shop dealers, warehouse staff. I used to love it. Every day on the road, meeting people, solving problems.
Then I got COVID-19 in April 2021. It didn’t seem serious — just a few days of fever and a sore throat. I recovered at home. By early July, after getting my Sinovac vaccine, I truly believed the illness was over. Life nudged forward. I went back to the field, back on my motorbike, back to the rhythm I thought I still belonged to.
People around me said I had a “mild” case. Just a few days of fever, sore throat, and some coughing. Then gone. I thought I’d bounced back. I even joked about it. “Corona? Cuma lewat.” (Corona? Just passed through.)
For a while, everything seemed fine. But then something shifted — subtle at first. I started forgetting simple things, like the names of friends or motor parts I’d sold a hundred times. I remember coming home after just two site visits and feeling like I’d run a marathon. Maybe it made sense, since even a short trip could wipe me out. Sometimes I’d feel dizzy just from standing still.
And there were moments when I’d be in the middle of talking to a customer and suddenly blank on the name of a motorcycle unit I used to say every day. I laughed it off. I said, “Kurang tidur, Pak.” (“Didn’t sleep enough, sir.”) But inside, I knew something was off. It was like some part of me hadn’t rebooted properly.
That’s when I realized: I hadn’t fully recovered. Something else had taken root. Long COVID had crept in like malware in my system — hidden, persistent, always running in the background.
Now it’s been four years. And this thing — this invisible thing — is still here. Every morning is a gamble. Will I wake up with energy? Or will my legs feel like stone? Will I be able to focus? Or will my thoughts float around like lint in the air, impossible to catch?
The hardest part? People don’t see it.
Indonesia isn’t the kind of place where you can say, “I’m chronically ill,” and people get it. We’re a tough-it-out, smile-through-the-pain, drink-jamu-and-go-back-to-work kind of culture. People mean well, but when you say you’re tired, they say: “Sama, saya juga.” (“Same, me too.”) When you say the sun hurts your body, they laugh and say, “Makanya, jangan lembek.” (“That’s why, don’t be soft.”)
People don’t talk about Long COVID in Indonesia. It’s like a ghost — it’s there, it’s ignored, and nobody wants to see it. I’ve seen friends who used to be full of energy — salespeople like me, whether selling motorcycles, cars, or even property — now canceling plans, saying they’re just busy. Some switched to desk jobs, moving to office roles they never thought they’d take. Others chose remote work. My mother, a middle school teacher, sometimes forgets what she was about to say mid-lesson. My wife’s coworker, a nurse, now quietly rests between shifts she used to handle with ease. And even the regular rideshare driver who comes to my shop for routine service said he avoids long routes these days, his body just “not the same.”
We don’t name the ghost. So I stopped talking about it.
Even my boss — a kind man, practical, old-school — started asking if I was sure I was okay. He said I was moving slower. Missing details. He wasn’t wrong. But what do I say? That my body sometimes rebels against the weather? That my arms go numb if I walk too fast? That I forget how to spell simple words in texts?
But what do I say? That my body sometimes rebels against the weather? That my arms go numb if I walk too fast? That I forget how to spell simple words in texts?
I still do the job. I still ride my motorbike around the city, still check inventories, still smile and hand out business cards. But I take longer routes to avoid traffic lights, because standing still in the sun makes my knees shake. I keep an energy drink with electrolytes in my backpack like a secret weapon, even though it helps only half the time — one of the few things that sometimes calms what a doctor later called dysautonomia, a nervous system disorder that makes my body react strangely to heat, standing, or even mild activity.
Sometimes I sit on my bike in a parking lot and cry a little before the next task. I’m exhausted in a way that sleep doesn’t fix.
Then there’s home. I take off my shoes and hang my keys where they always go. The floor feels cool. I sit for a bit, just to catch my breath, before the noise picks up again.
I have a son — Chan. He’s two. Little tornado. He laughs with his whole body, dances with his shoulders, says “Papa!” like it’s the best word he knows. He doesn’t understand why I lie down a lot. He just thinks I’m a human trampoline. He jumps on me, kisses my forehead, calls me robot Papa when I move too slow.
It breaks me, sometimes.
I want to chase him. I want to throw him up in the air like I used to, hold him until he falls asleep on my shoulder. But on bad days, I can barely lift him. I rock him sitting down, telling stories that end early because my head starts to spin. Hera — my wife — she sees it all. She’s a hospital worker. She understands the science of this illness. But even with all her knowledge, I see the frustration in her eyes when I cancel plans, when I forget to do simple chores, when I say, “Nanti ya?” (“Later, okay?”) too many times in a row.
One night, a few months ago, I heard my wife crying in the bathroom. Not loud. Just a quiet kind of sadness. Maybe it was after I forgot to pick up Chan’s vitamins again, or maybe it was just everything piling up. I didn’t knock. I just stood outside the door, useless. I wanted to tell her I was trying. That I hate what Long COVID has done to us — our rhythm, our ease, our laughter.
What do you say when love meets exhaustion? When the person who’s cared for you now needs care, too? In that moment, I wasn’t human — just a silhouette pressed to glass, watching a life move on the other side that’d never be mine. Because some silences are too heavy for words to lift.
I wonder sometimes if I’ll ever get to where I was before I got sick from COVID-19. If this fog will lift. If my energy will come back as suddenly as it left. I hope so.
But until then, I’m forced to adapt.
I keep extra clothes in my motorbike because I sweat through the first pair before 10 a.m. I make lists for everything — clients, addresses, reminders to eat.
I take breaks. Even if people look. Even if they judge.
And I find little joys where I can.
I take breaks. Even if people look. Even if they judge. And I find little joys where I can.
Like the time Chan tried to make me “soup” out of pebbles and leaves and called it “Papa juice.” Or that weird moment when a client actually said, “Take care, Mas. You look tired,” and meant it — not as an insult, but as a kind of blessing.
Those moments matter.
I’m still the guy who remembers which warehouse has the best coffee. Still the dad who sings lullabies off-key. Still the husband who holds his wife’s hand in the dark, even when I have no words to give.
Long COVID hasn’t taken everything. Just … rearranged it.
Though I know, for some, it takes more. Everything, sometimes. I’ve seen it — even here in Malang. A neighbor who stopped showing up to the workshop. A friend from college who stopped calling. Other people’s jobs slip away because they can no longer keep up with things that used to feel simple. But people don’t talk about it. We just nod, say in Javanese, “Sek lur, kesel, leren dilut!” (“Hold on — water break!”) and move on.
I think that’s why I wrote this essay. Not because I have answers. But because I wanted this thing — this struggle — to have a name. A record. A reminder that this is real.
But I still hope — quietly — that things could be lighter. That bosses would understand when we say we need to sit down. Neighbors would stop judging when we cancel plans last-minute. Health workers could get a break without guilt. That rest isn’t laziness.
I still hold pebbles from my son and believe him when he says, “Batu ini kuat, Pa.” (“This stone is strong, Dad.”)
And maybe that means I am, too.
I wanted this thing — this struggle — to have a name. A record. A reminder that this is real.
Fendy Satria Tulodo is a writer and music producer from Malang, Indonesia. When he’s not writing about invisible struggles, he’s producing tracks as Nep Kid or chasing his toddler around the house.
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