Bork Slowly Borking

 Spent the weekend at my brothers, which was pretty good. Spent much of the time in various forms of exhaustion. It's hard. I can do stuff. And I dare say appear normal to people at those times. But it's a real struggle. There is a weight of exhaustion about everything. At best it's like swimming upstream. At worst its a crushing weight that makes you seek bed. The ever ongoing process of... processing... ticks over. This weekend I reflected that on the whole, this was a pretty miserable way to live. Always swimming upstream from bone deep exhaustion. Hmm. I didn't like where I was. A gloom about my long term health settled. On the car journey down, I had too much time to think and few to zero distractions. This, as it turns out, was not good. About a third of the way in, when the drive had become a monotonous follow the leader down the winding single lane roads of Norfolk, misery, sadness and grief descended pretty hardcore. About all of it. About Ares. About how shit ...

 I did too much yesterday, and paid the price. Worked, difficult, stressy work, bouncing around between things. I have realised that the constant shifting of priorities on at minimum a daily basis if not hourly basis ups the stress a lot. Which is Andys anxiety and lack of planning. When he's not there, peace reigns - and not because of no work. I was in contact with one of the clients on a daily basis. I know his weaknesses, have for a long time. It is what it is. We work together, supportive. I digress. Went to DIY shop to buy a couple of supplies. I optimistically have it in my head I want to make something for my brother. A mold. Came home ate lunch, felt, ok. Then decided to go out again and pick up a little paint. This was a mistake. By the time I came home I felt sick. Tired. Ill. My eyes sucked into my head. Dizziness started to get worse. And on getting home, I was that awful exhausted. Brain slightly struggling. Pains popping up in the chest area. Shoulder suddenly ached....

 Another day, another experience. Felt better today. Less ill. Less like the dead being raised in the morning. Curious how it waxes and wanes. I had another chiro yesterday. I this time made it clear that I was not feeling well. He considered it. Wasn't sure. Not typical he said. He was then a lot more gentle with me. Uh huh. And what about my condition is typical ? What in a post covid world is typical ? They don't know. He certainly doesn't know. They stick to old patterns. And guess that it helps. Without evidence or study. Witchcraft at that point. Our collective knowledge is pitiful. We like to think we are advanced. A quick check in on medicine shows how not advanced we are. I feel tired. Concentration is difficult. Work is difficult. I can feel every bit of me crying out for a rest. Peace. No demands. Process. Heal. Grieve. I don't know. This evening I was noodling around. And I caught sight of "Pooch Cream". A salve for dogs. I bought it a week before ...

 Ok. Not cool. I'm more ill. An almost fever like state comes over me in bed. I am exhausted. My eyes have regressed hardcore into some serious blackening and I often feel "ill". Tingles are up. A few chest pains are back. A very real step back. Hopefully it will pass. But in this last week the trajectory has been very noticeably down. I suspect I am bouncing in and out of infections. I think my immune system is garbage. My physicals are weak. Easy prey. I don't know. We shall see. Mentally I am alright. For the moment.

 Yesterday was the worst I've felt in a long time. Any kind of exertion made me feel ill and like I was teetering on the edge of it becoming a crisis. My heart kept skipping or *something* the whole thump thump THUMP pause, THUMP thump thump. And in bed. The timing inside was all off. My heart skittered. Some hard to point at unwell feeling. And a tingling down the left hand side of my face, this time creeping to my jaw. I was at peace with it. No struggle. No panic. It's ok. It doesn't matter. Just experience the ride. I've been dwelling on Ares somewhat. The guilt has crept back. The grief has crept back. This is me probably torturing myself. I am not sure, but it might have been kicked off by me stumbling across this. The thought which was apparent to me - That which time cannot tarnish. Metal may tarnish, bones may weary, and eyes may cloud, but the love never fades. The best of boys forever. Yeah. Sad. Ok. It was probably that. On a more positive note, I picked...

For the hundredth time, this morning, I think of Ares in his last second. That final uniquely Ares huff of breath. And gone. There is an avalanche of emotion inside me behind it. I can feel it. Feel it threatening to unleash in a wave that blows me away, a tiny speck amongst an immense landslide of chaos. A depth of sadness. Of loss. Of missing him. I have to stop what I am doing. Breathe. Breathe. It is 8 days since I lost him. It can creep up on me. And hit me like a sledgehammer. He's gone. The vet says to me in my memory. And the tears roll in the present. I am sorry Ares. Third chiro visit yesterday. I mentioned my face tingles had got worse since treatment, and for the first time in a long time the numb patch on my back had returned. He didn't say anything about it. Last few days I have been feeling worse. I can come up to normal depth somewhere during the day and stay there for a good chunk of a while. But the evenings I start to crash. The nights are... not good, and th...

 Second chiro visit yesterday. A report and a plan. The report - you're kinda fucked. The plan - see me three times a week. I rested again yesterday. Which definitely helps. The issue is well in hand at this point and making decent progress. I can't fuck around with it though. This morning I was more downbeat. I think. I've been on a very odd slight high. Lots of sadness and tears. But then feeling a bit better as the days wear on. I think my body has been jacking my happy chemicals up to offset the misery. Wearing off a bit now. Always the test. The long game. I grabbed dinner for Poppy and Athena yesterday. Force of habit, filled the first bowl up with Ares food. Yeah. Not good. I stopped. Breathe. It's ok. I don't know. The grief has waned a lot. But. There is a hole there. It's more than a hole for Ares. Don't get me wrong. There's a big fucking Ares shaped hole that is still "under consideration and deciding what form it will eventually settle ...

 Better yesterday. Very few tears. At times I consciously don't poke at the pain. Don't stick your tongue into the sore tooth. And I am ballpark normal. I wanted to see him. To see his face. I looked at my phone with his pictures waiting for me on there. Let's maybe not. It's too soon. Don't punish yourself. I am losing Ares. Fading into a blur. It gives me peace. It's also horrifying. I feel like a borderline sociopath. Ridiculous. Sociopaths don't hurt like that. But still. I carry a sadness for him. Mostly I am ok. I can deal with his stuff. His lead, his bowl, it's... not anything near as wrenching as I thought. But then small things will come and smack me around the head. Last night of all things it was a packet of crackers. I went to take one. Realised the packet was open because I opened it for him, a cracker after his pills. The crackers were still in an "Ares state". A mark that he was here. And another mark that was to be erased. Mmm....

 The grief fades. The guilt recedes. I would not have banked on it. But apparently I am more durable than I thought. I really wouldn't have given good odds of that. Then again. I'm on maximum dose of mental meds. A hammer of chemical smoothing. Which probably has a lot to do with it. I am sad. It lingers. I think of Ares a lot. I close my eyes. And lots of images of him flit through my mind. But the memories of him are softening. It somewhat appalls me. There is a part of me that is horrified that I am slowly losing him to a less painful memory. There is another part of me that is.. not grateful.. but.. understands. Yesterday I spent most of the day in bed. My back/shoulder is brutal. In the scale of things - although it nearly made me pass out. It feels kinda... trivial. Even though it has stopped me dead in my tracks by and large. It's a "minor inconvenience". I am pondering if it's because my threshold for chaos and suffering this year is so high, that anyt...

 The grief is easing. It is a little smaller. I have cried so much. And I burst into tears at the drop of a hat, for anything, for nothing. My memories are softening very quickly. I cannot entirely remember the spark leaving him. It blurs. The sharp details are sifting away. My brain doing its usual defensive scrubbing no doubt. Oh this seems bad. Shall we start scrubbing this out. It feels like one more level of betrayal. An easing and trivialising of his passing. Selfish. I deserve that pain. I went out to a BBQ yesterday, something that had been arranged a month earlier. Stops me dwelling. Ish. Stops me crashing into sadness. Ish. I drifted at the BBQ. I accidentally saw a picture of Ares on my phone. I stopped. Don't. Look. I closed it. My mind didn't let go of it. 10 minutes later I had to look. Opened my phone. Looked. There he was. He didn't look utterly awful. He was ok. I had betrayed him. Robbed him of days. I made a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake. I am bey...

 Yesterday. Was worse. Somehow. I am struggling to put time in order. 24 hours feel stretched into days. It's difficult for me to properly order the time in my head. My dad stayed overnight. Despite everything that has happened in the past. It was good to see him. He is not really a people person per se. He can be the life and soul, or used to be. But. There .. is a lack of truly connecting. And he shies away from pain and suffering. So he did not talk to me about Ares. Pretty much at all. Maybe it was better that way. We talked about his plans and stories. At 5am in the morning I walked him through the basics of trigonometry - he wanted to know the measurements of a ladder he was building. I gave him the basics on a piece of paper, as well as the completed calculation he wanted. More surreal experiences. As is my dads eccentric ways, he left at 6.15am - to go to the Marsham festival. It's too early dad. No he said. I can see the countryside. He left. I took a shower. And waile...

 I cannot sleep properly. I am in shock. I can feel it. A numb autopilot. Sleep is oblivion. It has been my only refuge for some time. Tonight it is the only escape. I crave it. I reflect that it is a quiet parallel to just wanting everything to end. A socially acceptable face of oblivion. I sleep for a bit. Then awake. And my mind goes around and around and around. Watching the spark go out of Ares eyes absolutely haunts me. It. Is. Awful. Of him lying there, unmoving. No small movements. No body language. Suddenly terribly terribly aware of how much that all meant to me. That equalled Ares. I fleetingly remember him walking away from me at the Vets. A trusting good boy. Walking into his end. It kills me. People tell me I have not failed him. But it feels like pure betrayal. I have ended my best friend. Who trusted me. Death is inevitable people say. The day would have come sooner or later. I find myself bitterly regretting not having one more day. And another. Of not being able t...

 Ares is gone. I let him go. I watched the spark go out of his eyes at the end. Brutal. I watched his lifeless body. Everything screaming in me that this was wrong. The boy I had watched for 11 years. Still. Unreacting. The spark gone. I am lost.

 Bad day yesterday. Ares had a funny turn. He seized up - like a fainting goat - and keeled over sideways. Before panicking a bit / fitting. I saw the early signs a split second before it happened. Comforted him to calm him down. He was scared. He did it again in the early hours of the morning on the sofa, whilst Hazel was watching him. And then went into a coughing fit. I got up. And spent time with him. Overwhelmed by grief and tears, but comforting him. He was rough. Hazel helped. I am beyond glad she is here. But feel guilty she has to endure sadness too. Ares time is near. And it destroys me. I don't want him to suffer. So I watch him. Will he come out of this trough. Today, I was not sure if it would be his last day. I am still not certain it isn't. I will have to make the decision. To let him rest for good. I will lose my best friend. Someone who has spent all their life with me. I have been fortunate enough to work from home through all that period, and therefore spend ...

 Life plods on. Symptoms wax and wane like the tide. Worse, better, worse, better. I reflected this morning that even at its best... everything is off half a degree. Disjointed, disharmonious. Even when I am mentally ok, or within touching distance of ok. My mental state definitely has an impact on the physical stuff. It's pretty clear at this point. But it's also clear shit is just not right. The only debate in my head at the moment is whether this is the new normal or whether its underlying rumbles of thunder for something terribly wrong that has yet to surface enough to be picked up by the crude diagnostics modern medcine has to offer. I nearly blacked out this week due to a vicious dizzy spell. Ho hum. Time will tell how it develops. I am resigned to it. Ares has had a bad week. His skin condition which has been struggling for months, but seems to have settled in the last few has erupted horrifically. A patch of skin as big as my hand has sloughed off, leaving a big exposed...

 Anxiety yesterday morning, slowly crawled up and strangled me in my sleep. It has become something of a pattern this year - early morning I am brought out of sleep by an increasing level of anxiety and skittishness until it forces me out of bed, and then slowly recedes - maybe. Sometimes it "pollutes" the whole day or days. A shit day. Hazel has confirmed she can have similar days when her mentals are just out of whack for the day. Meh. Also been getting random pains again, and I seem to have got back into hands, arms, et al randomly giving me pins and needles - often when asleep ( and not tied to sleeping funny or putting pressure on places, positioning is random and often on the arm or hand I'm *not* sleepingon ) but also when awake. Had to sleep a lot this weekend - against my will. Not happy at constantly having to nap. Ho hum. On the plus side at least it is something I can do and it... usually... helps. A couple of not so great pieces of research crossed my desk th...