Bork Slowly Borking

 Curious. Seem to have gone backwards covid wise. The flu like symptoms are back and I feel under the weather generally. Odd. Thought I had shrugged that off. Supposed to be working this week, but, it's turned out to be a way harder proposition than I imagined. Went out for a walk yesterday, Athena was full of beans, well, for an old lady anyway. She continues to be in pretty good form of late. If she's declining at all at this point, then it is very, very slowly. I am very careful with her. She's kept warm, and comfy and interested. We go to very nice places to walk, and run, and sniff and paddle. She meets lots of dogs. She's fed the healthiest food. Gets her supplements. And I always have at least half an eye on her. She is treated with love and respect and gets to indulge whatever she likes - within reason. She's old enough and smart enough to be very familiar with how Shit Should Work. And so we never have cross words. And she is super smart enough that I can t...

 Things have slowly returned to.. eh.. normal is a bit much, but, cruising altitude. I don't feel great. I don't feel terrible. It'll do. Just give it some time. Get a chance to get out, go swimming, do shit, and see if I can't improve further. I do feel like I'm on the cusp of getting on my feet again. And in some weird aspects, the bout of covid has left me feeling a little... better.. in a few places. There were some anecdotes about people with long covid catching it again and feeling better in the aftermath. Perhaps it's that. Perhaps it's nothing. Funeral is next week. I dithered about what to wear. Bother. Not bother. Slightly bother. In the end. My mom always liked me being smart. And not so much less smart. In that old school notion of smart or not. So. I will try and make the supreme effort. Properly. We'll see how well I pull it off. Three piece suit. London tailored shirt. Clips. Stiffeners. Garters. Not really me. But I am sure my mom would h...

Not got much energy. I'm alright. Covid is all but done. Gastro is an utter shit show. So. It's not really the covid making me ill at this point, it's Everything Else. But still, getting better. Just. Tired. And not exactly hungry. But. That whole low energy because you haven't eaten much dealio. Mmm. At times my brain doesn't want to shut off. Trying to sleep last night. It decided to keep me up. Thinking about my parents. The stuff I lost. Life. Death. All of that stuff. Revisiting the really weird shit that I have in my family that just.. never gets talked about. Like half my family being off the radar entirely. For instance. Or that, that side of my family, has nothing to do with the rest of my family, because, you know, same mom, different dad. It shouldn't matter. But. I am the sole genetic connection to my dad. That he's in touch with. Everyone else - to my knowledge, he has now, cut off, or stopped talking to. This means I have a small army of cousin...

 Stabilised. More human. Last night was the first night I wasn't forcibly up either vomiting or trying not to vomit. I feel like I have a flu. Which to be honest is a cake walk. Easy. The underlying bullshit it's triggering is not so easy. But seems to be weakening every day. So. Good news. I haven't relapsed into a months long horror of suffering. Touch wood. Symptoms have been coming and going in quick succession. Yesterday was hella dizzy. Close your eyes the room spins. Tingles up the left hand side of the face. More all round gasto hell. It's interesting that it seems to be touching on a whole bunch of Greatest Hits earlier symptoms, probing all the weak spots maybe. It all seems very familiar however. Albeit. Quicker. Except for the nausea et al. Which seems to be in a constant state of battle. Eating is still very difficult. I am walking an impossible path of not eating enough so that it makes me feel worse, and eating a little so that it.. makes me feel worse. I...

 Super fucking ill. Most of yesterday I was left gasping in pain, severe gastro issues, nausea and a migraine that came along with it. Pain sweats. Couldn't sleep through it. Too much pain. Awful. This continued all day. The nausea would step up and down in intensity, from ill, to diabolical. I was heaving - my empty - guts up at 3.30am. Then a sore throat. Then a cough. Meh. I think my underlying bullshit has been turbo charged by a suspected bout of covid. Today I am fragile as hell. I have that familiar flu-ish kind of feeling to me. And my gastro feels like it has been beaten up and is deciding whether it should just go tits up entirely again. Some of my lowest moments yesterday. Really bad. Fingers crossed it doesnt go back to being that bad today. Ho hum.

 Flickering on and off. Chunks of day are disappearing into voids. I am ok for a period, then I am not. Sometimes really not. Uh huh. Mmm hmm. Seems like quite a regression. Relevant or not, the CFS people said there would be relapses. Perhaps this is one. It feels like it all stems from my gastro which cannot seem to settle again. Often nausea, and a whole truckload of other symptoms to go with it. The other day I had three attempts at getting up and out of bed before it stuck. My head has also been fogged up quite a bit. At times really bad, getting back to the worst of times when I would just stare into space and.. just.. bzzzt. It's an odd sensation. It feels like the front of my head is full of .. cotton wool.. and concrete. Everything is treacle. And slow. As I'm writing this I'm on a relative up. Evening. I can think. I am.. not suffering too bad. I have an air of unwellness about me. A touch of nausea. A deep lethargy. This weekend has been pretty miserable. Despite...

Ill. A lot. Off and on. Most on. Mmm. Brain fog off and on. Like being..... under water. Deep. Taking me minutes to write this. Many thoughts and experiences. Comes out as silence. Too hard to relate. I can feel me trying to kickstart. Tick... tick.. tick tick... tick tick....... thunk. Like a car that wont start. ... ... Lapse into space. Waiting. It'll get better. Jeez. Treacle. Ugh. Back later.

 Despite no serious nausea yesterday, by late afternoon I felt shit. Went for a walk. Half way round I had to sit down. And then lie down. I recovered enough. But yeah. Not great. Still. Better than I have been. This morning I have woken up like being pulled backwards through a hedge, and my mood... is low. Shadows low. Long term looming doom low. It must have been my dreams. Somewhat. I dreamed of war. And the end of things. I watched the missiles fly. But I also dreamed I had another dog. Another boxer. Just like Ares. I knew it wasn't Ares. But it was just like him. I chatted to a friend last evening. One way or another we got to the point of him questioning that I was a burnout. That, it wasn't time for me to pull in my horns, to stop. It seemed like I was giving up prematurely. Still life there to live. We are dead a long time he said. Mm. Sure. And from there straight into. You need to get another dog. Difficult. I don't have the energy or wellbeing to keep up with an...

 Been suffering the last few days. The nausea crept back. And then came back properly. Oh no. No no. Uh huh. From one point of view, its effects... or whatever it is... effects... are easier to track in isolation like this. So. Nausea. A sick feeling that entirely wipes out appetite, makes the thought of any food a queasy proposition, and pretty much overrides feelings of hunger or otherwise. Next. Generally unwell. Ranging from the, I do not feel good, but will struggle on, to, oh my fucking god I feel terrible, freezing cold, no blood in the feet or hands, I, must, lie down, and sleep. Next. Lethargy. Low mood. Unsurprisingly feeling like shit, makes you also feel like shit. The world gets way more miserable. Which ties into. Motivation. Motivation to do anything except feeling unwell goes to zero. All you can think about, is how unwell you are, and counting each breath. So yeah. Not fun. It passes. And then comes back. And passes. In the space of eh, 5 or so hours. Endlessly re...

 Feeling burned out again today. A heavy blanket of exhaustion is sitting on me. Too much thinking. Too much wading through peoples headspace ( including my own ), sifting the whys from the wherefores. I think I just run out of energy. At a different period to a single day. More like a slower arc of many days. I can feel my patience is down. I am. Eh. Tired of people. Tired of the incomplete threads. And I am tired of thinking stuff through. Tired of having to fight just to get to a neutral point. The whole funeral shenanigans and the sheer malarkey required just to be able to get to a point to say, hey, I'm going to be there at the crematorium. It shouldn't be that hard. Mmm. Just time to live in the moment. No thinking. Just do what's in front of your hands. Switch off. The tug of withdrawal nags at me. Shut it all down. Disappear. I reflected the other day, if it wasn't for the fact I have a house, I'd have been long gone. The house ties me down. If you gave me f...

 Spoke with my brother about the funeral. If it had already been paid for, was it going ahead without us, or what. My angle was that I wanted to be there. Not causing trouble, not making a thing, but, I didn't want my mom to be on her own in that last thing. Fuck that. I would be there with her. I know that she's gone, empty vessel and all that. From being up close and personal and watching Ares last breath, oh my god do I know that. But. It's still her. The last bit left of her. And I am not going to leave her on her own. With no one there. Just. Off. Done. No. Fuck that. So I will be there. I would want someone to be there with me. I think it's important. That's fine said my brother, you can do what you need to do. I didn't say that it wasn't really about me. It's about my mom. And being there for her. So we're going to do that. My brother said that he'd probably come along too. As would his wife. But no one else. I reflected to Hazel that this...

 I quieted yesterday. No constant churning of thoughts. Went for a swim. Got a message from my brother. News about mom. Are you available for a teams meeting at 6.30pm. It must be the autopsy. Slightly naughty of my brother. He perhaps at least should have prefaced it with no bad news. I could only imagine that you'd declare a meeting about the autopsy if it was truly an issue. If it wasn't, why the meeting. As it turns out the autopsy found that my mom died of pneumonia. That she wasn't on end of life care, and that it was a "surprise", says a lot about the care in her observation. Again a repeat of earlier in the year, where they were largely unalarmed by the horrible state of her breathing, and I, having raised it, a short time later they finally raise the alarm. Negligence you might say. Mmm. I think this is where reality meets the road and like a lot of things in life it depends how you frame it, and who has an axe to grind or trauma to work through. No one c...

Another day, another drift through uncharted waters. My brain burned again yesterday. Manic. After a particular deep dive into nothing, and realising I had just sat there for 2 hours, I decided to do the thing I didn't want to do. Go for a walk, human contact. I don't want it. But I need it. I lamented about this contradictory shitty nature of life. I got ready, pinged Hazel if she wanted to tag along, no reply. I didn't much care. I was going for a walk. It was better she wasn't there. In the shower my brain burned this way and that, and then a shot across my thoughts. You're burning out. You can't maintain this level of burn, you're running out of energy. Energy out does not equal energy in. I could feel it. It pulled me up and made me stop. Huh. I realised like a game of Jenga or Tetris, a block at the bottom had disappeared. And now everything above it had shifted down. Every assumption, decision, simulation needed to be re-addressed, re-indexed, integr...

 Ok. I don't entirely know what's going on with me. I'm off the road map with this. One of those rare times in my life I have no clue where I am or where I am going from an inner point of view. There seems to be a long slow grief process. I am ok with it. Most of the time. And even when it's there it's very dealable with. Not a nuclear wipeout. Not like Ares. But this isn't a day 1 deal with it, day 2 process it move on thing. It's sticking. And if anything is slowly building. Perhaps I am feeding it. I am not sure. My thoughts are focused on the past and my place in it and the present. The impacts all round. The mistakes of my parents. The crossroads I have, one path or the other. And then. A host of little things. About my mom. I have returned to sleeping an inordinate amount of time. Also. Time and days and shit to do on those days has become a lot harder to pin down. A slow burn grief perhaps. My brain is in overdrive if I give it half a chance or don...

 Head span up today at 6.50am. Buzzing away at a million miles per hour it was crunching social problems in a miserable kind of way. Bit of a revelation. I've realised the highest gear of brainpower I have is when it's slightly miserable. Perhaps it's something to do with "threat". When threatened it switches into highest gear. Must. Solve. Everything. And. Spot. The. Predator. You know. Primitive impulse brain. That kicks later stage development brain. Anyway. My mind focused on the non funeral for my mom. A long time ago, when I was in my 20's, a good friend of mine and I attended the funeral of a friends daughter. Funerals are sad, this if anything was worse. She was 21 ish. Died of leukemia. A very bright spark. Daughter of two open minded ultra academics, somewhat bohemian, she never got less than acing everything she put her hand to. And as she grew up she decided that was going to be medicine. By 21 however she was gone. That loss ended up destroying th...

 Tired and full of aches. I'm doing alright, but have had little energy today. Not done shit. I phoned the old man up today. I. Kinda. Slowly realised I should probably do that. I feel a bit disconnected from it all. I'm usually tip top aware of what to say, who needs support, and yada blah. Except perhaps when it comes to this ? I don't know. Anyway. I phoned the old man up. He was ok. "OK". A studied OK. The old mans "OK". You'd have to know him. You'd have to know your shrinkology. He's not ok. He's not dealing with it. He's burying it. At one level, if you ask, he's matter of fact about it. This has happened. That has gone on. But it's the little things if you have the ears. He said more than once. She'll just be burned. The emphasis was on the burn. Subtle. But there. It's not a term of sadness, or loss, or respect. It's spat out. The anger beneath the surface. The fuck you this is the brutality of the world. ...

 Around about 7pm this evening, my mom finally passed away. She had caught another infection. Struggling to breathe. Ambulance called. But she was gone by the time they got there. A repeat of earlier in the year, but this time, it got her. One of the last things she said before she went was that she had had enough. She was going to her happy place. Where is that my dad asked her ? South Africa. I got the call from my brother. Who was lapsing in and out of high emotion. He said the old man had seemed ok enough with it. But. Yeah. The old man is also not doing well. We had a brief chat about him not being long behind her. And. Yeah. His health is failing, took a nasty tumble himself this week. And without the anchor of my mom being there, and his life revolving around his daily visits. I am sad. It flutters. I am ok. A long time coming. Foreseen. But still. It's shit. Death is always shit. There is something of a softening of the blow because my mom had not been truly herself for a l...

 I think the CFS or whatever it is kicked my ass a bit yesterday. Made it clear it's still around. Went for a walk with Athena, Hazel and Poppy came along. I wasn't exactly hyped at the start, and by the end of it, I was really feeling it. That deep tug of exhaustion. Oof. Hazel made a checklist. Had I been eating my vegetables ? No. Drinking ? Not enough, dehydrated I think. Eaten today ? No. Its 4pm. I had an apple ? I wonder why you're feeling not good she said. I dunno, it's a mystery. Ha ha. On the way home stopped for a Greggs sandwich. And I felt somewhat better afterwards. So. Eh. Heheh. But still. It's a different thing. That tug. That whole.. background... malarkey. It's more than just not getting enough to eat or drink. There is another rise and fall thing going on behind it all that at its worst is very debilitating, and at its best passes almost unnoticed. Still for all that, I'm still doing ok. Allergies are still flaring. Itchy eyes. Sneezy. Y...