9th Feb

 Work, a walk, some shopping.

Wiped.

I was in bed by just gone 8pm. Slept for 11 hours. Still not enough.

The hole in my ass acted up yesterday, I always wonder if it's another source of exhaustion, it certainly seems to have coincided with me feeling a lot more exhausted since it has come back.

Still not gone to the docs with it. I just have no faith in them anymore. I should go. I cannot bring myself to go somewhere that I do not trust and have no faith in - based on exhaustive experience. You can kinda understand how that works right ?

Hazel wanted to tag along if I was going shopping. So we took a walk - where she was notably lacking in patience, a little subdued and grumpy.

Hazel's moods can run a very wide gamut, and at their edges they fall into serious mental health problems, borderline personality issues and yada.

She's been doing pretty well of late, but, it never goes away, and you have to be very careful when it starts to wander into problem territory.

An impatient Hazel is a warning sign. Possible storms ahead. And her meanness develops very quickly. Typically she's ok. Almost always brutal. Short on sympathy. But willing to help. But not mean to people she gives a shit about. Which admittedly is a fairly short list. 

But when her mood shifts impatience is matched with meanness. And push it a little further and it becomes just outright meanness and spite. Push it a little further again and you have a raging monster than will do or say anything to cause harm. Literally. Very difficult.

So I was a little wary of her yesterday. Impatient with Poppy. Impatient with everyone. Grumpy. But, not severely so. Still. I gently asked if she was ok today. Not so good. Clearly she wasn't. But communicating that can be thorny. Bad nightmares she said. And also - of all things - pickle ball had pissed her off. Its existence. A stupid form of tennis. She was irratonally annoyed at pickle ball. It had made her grumpy.

I suggested that maybe the mood had instead encountered pickle ball, rather than the other way around, and the pickle ball was just a rationalisation. This, for the record, is 100% her pattern. Look around for something that justifies her mood swing rather than acknowledge her moods are unstable without any external force.

No she said. It was pickle ball. Stupid game.

Mmm k.

We went shopping, where guaranteed 100% another of her mood shifts occurred.

Whenever she goes supermarket shopping with me she goes hyper. Properly hyper. If you've never seen it it's going to be weird.

She shifted gears, grumpy turned into super chatty, super loud, always narrating shopping fest.

At this point I become like the straight guy in a manic comedy duo. I stand there pretty silent, she chatters away, continually bouncing off me - every other sentence is punctuated by a "Johnny" - and at times alarms passers by with her without care sweary roll of chatter. This is shit. That's shit. Her opinion on them fucking people over said over loud for the audience.

It's pretty exhausting. But she's usually always happy buzzing around, so I don't mind at all, and just let her do her thing.

Yesterday I had to have a sit down half way through. I was exhausted on all fronts.

Another aspect of the mania is that she always gets carried away shopping. Goes in for 3 things. Comes out with a bulging trolley. She always underestimates what shes got. She has huge FOMO. If I buy something, she wants to buy something similar too. As she puts it, she's very suggestible. Sometimes. For some things. She's also a sucker for adverts on TV for doodads.

Let me make it clear, none of the above, grumpy to manic bothers me in any way. It's who she is. And I am ok with that. She can be a stalwart friend, understanding of the shittier things in life and mental health issues, and to be honest, she's probably the only person I feel comfortable around showing my absolute worst moments too. Which means I am ok collapsing in front of her.

She's definitely not an easy person. And, if it's bad, is no holds barred abusive. She has a lot of trauma and issues that she carries around and that shape her personality. She is the most scarred person I have encountered, and her problems are above my pay grade. Although I do what I can to even out the storms, give her support, and just try to be a constant caring stable force in her life. But these days thats not saying much as I am bumping along the bottom myself. But even the tiniest of things can help her out. A lift to the supermarket. Someone to chat with on a walk. Someone to lend her money. Look after Poppy. Offer a calm port in a shitty storm. Things that on my end, take little effort.

She can, given sufficient time after something, often learn from her mistakes - no mean feat - and show flashes of insight into herself.

Yesterday she asked which version of her was more annoying. The grumpy one or the manic one.

I know what she meant with that. It was also her subtle way of apologising for being a lot without directly saying so.

You're not annoying I said.

Lies !

I am tolerant.

She scoffed.

I am famously tolerant. You even tell me off for being so tolerant.

True she said.

Therein lies a bit of a paradox in her. At times she can deny that I am tolerant. Mainly because it's a rationalisation of the times in the past when she's been super mean to me. It must have been because I was intolerant. Not because she was raging out. And yet. Every example she sees of me in life, with others, with everyone, is someone very tolerant. And very tolerant of her. To the point that it annoys her. She thinks I should be more mean to people at times. We have had tricky shadow conversations where she will berate my sympathy and understanding of someone, and I counter with the fact that trauma and mental health issues are difficult for people to deal with and need understanding. The fact that this is our relationship to a tee seems to float by her. Either wilfully or without awareness. I never directly compare it to her. To do so would be to enter into a storm of rage and trauma. She isn't ready - perhaps never will - to have that conversation. So it gets left unsaid. But obviously there.

A larger part of her then understands I am nice, tolerant, easy going. She even said a whiles ago I am easy to talk to, easy to spend time with. And yet. That whole. I was abusive to him. It must have been his fault. Sticks a little in her mind. And so I must have some intolerance in me somewhere. Otherwise why would she abuse me.

Slowly it's fading. I think slowly she's coming to terms with her own past behaviour and that it's her demons that at times control her. She is slow to accept this, even though she knows this is how mental health issues can work.

It's never talked about. It's one thing she skirts around with a huge berth. She is also typically extremely short on paying me any kind of complement. Or outright compassion. Very rare. She'd rather insult me in that East End kind of way. Although she often refrains because she knows how shit I think that is.

A complicated not easy person. Shot through with so much past trauma that it has twisted her personality into something else. The core of who she is is still in there sometimes. Sometimes you can see it. Sometimes it disappears completely beneath a super angry trauma personality.

I like complicated people.

And not because I have that rescuer tendency. The whole had to walk on eggshells as a kid and am now programmed to sense the slightest of mood swings in people and take care of it ( which indicates the kind of relationship I had with my parents, particularly my mom ). Whilst I am definitely that way. I also just like complicated people.

People with something to say. A different perspective from the norm. No offence to normal people. But, their situation often means their brains turn off. They are lulled to sleep by pictures of new washing machines, and watching soaps on tv. Of routine and stability.

And those people cannot see the edges. The sharp bits. The holes that swallow people. The greater meaning of life. Of who they are. Of who everyone else is.

I find those people have no insight, nothing to say, and are confused at best when shown shittier aspects of life. At worst, they cannot comprehend anything outside of their circle. Everything else, must be a lie. It means not only can they not see the worst of things, they cannot see the best of things. Which can be surprising - notions of the highs of a deep love, the things that are mentioned in stories and songs are lost to them. They think they are fantasy. They have no grip on the edges of everything, scale is lost to them, they simply paddle in the middle, and much of what goes on in life is a mystery to them. Or, as they rationalise it, a lie.

The sort of people that just tell someone with mental health problems, have you just tried not being that way. Cheering up. The secret thought in their head, that oh, they just need a good breakfast in the morning.

The teeth grindingly annoying, it's not what cards you have, but how you play them mentality. Sure. I am sure that philosophy would go down great at the immigrant camp. The homeless shelter. The concentration camp. The Ukrainian frontline.

It is the philsophy of people that don't understand the scale. That have lived in a warm shallow pool all their life, where their cards are about whether you invest in this, or buy that. Not whether you get to eat today. Or get a bullet in your head and thrown in a ditch.

It is the modern comfortable living, oh so often middle class, equivalent of let them eat cake. At worst, outrageously offensive. At best horribly ignorant.

I don't dislike those people. I understand where they are coming from, and why their horizons are so incredibly narrow. They are, asleep. If not comfortably asleep, then, someone lazily asleep. Peaceful. And good for them if they are happy.

But you're never going to get wisdom out of such people. No great empathy or understanding. 

This can be difficult to deal with if you haven't yet learned the lesson that many people are not always geared to understand, or help. You can wonder what makes these people so mean, stupid, patronising. There must be something wrong with them. There's nothing wrong with them. Their context is just very small. Like a rich person that never sees how poor people live. Let them eat cake. You could argue they should make a better effort to understand their surroundings and empathise, but, it's a hard ask. And not everyone is capable.

If everyone was wise, insightful and empathetic, we wouldn't have special words for them. They would just be. Everyone has skin. Therefore we don't talk about someone having not enough skin, or too much skin. It just is.

I tend to avoid those of a narrow context. Whatever context that is. Middle class bubble person who cannot see beyond their next luxury purchase. Content normal person who doesn't understand trauma or how life can blindside people. Rich people who do not understand anything about how the rest of the world works. Hardcore rights activists, who cannot see beyond the horizon of their own fucked up zealotry ( ie PETA ).

I find all those people to be... uneducated. Ignorant. Not having a bigger picture. All locked in their own tiny wheels. I understand how they get there and how that works. And each to their own. Unless you're causing harm. But. They have nothing to say that I am interested in. They have a tiny horizon which I already understand, and they cannot push beyond that.

Avoiding such people is not something meanfully spirited and not something I actively police myself to do. It just happens naturally.

But it does mean I end up spending more time with the complex people.

The broken people.

Those with insights beyond the normal.

I guess that also has a cost.

Sometimes I wonder whether a dose of just spending time in the warm shallow end of the pool wouldn't do me good.

Heh.

I don't think I could stand it. I would go nuts. In a different way.