Nov 17

 So I've heard back from a lot of people over the past 12 hours or so. Catching up. It has been nice. Most of them I haven't spoke to in over a year. If and when I am up for it and around, I have a few invitations for cups of tea and the like. So. There's that.

Went for a walk today with Hazel. I wasn't feeling it, but, she asked, so, off we went. She wants to meet up a lot in the next week because... she's away for two months. Off to her dads for a month, and then off to the US to see her boyfriend for a month. Quite the extended amount of time away from home. Of all the things, she said she was anxious about not seeing Athena for 2 months. Uh huh. 2 months is a long time in Athena world. Different for me of course. But I couldn't spend that amount of time away from Athena. Fuck that.

Walk was nice, getting cold. Athena didn't seem to mind and spent sometime in the literally freezing river. All good. She likes going for a walk as a group best of all I think. She got admiring comments as we walked about, from teens to retirees. She's still got it apparently.

We came home and both passed out in bed, she snuggled into my side.

Peace is a dog sleeping beside you. Of all the things I've experienced. And thought about. And crunched through. A dog sleeping beside you is the truest of them all. No competition. It rings a palovian bell, 15,000 years in the making between human and wolf. And if you haven't experienced it. You are missing out on something fundamental and primal. It's not part of the continual babble of noise from your conscious fucked up brain. It's deeper than that. Somewhere in the places where there are no words. No thoughts. No chatter. No overthinking. Just vibes.

My brother has surgery scheduled for next week. Must be the season for surgeries. In his case it's a minor one, local anaethetic, lop off a bit of skin. In. Out. Shake it all about. He should be just fine. As he was talking about it, I shared with him I too had a surgery.

Worried or relieved he asked ?

Don't care I replied.

He sent back a worried face.

Eh. Meh.

The thing is. You get to a point where everything fades away into insignificance. They talk about not sweating the small stuff. It's like that. Except. When you push at it hard. Everything fades to grey.

There's a thing they note that sometimes people with depression end up losing their fear. They become indifferent to danger. Even possibly attracted to it. When you're walking through hell, everything else seems tame. Even imminent demise. So what. Demise is better than suffering.

It's not irrational. It's a rational response to having had your thresholds pushed so far, that everything else seems like nothing.

When you spend a lifetime living in the scorching desert, a warm day in London suddenly seems like nothing. It's true of everything in life. If you are pampered all your life, then suddenly not having lavender scented loo paper can seem like the end of the world. And conversely. If you live in some hell hole where life is cheap and there is no justice. Then minor crime somewhere else seems inconsequential.

And so it's kinda like that for me with the surgery. I literally don't care. It needs to get done because if it doesn't get done, it gets worse and stands a good chance of killing me somewhere down the line. Not that I particularly care about that either. But. It seems like a logical thing to do. And probably avoids physical pain. But there is no emotion or care in it for me. It's just a thing. I am aware it's an expectation of me. To do that. So you kinda do.

Likewise I don't fear the surgery. At all. If anything like I've said before, I am slightly cheery about the prospect of dropping dead on the table. Great. End of story. Thank fuck. It's not the boogie man that it might be for some. But that's not going to happen.

What's going to happen is they do the surgery. It probably, but not definitely works. I will still be ill. Still be fading. One of my issues will be fixed. The world will still be full of its flaws. Life will still be hard.

Nothing of any import will have changed. I am not worried about being sliced up or not. Of good or bad outcomes. It literally doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter because my everyday is so monumentally worse than any possible outcome from surgery, that it doesn't rate. At all.

White noise.

There is an uncanny place. At the bottom of depression. Or at the bottom of suffering. Or trauma. When it is so bad that you lose all care for anything else. Life. Death. Whatever. An awful uncanny place. But one that ironically can make you hard as nails in a certain sense. Capable of walking into fire and burning. Because. It no longer matters. A steely uncompromising strength that is born in madness.

I'm not saying it's good. It isn't. But it's not entirely unuseful either. If you're ok being nuts. You can see it in the rage of the beserker. Uncaring. Just violence. It has many manifestations, from the intense to the completely switched off, but, people rarely get to that awful point.

Much of life is like that to me at this point. Numb. The suffering numbs you. The mind fuckery numbs you. Everything. From heating not working. To tap leaking. To who is fucking who. Becomes unimportant. Many times it can be a struggle to wake up, and appear to care in order to do something.

Everyone will eventually get there in a form.

I suspect that if you get it, everyones last breaths in life will suddenly come rushing to this point. Where all the trivialities in life are exposed bare, and suddenly life just comes down to a few basic very important things, and even then, perhaps none at all, except maybe just one more breath. Or the not taking of one. To end it. This will be as close as everyone gets to that bottom of the barrel clarity.

Death. And how close you get to it, has a funny way of putting everything in perspective. And the perspective mostly is, that not much matters. Perhaps, nothing does. It will depend on the person. But of this I am sure - 99% of what someone thinks is important will end up not being so.