Jan 12

 Athena's eye is much the same. On talking to my vet friend about it, she reckons a referral to an optholmalogist is overdue for some more drastic treatment and a little bit of surgery. Eh. Meh. I listened to what she said, she probably has a point. Next week I will bring up with my vet and see what he says. If there is a problem with the old vet at my usual place it is that he does sometimes drag his heels about getting the bigger more serious things sorted. He was not going to send Ares to get a scan until one of the more junior vets pushed for it - and lo and behold the scan turned something up.

So perhaps he's just dragging his heels a little bit again.

I dunno. Feels a little like deckchair arranging on the titanic anyway. I think even if her eye heals, it will still be in for trouble. Ho well. Can only try. Next week I will mention it for sure.

Yesterday I checked in on my stressed friend, and no surprise, they had filled their day again with stressy bullshit to do. Chasing around the city in pursuit of bureaucracy, only to get to the end of the trail and end up nowhere. Classic bureaucracy.

Also classic, can't fucking rest for 5 seconds.

They mentioned they felt very sad and terrible and had started on anti depressants.

Well. 1) Depending what you're on they will make you feel worse in the short term. And 2) You're not getting any rest, chasing around after stressy frustrating things and are then surprised when you're not feeling good.

Duh.

Today I met up with them. And listened to them talk a bit. They asked what I thought. So I gave it to them. You need to rest. Not treat the time off like a bloody extra week of vacation time to fill in with chores. The GP has decided that you are unwell and that you need time off to recuperate. This does not mean you treat it like any other week off and continue to fuck around. You. Need. To. Rest.

As expected, it became fairly self evident they didn't actually understand what rest meant. Did. Not. Compute. I had foreseen this too. What set of tasks do I need to carry out in order to "rest". That's the thing. None.

They've had massive trouble in the past trying to be mindful and empty their head. They can't do it. It fills up with noise and tasks. Or. They fall asleep. Go, go, go, go. Zzzzz.

They complained they couldn't understand me. They got the theory. But they couldn't understand it. Indeed. I am talking a foreign language to you. So I did my best to set it out like it was a goddamn schedule to be achieved. 10am. Have a cup of tea. 10.30am. Go take a breath of fresh air and listen to the birds. 10.45am. Watch the clouds. 11am. Read something light. Noon. Lunch. 1pm. Have a nap. 3pm. Decide to go out and get cake. 4pm. Watch something cool. 5pm consider dinner.

Ridiculous that you need to spell out a schedule to do nothing.

I observed that as they were so good at studying and learning, that they needed a course on how to do nothing. Treat it like a thing to be studied and mastered.

We then talked a lot about the shape of depression. Mental health. How it feels. How the science works. And yada.

They didn't in the end, seem too bad to me. Bad enough. But not terrible. There is, far worse.

I bought them a cookie to and drove them home after a leisurely late lunch somewhere fancy.

In other struggling news.

Hazel pinged me.

She might be coming home from the US early.

Ok.

Things had imploded she said.

Oh dear.

Long story short, things have gone tits up with the boyfriend in a major way. I listened and was supportive. Asked if she could get past it, sometimes people were idiots, but, it didn't always mean it was the end of all things. She listened. I have no clue as to whether the relationship will be salvagable.

I think just from a long term perspective it was always on shaky ground. And she knew it. We had talked about it.

It could just be I am training him for his next girlfriend she said.

Yeah. Probably.

But then that can so often be the case.

Not to super get into it, it sounds like this meltdown is not down to Hazel. Or at least. Is not instigated by her. That she has escalated it. Sure. That she kind of set it up to start with and ignored the red flags. Also true. But then this is Hazel. Bad at making choices. And set into patterns that will end up pretty bad, and require everything to go absolutely perfectly to even stand a chance of coming out even. When inevitably something doesnt work, or some bit of reality interjects, everything falls to pieces. We've also talked about that too. You realise. That when you make a plan that has no wiggle room. No backup plan. No time to adapt or absorb new information. When everything is done already a week late, and half undone, that you are just setting yourself up for failure. And then you are sad. And then the world sucks. And you dig deeper into that pattern of not coping. Vicious circle. And it starts with bad choices.

In any case.

This marks the second major relationship in her life that she has set on fire in the last month.

Very not good. Even amongst the most happy of mentally stable people, this would be Pretty Shit. For Hazel. Hmmmmm. Crisis triggering.

Particularly when you also consider that she is now very short of any kind of relationship whatsoever. In fact, squint, and the only person she has close to her left, is me. She has one friend in Bristol that she talks to once in a blue moon and sees even less. She has a couple of quasi friends in the US. And that's it.

This, is not good. She needs a support network around her. Everyone needs a support network around them. Friends. And people. And stuff. Who you can talk to. Do stuff with. Help. And be helped by. A social network. The village. The clan. Is is, fundamentally, who we all are. And without it. We wither at best, perhaps able to live like that, but not thriving. Not our full potential. Struggling to grow in the shade beneath a wall. We all need people.

My original plan of going to talk to her dad to try and mend fences has kind of been blown out of the water by me being full on busy with Athena. And also completely getting wrong how far away he lived. A 6 hour drive. Which puts it out of reach of my going there in person.

However. With the advent of the whole boyfriend thing going tits up. Mending bridges with her dad becomes even more important.

Ho hum. I need at the least to sit and write him an email and then, if he's open to it, have a chat on the phone with him. Far from ideal. But. What else can you do.

So Hazel may be back from the States in short order. And her life will be in tatters around her. It's fair to say that her entire schedule revolves around talking to the boyfriend into the early hours of the morning. Without that structure in her life, eh. Bad.

It wouldn't surprise me if she comes and stays with me a bit to fend off any feared meltdown she will have.

She will, if history is any judge on it, bounce back pretty quick, and from there not be long from another relationship. Starting relationships has never been a problem for her. Maintaining them on the other hand.

I am tired. And starting to feel ill again day to day. I think my adrenaline is running out.

The last month or so has not been great.

It has been a period where I have needed some support and help myself. But instead. It has been the other way around. I am doing surprisingly well in spite of the burdens. But. Eh.

Picked up the laptop from the repairers today. New screen. All working.

Got it home.

Yeah. Not working. Piece of junk. Something else is wrong with it. Not sure what. Memory ? SSD ? Janky controller / motherboard ? Hard to say. With the last of my energy today and a sense of frustration and defeat, I have cracked open the laptop myself to have a poke around, and removed the SSD. Ordered a new one. Will try a fresh install with a different SSD and see if it makes a difference. If it doesn't the next step is to maybe try some new RAM. Whilst the SSD is possible to re-use elsewhere, so, the cost isn't lost. Getting new RAM for the laptop, if it's not that, would just be throwing good money after bad. I am in two minds whether to just give up on the thing entirely. Which. Is expensive. But. Meh. Sigh. I'm hoping it's just a janky SSD. I don't think it is however.

If there's one thing I'm doing at the moment more than anything, it is haemorrhaging money. Not great. Burning money like it's endless. My healthcare. Athena's healthcare. Stupid laptop fixes. And on.

Ho well.

Busy, busy, busy. And I am super tired. Exhausted. But. Somehow trotting on. It's not going to end well.