May 13

 Worse today on the whole I think. That slow miasma gets stronger.

Today I had severe pain. A band of pain around my upper torso. Everything sore elsewhere. My eyes red and stinging. Two black eyes. It is that peculiar set of symptoms that occur after or during sleep. Something fucky goes on. The stinging eyes usually get better within 10 minutes of waking and moving about. The redness fades some shorttime after. The black eyes take hours to get slightly better. But they are now a permanent feature, often as not masked by my glasses. I take them off. You see the punches and the odd black ring outlines like water tide marks that circle my skull orbits.

It makes any given day hard to deal with.

My shitty health.

Now slide that loss of Athena in behind it. My loss of everything.

This is the problem.

It is not one thing, but many.

One of my concerns during these few years has always been suddenly dying whilst Athena and Ares were still here and there would be no one to save them from an empty house.

Of late I realised that despite my also shitty health, it was likely Athena would go before me, and so, the issue was not going to crop up. Albeit she had improved a lot, and it had started to be a worry again.

Now, it doesn't matter.

I think I have said all that needs to be said. The pattern seems fairly set at this point. That quietness maybe, is also beginning to steal in on me.

I will write a thing for Athena. It won't be of a great standard. But I will remember all the things that come to mind of her. And maybe also of Ares. Those that never knew them might know that they once existed. And what they were about. I know. It doesn't really make any sense. In another way. It does.

I need to be careful of the sads here. Beyond everything else, hilariously, it is threatening to morph into its own beast. Something depressive. Something nastier. Something clinical. I am not entirely sure I care enough to take it seriously. The analytical part of me is aware it's starting to loom though. Good stuff.