Jul 6

 Yesterday and today I've been catching up on sleep. Which is all round problematic as fucky things happen in my sleep. In general I get worse when I sleep. My eyes get punchy. Irritated. Bloodshot. Things fall asleep. Things swell up. Aches magnify. Yada. Which. Perhaps. Is the apnea just giving the pot of shit a stir. 

Nevertheless, I need sleep. Catching up on sleep is a daunting prospect. Which makes sense if you think about it - you need to sleep longer, which also means, you need to be oxygen deprived for longer. Oh. Rock and a hard place.

There is I think a bit of a pattern there. The longer deeper sleep tends to be the shittiest of all. And when I come out of that I can be truly awful. The more recuperative sleep tends to be - but isn't always - when I've had a longer sleep, and am now short sleeping for an hour or two at a time. Perhaps this is the sweet spot between rest, and oxygen starved. But who knows.

Yesterday I caught up with Hazel. She needed a few things doing. A big parcel taking to the post office ( which she needed a car for ). A run to pick up her meds. And then a dog walk somewhere better. She also said having some human contact would be nice as it had been a couple of weeks for her.

So we did that.

I have to say. Interestingly.

It was overall fairly negative for my mind state. I took a big step back doing that yesterday. It was ok. I am fine. But I definitely felt it.

For one thing we went for a walk at Athena's favourite spot, lots of water, dogs. She would always run down to the water to jump in. I didn't really think about it. But going there and sitting at the water was an enormous wrench. It made me incredibly sad. I kept thinking Athena was just around the corner out of sight, splashing in the water. I also kept thinking that she would have loved this, and what she was missing.

It was absolutely crushing. That oh so familiar twisting of my stomach, the dropping out feeling of vertigo, the pain in the back of the throat, and the tears. Extreme sadness. I lapsed into complete silence, sitting watching the water lost in my own head and memories, utterly sad and broken.

Very slowly it passed to a mere sad.

Poppy was focused on me. Wanted hugs. Wanted the ball thrown. Sopping wet. She was lovely. And a small distraction. But even that was a tug in places. Because her and Athena would team up. But no Athena there anymore. Very sad.

But it wasn't just the sadness of walking at Athena's favourite spot that was negative for me.

I could see that I was just playing the errand boy. Doing this. Going here. Fair enough.

And then at the end of the journey on the way home. I told Hazel about my very unlikely idle thoughts about getting a girlfriend. She waded in and "helped". That I should get some widow. Some old lady. Uh huh. Or failing that it would be some 20 year old chav with multiple kids. Those are my only two options huh ? What's wrong with getting an old lady she said ? She was adamant that that was all there was. Old widows.

I thanked her for her singular help. 

I am being helpful she said.

I thought she was being the exact opposite of helpful. Being mildly obnoxious and delighting in it.

I said she had a very singular narrative. Of an older than me widow. Or a 20 something chav with multi kids. There couldn't for instance be say, some 40+ single year old geeky type ?

No. They would all be in terrible marriages. Or getting divorced and it would be ugly.

Ok.

I thanked her again.

She was being an arse.

I am not 100% sure what she does with this. She has done it before. She prickles a lot about the idea of any normal kind of relationship, close friendships. She particularly scorns any close relationship I have. They are inevitably all my "boyfriend", "girlfriend" or "son". Always. To a fault. Every single time. It gets old. I have said to her that she has a problem with any kind of intimacy. And I don't mean intimacy as in a sexual relationship. I mean just anyone that you have a good relationship with that gives a shit.

The notion of me getting a girlfriend almost never comes up. Because I am almost never interested, or, resigned to it never happening anyway. So it's not often I get to see her response to it.

I left her and Poppy to it all was good.

But the afternoon did not make me happy. The reverse.

I did a bit of reflection about it. Hazel had been a fairly major tug backwards on my mood and where I was.

A few things my friend has recently said have been walking around in my head.

He is of the opinion that I often get taken advantage of, particularly by women, and that they often take what they need from me emotionally without much or any consideration of what exactly it is that I might need. He has had some choice words to say about some of my female friends who "prop their marriages up via you". In his view they end up getting to have their cake and eat it. And I get to foot the bill.

It has to be said his view on women has soured considerably in the last few years. So. He takes a pretty hard line. He believes that the modern world has gone way too far, and that women get to set every expectation and demand - everything has to revolve around their needs, their moods - and men are presented as horrible monsters whom society would be better off without.

I do understand what he's saying. I think it's a complex area where rights are being fought for that are important for women, but also some have weaponised that, and ironically it's being used to behave horribly and take massive liberties with men. I guess this is always the way. Anything and everything can get corrupted into an abusive greedy pattern. In some respects I can definitely see what he's saying. And in the long distant past, very unusual for me, I have made ultimatums before that someone stop dithering, and make a choice. If you want to be with me, then choose that. If not. Ok. But being in the half and half world, take what you need, skip away when you dont, is not a thing.

Some of my near miss relationships have also been very much this way. I have, perhaps foolishly on my part, ended up being the emotional support, financial support, errand boy support, everything but the actual relationship bit. But you don't get that in return. It's a one sided thing.

I guess this is the people pleaser bit in me that I inherited from my parents shitty upbringing.

I don't know.

Food for thought perhaps. I think I have to be careful of people that are happy to take advantage of me. For me and some of my relationships, this can be a complex thing, not clearly one thing or another, and something where perhaps I need to resist the more manipulative bits where I am toyed around with, and just maintain the friend bits, the less exploitative bits of it. I am shit with boundaries. It's no wonder that people ( actually typically just women ), reach over and grab a bit more for themselves.

I dunno.

Keep an open mind.

It has to be said, I am not short of people telling me that I need to be less open to be exploited. So. There's that. Which means it's almost certainly true.