Aug 7
The cold has shifted. The dregs of it stuttered out over the last couple of days mostly in the form of a voice dropped by an octave and the occasional cough and sniffle.
As the cold has dropped away, the other symptoms have come out for a whizz around the playground.
Joy.
Nausea is back on the menu. Pains. Dizzies. Bad eyes.
And of course the exhaustion never went away, but has been biting particularly hard of late.
Also as it has faded, my mood has bounced around, the sense of loss and all that bullshit has moved back into primary focus. And at times made me very unhappy again. To which. I still see no end at this point.
Of late it has been worse at night. Over night my mood goes very far down. I get very sad. I miss Athena so hard it is, I don't know. Very physical. It's interesting in a way. From that scientific, poke me like a lab rat kind of way. From the other way it's awful. That I miss her so much. And that in order opens me up to being so very vulnerable about the rest of it. I have realised there is still a lot of shock in there. I am in shock. I still cannot quite get to grips with the fact she is gone. That that bit of my life is over. It feels like some horrible joke. No answers. Just. Horrible loss. It has been 3 months now. And the shock is apparently still there.
Brutal.
I can potter around most days, when I am not curled up in bed exhausted, and get on with shit. But. It comes. And goes. Absolute crushing sadness. Loss. And then. Back to zombie mode. Walking around with nothing inside. Hollow. I suppose hollow is better than suffering. It's also perhaps the safety valve going off. Too much emotion. Turn it all off. Run it in zombie mode for a while. A bit like hitting your electric trip switch - shorts out, flicks off.
I have been there before with high emotions. Not least of which in one of the oh so close suicide attempts, knife stuck in my arm, intense emotion tears, before flick to a weird calm switched off state, and then back again. Each state being maybe 10 seconds long in some utterly bizarre broken system demonstration. Before at some point collapsing in an exhausted, failed suicide, heap. Put through the wringer. Fascinating. And horrifying. Of course.
It does lead me to believe that you can temporarily "burn out". You hit a threshold and it does a reset. Like a blue screen on a windows machine. Critical error. Reboot. I am not sure if this can be true or not. But. My brain certainly acts like it. Too much. It just switches it off for a bit. The safety valve. I heavily suspect it's not just me. I think people can flip flop between disassociation and intense emotion. And I think it's a similar thing again. Over stimulation.
Anywho.
I am worse at night at the moment. Dipping very far down indeed. Like. Far. Down. In the middle of the early hours of the morning. A spiral of sadness. It floats up. Oh. Is it time. Just go kill yourself. With a knife. In the bath. Because you dont want blood everywhere. And you dont want it to be crappy for someone to clean up. You could do that. Right now. It would stop it hurting. It has been enough no ? Just. Go do it. It makes sense. It would be so easy. No big deal. Just do it. Now. Get up. Get a knife. Let's go.
It is. Exactly like that. It is lulling. And compelling. It feels like a "nice" conversation. The worst bit of it, is just how rational and easy it feels. Just how very right it feels. The end. To the story. That I am continually craving. It feels like putting the last piece of a jigsaw in place.
And that, taking a step back, is worrying. In the light of day. Feeling less sad. It also feels like a "different approach". A new tactic to promote a suicidal end. Like part of you whos only goal is to finish it. Actively strategising on ways to make that happen and get around the cowardly / stubborn / animal bit of you that keeps getting in the way.
Uh huh.
I wonder if this is a common phenomenon ? The cross purposes fighting going on. Do it. Don't do it. Does everyone get that ? Would need to ask a shrink I think.
I guess thinking about it, and answering my own question, it would be the common thing. It's nothing really more than the different bits of you arguing about what to do - however you want to model that, even going back to an id, ego, superego, I want a cake, No we're on a diet, etc. I can imagine that it's common. And like many things. It's not about the average, but the peaks and troughs. You might be ok when you're having a good day. And the next day, be at the point where walking off a cliff is the thing to do. Peaks. And troughs. In everything we do. Tiredness. Sickness. Excitement. Day and night. We are not a linear thing but an ever rising and falling wave, just like the tides. You can walk far out to sea when the tide is out. And be drowned at that same point six hours later. But they were fine six hours ago. Yes. But the tide turned and came in. Didn't it. And now they're not fine.
Anywho.
As my cold has waned, I briefly saw Hazel. She had found an ailing hedgehog. Wanted to know if I could drive her to the emergency vet.
Sure.
But it turns out she had wanted to talk to me anyway.
She is planning on going to the US in September. Needs a dog sitter for a month.
So, I have agreed to that. We shall see how well I do. A month is a long haul. Again. I did this back in January as well. Which. Let's not revisit that whole slowly building ball of awful.
I didn't say much to Hazel. Nor did we hang out for any length of time other than to go to the vets and back again.
She chattered on about what Poppy had been up to. And her rescues. I listened. When she asked how I was I half grimaced and shrugged. Non verbal. What is there to say. I did offer a few words about my cold, mostly gone, throat had closed up. That was about it.
She did ask, pointedly, again, if I was ok. In that. You're not ok kind of way. I'm ok I said quietly.
She gave me one of her, I don't really believe you uh huhs.
Sure.
That's because I am walking around hollowed out. The lights are on, no one is home. I no longer have a heart.
I left her to walk Poppy around a big playfield near her. I didn't stop to join the walk. Just went home.
I will see you soon yes ? She said on leaving. Sure. I said half heartedly. That kind of question doesn't really make sense when you have no heart. Just words.
Uh huh.
So that was that.
I had a blip of feeling a smidge better for 5 minutes yesterday. So I decided on a whim to call my sister. And talked to her for a few hours. Or rather. She talked at me. And told me all about her work problems and how busy things were, and exhausting. It sounded very familiar. The curse of the family. I told her as much. Cursed to give a shit. Step up. End up doing everything. People relying on you. And slowly. Taking advantage of you. And for yourself. You get little to any help. Uh huh. What a very familiar tune.
As my friend pointed out later that day, a "number" had been done on myself and my siblings, and in a way, it looked like there was a really effective training regime to turn people into high functioning high capable, burn out giving all you've got kind of people. Useful. And awful. Top tier dysfunctional givers. If you were that way inclined, you could produce an army of them he mused. For getting shit done. Horrible for them. Useful for society.
We have covered this topic before. About how dysfunctions can maybe end up beneficial to a wider community whilst simultaneously being shit for the individual. His initial opinion was that you needed people at least a little like that, to be selfless, and carers and givers and that it was a good thing in the end. I pointed out that the cost of it, and also the lack of choice in the matter - a compulsion, a slave to the task, a proper dysfunction was the thing that made it monstrous. It is one thing to choose to lend a hand, and some days not, depending how you are. It is another thing entirely to have someone with a mental fuckup that compels them to do it like a dancing monkey with no self restraint about how much it may burn the giver.
Like the difference between having a drink. And being an alcoholic. It's not so much whether you drink booze or not. But the manner and extent of it. Being an addict is a whole different experience to not being one.
At a higher level, some of this comes down to an end justifying the means deal. And as soon as you start saying shit like that, you know you are on very dodgy ground if not outright morally repulsive ground. The end almost never justifies the bloody means. That way slavery and genocide and all manner of experimental horrors lie in the conclusion that, it was ok in the end. The suffering on the way was just the price.
No.
As nihilism succintly teaches us. There is no bloody end because all ends are pointless. Turned to dust at the end. The only thing that perhaps matters is the bloody journey. The means. Not suffering whilst being alive. Erecting the 100 meter statue does not matter. In 50 years it will be in a state of disrepair. In 500 it will have crumbled. In 5000 it will likely be gone. In 100000 no sign of it at all.
But the suffering of the slaves building your monument. That mattered to them. Very much. In the moment.
The means. Is all there bloody is.
Ozymandias - Shelley
Which is always the outcome. Nihilism. Nothing matters. Not even for the mightiest of kings.
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