Sep 4

 I have been careful. Careful when I go to bed. Careful when I eat. What I eat. When I take which meds.

It has helped a bit. I think. Or it could just be a random fucking fluctuation in the pile of shit.

I took Poppy out for a short walk yesterday around the meadow. We were out in total for no more than 25 minutes. And 5 minutes of that was driving.

It was the same route and same time scale I used to take Athena for a walk in her very twilight years.

Of course every step is laden with memory and emotion. But it was. Sort of. Ok. With a lot of sad.

I haven't been to the meadow in going on for a year. It has changed. The wide open meadow is disappearing under growth. The same spots that Ares and Athena used to gallop up and down after balls is now covered in knee deep thistles and plants.

The weight of time landed on me heavily. Nothing lasts. The memories I have of things are no better than fantasies. All those things and experiences are lost to time. No one would know. They meant so much to me, even the littlest of things. And now all gone. Like I made it all up one day to please myself. How. Can the two most beautiful brightest most wonderful spots in my life, be now invisible to the world and everyone. And if I talk about it, I look insane.

The time and loss thing is something my fucky brain majorly struggles to cope with. It is appalled. Frozen in "does not compute" horror.

I try to move them to the side. It's ok Johnny. None of it makes sense. None of it is good. You just have to ignore it.

I reflected I am like a person that has all the solutions to all the problems, and none of the answers. I am truly getting to a point in life where I know I have figured so much out, and at the end of it all, I have absolutely nothing but dust in my hands, and none of it makes any kind of sense. Despite knowing so much. It's not even an academic thing. It is hugely emotional. It has a payload of an immense amount of sadness and being lost and hopeless. Not just a scrawl on a chalkboard. Not just a pithy philosophical quote. It has a very human punch to the gut.

Despite feeling like shit, and not wanting to go out, and indeed not even thinking I could go out, the evening was lovely. The breath into my lungs felt good. Laden with late summer early Autumn. I realised in that yes I know this already kind of way that I brutally missed going out for a walk into nature. It was beautiful. This is one of the parts of me that had died with Athena. But here I was, temporarily out with Poppy. A ghost of what I was.

Well. This is easy you say. You should keep on going for walks. Dog or not. You like it. It's good for you mentally, good for you physically. No brainer.

Except.

I can't do that.

As I have got older, maybe more insight, maybe more pronounced, I have realised not only that I am neurodivergent, but I'm out there, really in the weeds of the neurodivergent. Freakish.

My friend wants to come up with a simple table top wargame for kids. With knights. And swords. You will have to help me he says.

Easy. Piece of cake.

I can write you a game system that caters to a specific audience without even thinking about it. Not difficult. I can give you a list of different mechanics, which to include, which not to, why, wherefores, the math breakdown, the probabilities, the psychology of it, to create a positive feedback game loop and not a negative one.

But this isn't normal. Most people struggle at that. Even game designers. Non game designers wouldn't have the first idea.

To me it's like breathing. Easy.

But then there are the things I struggle with.

Like going for a walk without a dog.

Easy.

Not for me. To me this is a very hard ask. It is something my brain doesn't work well with.

Go for a walk, it's nice.

Why. Why bother. Pointless. Also no dog. Very sad. Avoid.

Because it's good for you. You'll enjoy it.

I don't understand. Pointless. I can't do that. It would be a waste of time. It would feel weird. I would not be comfortable.

Just go for a walk.

No. There is no point. Stupid idea. There are more efficient ways to spend time. Rest.

You need to take a dog for a walk.

Oh ok. That makes sense. Let's do that. Oh that was nice.

You see ? The dog unsticks that fucking broken record like nothing else. And this. Is how I work in a lot of situations. No. No. No. No. How about with a biscuit ? Oh well of course, yes.

It might sound utterly bonkers ( and, it is ). But as I am learning, this is how my fucky brain works. Some things are trivially easy for me. Others that should be trivially easy are super hard. And if that's starting to sound familiar to some neuro atypical ADHD or autistic or some other label, then yes. Because it is that. It's likely it doesn't even have a proper label. Maybe. Or even more probably still is just undiagnosed.

But I can see increasingly clearly. Oh. Oh. This is why somethings are a challenge for me. And others are like having a super power. This isn't fucking normal dude. The normies do not deal with this shit. This is going to make a whole lot of life an "interesting" experience for you.

All very nice.

But I suspect. This all starts to fold back around ultimately to emotions. It means I have an unusual and at times bumpy emotional path. Because of those struggles. It means I can get frustrated. Depressed. Distraught. At something that doesn't exist for other people. I am struggling against my own default behaviour. I have to learn very specifically to mask against it. To know which steps to take to get somewhere closer to a "normal" path. But in some cases, I can't ever get there. Because that's just not how my brain is wired.

Over the last decade and more I have learned how to listen much better to myself. The rhythms. Not to force shit. And I have dialled up my ear to a thing I have always had a sense of "vibe". When something does and does not feel right. It's not a moral compass thing. I have had it all my life. Where doing something at a given time has an uncanny Does Not Feel Right feeling to it. And sometimes it clicks and suddenly it's ok to do that thing. As time has gone on I have realised this is way way more to do with me, than it is my environment. This is about me and my fucky brain not being able to tackle X because the "vibes aren't right". It is, I now heavily suspect, a neurodivergent thing. I have become adept at listening to the crackers tendencies of my freaky little brain. To the point where I am now beginning to see the pattern in a bigger picture as part of a neuro divergent thing, and not just a quirky me thing, or unexplored why am I like that thing. I can also quite clearly see this stretching all the way back into school. And that whole schtick of zoning out hardcore. And then zoning in, acing all the tests and zoning out again. And when crucially confronted about the inconsistent behaviour, the best I could articulate it as was, if I tried any harder I would explode. I don't know how to explain it. Which was my childhood self scrabbling to piece together a meaning.

In a better world more savvy adults would have known exactly what they were looking at. And done something about it. Helped. And given me some tools. It is not a better world. And certainly in that kind of time frame of way back when, that shit was little more than a theory on a piece of paper on a few peoples desks, let alone a mainstream understanding.

But I did "ok" in school. It is what it is. It's not like I was utterly scarred by it. Albeit I suspect everyone gets a little scarred by school judging by how many people end up dreaming not so nice dreams about school, even 40 years after they last saw the back of the place. Can you say haunting trauma ?

Anyway.

I had a bitter sweet walk around the meadow yesterday.

I didn't collapse. I didn't run out of energy. It was a 20 minute walk, so hardly the fucking olympics. But still. I surprised myself a little. Hey. I didn't die on my ass.

Today I am a bit better.

I think what I did yesterday set me up for a better day today. I was actually up, reasonably on time. And didn't feel horribly awful. So. There's that. But I am still very sketchy. I can feel the really bad effects of my health poised on a knife edge, the slightest slip or change of wind direction, and I will be cast back down unable to move.

Sigh.

I have also mulled over the CFS advice I read yesterday. And how very closely it lines up with my experience. My failure to come to terms with it is repeated and ongoing. Several years in. I am still struggling with the same thing. And the setbacks. Good god. The setbacks. Make you question everything again. Hmm.

So. This week. Today. I have lined up a couple of maybe social calls. Depending how I am. Depending which way the wind blows.

Tomorrow I will try and hook up with my not sister in law. For a cup of tea. And a chat. Nothing ground shaking. Just. Social. And human. And normal. And nice. You know. What normal fucking life should look like.

Friday. I will try and hook up with a friend. And talk through her issues with her. And just spend some time on a slow, short walk with Poppy. And if nothing else just chill. And enjoy each others company. 

In a lovely world this is what my time should be full of these days. Nice social interactions. Lots of free time to noodle around unhurriedly. Nice. In my world however I am sick in bed for most of that time. And that lovely world is seen at a distance, through the bars of a jail, always out of reach.

But we shall see.

Shits again today. All the time. Everytime. Those antibiotics are wreaking devastation on my gastro. I guess that's half their point. But goddamn. I need to make sure I fill up on all sorts of foods and biotics once I am done with the meds. Just to round out my nuked gut flora.

I need to get through the rest of today yet. Absolutely not a foregone conclusion. Even the prospect of half a day fills me with a low level anxiety now about how much it will suck and how ill I will feel. I am throughly beaten by it black and blue. And I wince and duck away even on the suggestion another blow might be coming. Hardcore traumatised.