Dec 12

 A very dark mood has overtaken me. Very. Dark.

Today after a little sleep, I roused myself to go out and pick up a few supplies to make a one off fairly special curry. This time I did not walk around the grocery store with a death grip. Very little pain this time.

But something different.

Anxiety.

I was afraid of being out.

My health hovered in a kind of ok, but just on the tipping point of kicking off. Like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Damocles sword hovering above your head suspended by a single hair.

I felt jumpy. Anxious. Not altogether well, like a badly put together jigsaw puzzle. Functioning, doing things, but something fundamental was terribly wrong.

I didn't make a long job of it. Making a long job of anything these days is A Mistake. Keep it short.

But even so, by the time I was finished, my health was deciding that it was surely time to start shitting the bed. My nausea had been slowly increasing. I could feel my thoughts slide away in that oh so familiar way, replaced instead by pure instinct of getting through the next 30 seconds. The borderlands of that level of ill where you can no longer idly think, and instead everything focuses around coping.

Got home. Packed the groceries. Headed for bed.

I rested. In a quarter doze. Awake. But not entirely. Slowly, mechanically, ate lunch I had picked up. Fruit juice with vitamins. Some loose fruit, pineapple and mango. And some chicken sushi.

After a while I felt a bit better again. I decided to marinate the chicken I had bought. It needed marinating. So I did that. I had bought a bucket load of chicken - not by intent, an enormous pack of chicken thighs was at a dirt cheap price, with a single day of life left in them. So I got them. Probably a mistake. I ended up with an enormous mixing bowl full of marinating chicken.

I decided to go out again. I needed to pick up a couple of things from a DIY store. A container. A hand truck to move things.

I was deeply anxious about it.

I cannot contemplate stepping out of the house without becoming anxious.

I went. Got my things. Low level anxiety riding me all the way.

A slow realisation on the way back.

This whole journey of horrendous health I am going through. The hammer blows of loss. And hopelessness. There are two aspects of it. The first. Is coping in the moment. Keep on your feet. Can you make it through the wind and the rain and keep standing ? I couldn't tell you how. Or that it was likely. But I have done that. So far. But there is a second aspect to it. The long term cost. I can do that. And cope. And keep standing despite all the shit. But it exacts a cost. It erodes me. Deletes me. Bit by bit. Confidence drains. Personality drains. I become instead some fucked up sum of illness and grief and stress. Some weird twisted little due, anxious in sunlight. Horribly dysfunctional. Twitching.

As I pulled up outside home. I considered warning people in future to treat me like I had shellshock. I paused. Shellshock. An old school word. They call that post traumatic stress disorder now. I paused again. You are describing trauma Johnny. You have been traumatised. All this shit. This year in particular. Has traumatised you. It has gone past the point of strength in the moment. To a lasting wound. Another one.

Oh.

It was a sobering realisation. And really, obviously, no doubt at all, true.

This is the cost. PTSD. On paper. It makes sense. Of course it does. You can plot the points from A to B to C. Oh yes. Well duh.

My mood has lowered.

Whilst I was out the second time, I got a glance of myself in a mirror. Old. Ill looking. A mess. Fat.

It was not good.

My mood shifted lower.

I sent a message to Hazel having not heard from her. As I was more on her side of the city, did she want me to pop by for a visit. My anxiety crawled. I am drowning in my own life. Let alone swimming to help Hazel. But. Instinct. I offered.

She was doing better she said - implying she had not been. And that I didn't have to pop by. But I could if I wanted.

I opted to go home instead.

Because I am drowning myself.

Had I been feeling better - and by that, I mean at this point, a point in time of more than a year ago ( which saying that, is already mind blowing... it has been more than a year since.. the shit has not continually been hitting the fan... December was the start of Athena going downhill )

I got back home.

Anxious. Buzzing with that I'm not well feeling. The jumble of badly put together pieces.

I have entirely lost my way.

I no longer can properly cope in the world. At all. With work. With anything.

It is I think walking for too long in this purgatory I find myself in. Traumatised to fuck.

It is to do with losing Athena. It is also that process of dying myself. I imagined I would not exist after Athena. Here I still stand. But I have eroded so enormously. Huge bits of me have died. I no longer go out. I no longer walk in the beautiful green. I no longer chatter at home. Everything is quiet. My health this year has deterioated dramatically.

I am still here.

But I am a fraction of what I was. In all senses. In a way. The bit that is left of me is some stubborn bit that has not ended itself. Everything else has already left the party. Why. Haven't you ended it all ? It's just the lights to switch off at this point my dude ?

I can see clearly the shadow I have become. Yesterday. Was revealing of it.

There is another realisation.

This is not temporary. This is not some low point to recover from.

This is where you are. The path only winds lower from this point.

All of this.

Has lowered my mood to almost the floor. The bottom of the abyss.

The ghost of suicide sits right beside me. Quiet. But present. Not yet inescapable. But looming.

I can rest. I can sleep. I slept for some 11 hours after getting in the second time. But it is not recuperative. It is a holding pattern of my dysfunctional existence.

I miss Athena.

And as predicted.

She has gone. And the wheels have fallen off the wobbly cart of my life.

Just waiting for the final shoe to drop and the curtain to close.

Addendum.

It has occurred to me that Hazel might be having a mini meltdown. I have probably made a mistake with her. I should probably have supported her better. On consideration I think she might be having a full blown anxiety meltdown about Poppy. Understandable. It still doesn't correct the bad choices she has made. But. Yeah. It feels like I have made a mistake. I will, I think, reassure her, I can cover her costs for Poppy. Regardless of all the other considerations. 

So true that it hurts