Mar 31

 Had a slightly better nausea day again yesterday. It largely stayed away and when it did show up it was more of the I don't feel right, too stuffed, mild nausea type shenanigans. So better. But still fairly shit.

So I had a little more energy yesterday. I actually made a simple roast dinner for the first time in.. since Christmas ( so what's that average out at, a roast dinner 4 times a year ? ho ho ). I also fiddled some more with the waste pipe situation. It turns out I've fixed the original problem, but a new/old problem has surfaced with the old pipes. At this point I think it needs to be pulled out and redone entirely. Which I absolutely don't have the energy for, so, will probably need a plumber. The leaky problem is way better than it was - to the extent it's usable - but it's something that should be properly sorted. I'm kinda pleased I fixed the original problem. Big tick. But then as is this way with cranky old shit that hasn't been touched for 30 years, you pull at a thread, and it all starts to unravel. I think most of this house falls under that category. The joys of living in a more than 100 years old house.

Today.

Today the mental health has decided to throw all its toys out of the pram and take center stage. For no good reason.

So. Talking about my chronic illness. Or mental health. Can often be an exhausting experience for me. Not because I am fed up of having the same fucking topic 24/7 ( I am ), but because what you're often doing is just either fighting doubt, ignorance, unwittingly wildly unhelpful behaviour in people, or you're just having to outright educate someone. Which hilariously ends up as you, someone in need of aid, in a position of giving fucking aid to everyone else.

Often the way.

Horribly toxic irony. 

There are common milestones for this. Such as. Have you just tried cheering up. All you need is some fresh air. I think you just like being miserable. The last one in particular is a doozy. Something a friend - no longer a friend - of mine once said to me. He wasn't trying to be mean. But hilariously insensitive, insulting and wildly ignorant.

Anyway.

This is often why meeting people who suffer similar things, or at least have a good experience of what it's like to suffer some of the time, most of the time, all of the time, is a good thing. Because you typically don't have to go through the usual absolute bullshit of getting some fucking idiot up to speed. They've lived it. So they instantly empathise. And. If they've suffered with it for any length of significant time, it's quite possible they've also done their homework in their own journey trying to grapple with their problems. So they come to the table with a lot of knowledge and experience in hand.

Where often with normies, by the time you're even half way getting them up to speed about no it's not that simple, and yes this is a problem, and no that's not how that works, they can't be bothered. Too hard. Too tricky. Attention wavers. Like the bored kid at school at the back of the class picking their nose. So the entire conversation ends up a complete waste of time and energy. Because newsflash. Most people are not that smart. And almost all people are - surprise surprise - ill equipped to deal with such tricky problems. They are, just normal people. Who wouldn't know what a DSM manual was if it beat them to death. And like normal people have no fucking clue how to do open heart surgery, it turns out that, shockingly, normal people are also fucking terrible at being able to sort out mental health problems or chronic illness things. The conceit of course is that most people initially think that this stuff is easy, not a problem, the thought of having correct training or education doesn't even occur to them, and it's just a case of <insert moronic thing they just thought of, like getting some fresh air>. The notion that the field of mental health or any iffy chronic illness actually has decades of scientific work put into it, research, education, training, and that to be really good in the field can take literally years of study is lost to them. Mate. All you need is a hearty dinner. That will sort you right out.

People. Are imbeciles. Even when trying to have good intentions. Imbeciles. The road to hell being paved with good intentions.

Ok. Bit of a rant there.

So this situation in my experience gets delightfully even worse when you get to having mental health problems and you suffer from some chronic illness or other, bonus points for a vague chronic illness, like fibromyalgia ( bullshit term for, we can see you're in pain but have no fucking clue why, or CFS ( bullshit term for, we can see you're exhausted and ill, but we have no fucking clue why ).

When these two combine you get a new suite of wonderful ignorance to encounter. Are your physical ailments just imaginary in your head. Wonderful. Are you miserable because you're just not getting enough fucking vitamins. Do you suffer physically because you're just unhappy ?

Sigh.

Exhausting.

And so often just not fucking worth it. It's just not worth interacting with people that have no context for these things most of the time.  

What's worse is that general doctors, the marvel that is the clusterfuck of a GP, will often use mental health issues as a catch all for every single physical problem you have. Oh that's because you're nuts. Which. In the case of psychologists who then get these people referred to them is outright rejected. These people are not nuts. They have an issue which the GP doesn't want to deal with. Can't deal with. Won't confront their own ego and pride and maybe laziness about accepting they don't know or a problem will take more effort.

Because people are people. Even GPs. And subject to the same set of personality flaws everyone else does. GPs as a high knowledge, high intellect kind of profession suffer from higher rates of that oh so tricky, pride, ego and inability to accept not knowing kind of patronising toxic bullshit you can get in high achievers. Because they are conditioned to always have the answers. Conditioned into a space of being smarter than the average bear. And ill practiced at having to deal with failure, or humility in the face of not knowing. Better to just bluster over it, stick your nose in the air, and let pride trample across any obstacle. So much more soothing for the delicate soul of the prideful.

Wonderful.

 Another rant. Yeah. People suck. Humans suck. We are such an incredibly dumb ass species. Even by our own standards, once you properly hold ourselves up to the light. Yeah. That's not good. Not even consistent by your own standards. Boy do you suck Homo Moronicus.

Anyway.

Back to the point.

Wonderfully I have sprawling mental health problems at this point of my life, namely dysthymia ( I think ) spawning into hardcore depression ( diagnosed ) leaking into anxiety ( diagnosed ), panic attacks ( diagnosed ) and bouts of mania ( I think ), phobias ( diagnosed ), suicidal ideation ( diagnosed ) and on and on. In my experience, and thought process, it's like something of a flowering tree. It starts at a root and as time goes on it branches its limbs into ever more spaces and esoteric symptoms. The nail in the tyre. That makes the tyre go flat. Which wears out the hub. Which imbalances the drive train. Which makes the car always turn left. Which makes the steering squeal. And so on and so forth. The foot bones connected to the leg bone. The leg bones connected to the knee bone. As the song goes. One thing leads to another. See case in point. Trauma. One of the roots of so many issues that spreads its limbs into the air for outcomes of depression, violence, emotional dysregulation, suicide, abuse et al. Trauma. And it's often spawn abuse, can frequently be generational. One generation spreading their mental problems to the next. Like a contagion.

Back to the point again.

I also have some pretty fucking gnarly undiscovered country ( probably ? ) chronic illness issues that are just lumped so far into the category of CFS. Post viral syndrome. Highly suspected Long Covid.

So I get double doses of bullshit from people.

The experience is not just exhausting. It is harrowing.

Sometimes I think it's like watching someone drown, and whilst they are drowning, someone in a boat is offering advice like, have you tried not drowning ? You're just not swimming hard enough. Or. Why are you in the water in the first place ? You shouldn't be in the water. And whilst offering this advice sit there sipping a martini.

It is patronising. It is insulting. Oh. You're right. I should just try swimming fucking harder, of course I never thought of that myself ! You are a genius. It's also insulting of the war you've fought. The weeks, months, years of suffering that have shown you all sorts of horrible sights, that have given you terrible insights into how people work, how life works, you understand the frailty not just in yourself but everyone, the meanness of people, the weaponised ignorance. And someone comes along with their 5 second brain fart expecting to win the nobel prize. When what they've just done is ignore the fact you've been in the trenches for years fighting for your life in the blood and the mud.

Let them eat cake !

In other times, other places, people lose their heads for that kind of shitty unsympathetic behaviour.

The world would be a lot less populated if everyone that was a dickhead - unintentional or not - lost their head when talking about mental health or chronic illness things they have no business fucking venturing forth on.

Anyway.

Lots of ranting.

My final point.

The actual dance between my physical ill health and my mental health. They do interact. They do impact each other. If I'm having a terrible mental health day then my capability to cope goes down significantly When that goes down, I then have trouble dealing with the physical side of things that requires me to have a high degree of coping skills just to get through a day. So in a very real way. Mental collapse feeds the beast of physical collapse. And vice versa. If I am prolonged truly shit physically fucked. Then guess what. It starts to make you unhappy ! No shit sherlock. Depressed even !

The dance is a sympathetic one. One thing impacts the other, round and round they go.

For sure.

That being said.

What it is not.

No. It is not just a fucking mental health problem.

No. It is not just a fucking physical health problem.

I am pretty smart. I can be pretty objective. I am trained at being scientific. Methodical. Analytical. I have a horrible amount of experience with my issues. I can tell you that there are periods where each of these issues is a discrete problem.

I can be relatively stable mentally, and have a truly shit physical day. Not because I'm miserable. Or isolated. Or grief stricken. It can hit hard out of the blue. Drags me down. And I can fight it mentally. This is ok. We can do this. It's ok. And slowly it erodes that resilience until hopelessness creeps in.

And vice versa.

Sometimes I can be miserable. Grief stricken. Anxious. For no good reason. And it impacts hard. And it then starts to impact my physical health. Because I am not eating. Or not moving. And if I was physically healthy - it wouldn't be an issue. Hasn't been an issue in the distant past. But with a chronic illness that is always there, it just feeds the beast.

Because my capacity to do stuff is limited. I am permanently on the edge of critical failure, I have no wiggle room, there is no buffer. All of that energy and buffer is already engaged in trying to keep a lid on shit. Fighting off the physical ailment. Trying to keep a lid on the mentals. So upping the volume of any of this causes a tip over point which makes things worse.

But make no mistake.

For me, I have discrete problems going on. One physical. One mental. Yes they do interact. No they are not causal of the other. They absolutely don't help each other. They only ever make the other worse. But they are not the cause of the other. 

That nuanced point. The dance. The non causal separate instances. Can be very hard for others to grasp. It is yet another point of education, exhaustion and ignorance to overcome in others.

Sometimes the best way is just to say the obvious here. If you're feeling physically shit. It tends to make you emotionally shit. Yes ? Just about everyone gets that. Oh yes. I felt miserable with the flu. Right. But still. The context missed is then often the persistence of the issue. Because things change entirely when something goes from a, I just need to have a week to recover, to, its been 5 years and there is no recovery. Having no light at the end of the tunnel is a vastly different experience from having a light at the end of the tunnel. Even if - unlikely - the tunnel is the same. A tunnel without end is going to drive someone to despair, then crazy, then suicide. Unless there is some serious fighting and adaptation going on.

Anyway.

Point explained.

All of that bullshit. All of that waffle and ranting can be summarised very concisely.

Be understanding.

Be kind.

Listen.

Don't be a dick - easier to be than you think, particularly when you think you're helping. 

The default of listening, being kind and understanding covers you. Maybe there is a situation where you have the answer, and someone does not, and I'm just going to tell them to get some fresh air. But there's also plenty of places where you can think that. And be wrong. And end up being an asshole. Don't do that. Embrace the fact you don't know everything. That even when you think you know, you can be wrong. Embrace doing no harm. And instead listen. And understand. And perhaps only after a lot of thought. And experience. And attempting to walk in their shoes for a while. Have an opinion. If they are open to it. If they are seeking help.

Otherwise.

Just be supportive. And do your best.

It is nuanced. It is hard. It is not a simple black and white, just go for a walk, whats wrong with you, I've done my best, now I am annoyed at you because my simple stupid solution didn't work and clearly you must be doing it wrong. And people hate things that aren't black and white and take thought to navigate through. So much easier when it's just a switch. Left. Right. Flick. Done.

Sigh.

My mentals are not great today.

Anxiety has reared up for no good reason. A sense of doom hovers. Everything suddenly becomes problematic and scary.

Hopelessness has hit me hard today.

And grief.

And loss.

And isolation.

It is very much like, given a breathing space where my physical ills let the pressure up a little for a moment, my mental health issues take the opportunity to come to the fore and voice their gripes.

Right.

Now we're not feeling sick all the fucking time, I'd just like to say how anxious and miserable I am. Thank you.

Great.

Sigh.

I am not enjoying myself.

Once again I can only state I wish I had never been born.

Life blows.

And in the ironic same breath. I am online. Giving people a boost when they are down. Telling them how cool life can be. What amazing things they have to look forward to.

Both things can be true.

The damned do not travel on that same path with the happy look in their eyes of their more innocent companions. Once you've seen the fields of the dead, you can't unsee them.

Innocence is its own protection.