Apr 18

 Where to start.

Things are, of course, difficult.

Difficult is an understatement. Let me define that a bit better.

Every. Single. Day. I encounter severe issues where I cannot function. I have to lie down. Sleep. Tap out. There isn't a choice in there. It's do that or collapse.

Some days it swallows near enough the whole day. What do I mean by that. I mean that aside from maybe an hour or so of semi functionality, which is to say, I can get up, get a cup of tea, go to the bathroom, maybe grab something to eat, maybe watch something on TV, I am out of it. Asleep. "Asleep". Lapsing in and out of consciousness in bed.

Some days, better ones, I can stick in the land of the living for a lot of the day. With only, "only", 4 or 5 hours of downtime outside of a "normal" sleep period. A "normal" sleep period for me varies between something like 6 hours ( very rare ), all the way up to 20 hours ( uncommon overall but goes in distinct phases where that is normal for extended periods of time ).

My "down time" is punctuated by a slew of crazy symptoms where everything gets dialled up to 11. Pains. Epic breath stealing pains. A combination of knifing pain - not pin point, but literally like a wide bladed knife sinking into muscles - and a deep bruise feeling kind of ache. Like the worst bruise you've ever had that squeals to the slightest touch, radiates, and encompasses a wide area. This peaks so bad that it makes me cry out in pain whether I like it or not. Like being punched.

Deep exhaustion. Super. Deep. Brain fog. Grogginess. Exceptional muscle fatigue where your limbs feel like leaden concrete. Moving is very tough. Concentrating is beyond impossible. The world lags. The world spins. And bizarrely it feels like my eyes suck into the back of my head. There is a sensation at my eyes of reverse pressure, like someone is pushing your eyes back into your skull. And they feel awful. Super tired. Super scratchy. Like sand has been poured in them. And it's not just a feeling. My eyes black up. They look bruised like someone has given me a pair of black eyes. Rings of bruising radiate out around my eye sockets. You can see the lines like tide marks. And it's obvious where they get to, somewhere just above my cheek bones in a line that follows my eye socket but further out. At its worst this can feel like being a mile under water. It can feel impossible to wake up. Like wading through treacle. Like having sleep paralysis. A metric tonne of rock lying on top of you. And an awful horrible sucking exhaustion pulling your eyes backwards.

Nausea. Anything from a mild sea sick, to a curl into a ball roiling can't think feeling of illness. Bloating and intestinal discomfort. Over full. Over stuffed. Pains that go from dull aches to sudden stabs. Too much gas. Rolling over you can literally hear the problems in there, as everything gurgles and bubbles for a minute or two in response to you shifting gravity. You can time it on a watch. Roll over. Wait, 8,9,10. Burble gurgle, glub glub, for the next couple of minutes.

Blips. The blips. Like falling into an ice cold bath. BLIP. What the. Hello. BLIP. And the reverse. Blipping out. You jerk out of dozing or sleep because everything just went deathly quiet. I mean. Deathly. There is a panic drop. A gasp for air. Something very wrong just happened. These ones especially are scary in an animal response kind of way. These feel like death just walked over your grave, that you just stopped for a second or ten, and then your body kicked back on like, yikes ! Wake up ! Not yet ! I am not sure if this is exactly what they are. They are me sputtering out. And then back on again. It would really really not surprise me because of how much stress my system is under.

Zaps. A bit like the blips. But not. These are like having the sound suddenly turned up to 11 for a split second then put back down to normal. Like an annoying person flicks the volume on to max and then down to normal for less than a second. But it's jarring. And awful. And it's everything. Not a volume thing. It's visual. Audio. It isn't literally a volume up then down thing. It's a ... feeling of that. I am somewhat sure that this is actually micro disconnects in sensory processing / awareness. Effectively your brain for a split second pauses or disconnects from the stream of input, audio, visual, thinking, and then switches it back on and there is like a bump in acceleration. Like if you're standing on a train and it moves, you shift backwards. And when it stops you lurch forwards. It's exactly like that in fact. A lurch. And I suspect it's the brain basically switching off for a split second. This is, I think, serotonin related as it gets better or worse if you are fucking with your serotonin levels via medication. There is some widespread acknowledgement of this with regards to the effect and anti depressants ( like this - https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/brain-zaps#causes ). The exact causes going on are unknown, my guess above - the micro disconnects - feels to me correct ( having had it more times than you can shake a stick at ). And it's not just an anti depressant thing. I think anti depressants tickle the physiological thing thats going on there to make them more prevalent, but there's something underlying there, meds or no.

Heart blips. Flutters. Stops. Thud.... THUD. Thud, thud, thud......... THUD. Also fast sudden stabs of pain. As quick as a click of your fingers. Intense. Pin point. Oof.

"Stiffness". A weight across your shoulders, around your neck. Your your neck. Aching upper arm. Like a squeezing pressure. And everything becomes heavy and sluggish around there. I am 99% sure this is cardio. Heart distress. It happens infrequently, but can be serious. Sometimes it happens in bouts. Sometimes it pops up once in a while. More likely to happen if I've eaten something heavy ( which makes perfect sense as the cardio has to work harder at those points ). I can sometimes recreate it from. It is repeatable. Eat something heavy. Then try moving about quite a bit. Guaranteed to run into that squeezing wall. This is why I think it's 99% cardio. Can't keep up. You get a warning shot across your bows.

Spasms. I get this a lot. Involuntary muscle spasms. Usually when asleep. Or trying to get to sleep. Or. I am in a "distressed" state. I don't mean emotionally. I mean when I am suffering. There is a background "left side twitch" which can bubble sometimes almost imperceptibly, tiny tiny, micro movements all the way up to noticeable twitches. If I am relaxed, not suffering they go away. Ish. This also chimes with the left side "tingles". The worst of this is in my face. Starting in my left eyebrow like a tickle, an ant marching over your skin, many ants, then if it gets worse, down the side of your face, around the eye socket, down the cheek bone. Even worse the whole left hand side of the face - but that level is extremely rare for me these days, that at least, seems to have got better. But the left side tingle is always a thing. It comes and goes from zero to annoying tingling itch. The sleep spasms can be bad. These are absolutely the strongest spasms. I can jerk quite violently. Sometimes pulling me completely out of sleep into full waking - usually because the jerk has just touched off those excruciating muscle pain problems. You spasm. The muscles move, you suddenly inflame that pain point. Straight out of sleep with a scream of pain. Marvellous. Also, spasm wise, and this is very frequent, the restless legs. Which have got much worse in the last year or so. Twitching, itching, electric legs. Both legs. This is a known thing. And something that I have inherited from my mom. Interestingly they can chime with the rest of it though. Nerve issues. Same thing as that. The numb hands. The numb arms. Interestingly ever since one of the better docs asked a very pertinent question of, is it your whole hand(s) or just some fingers, I can say it's NOT the whole hand - my pinky finger gets away scot free, the rest of them not so much. Which kinda does start to rule out ( I think ) vascular problems and point instead towards nerve problems. It was a good observation. Everytime I get it now I check. All fingers ? No. Huh. Ok.

Tinnitus. Intensity comes and goes. Ever present. Left side. Gets screechingly worse when I am suffering. Takes a step back when I am feeling better. Can sometimes go hand in hand with left side face tingles. Worringly it has started creeping over to the right side sometimes now. At its worst the tinnitus can drown out everything on a TV. Interestingly tinnitus intensity can also easily be triggered by moving my jaw in a certain way. I can guarantee a high tinnitus spike by putting my jaw in a certain position. Maximum whine. Also interestingly if I hold that maximum whine jaw position, after letting it go the tinnitus is better for a short period of time. I highly suspect this is the brain dampening down the "shit signal". According to an auditory expert I have spoken to, the brain absolutely does this and can raise or lower the relative volume of incoming signals. Hence one of the things to try with tinnitus is exposing yourself to loud noises - it causes the brain to turn your volume down. Ironically, living somewhere quiet causes it to turn the volume up. And just like a radio, the higher the volume, the increasing level of white noise you get. I do live somewhere very quiet which may not help. Hilariously.

General brain fog and exhaustion. This is evident when I'm not sleeping. I can hilariously wind down like a broken toy running out of clockwork energy. My voice croaks. Breaks. I get slower. And slower. The fog creeps in. I slump. I start to have trouble keeping up with things said to me. I start to slide out of consciousness very slowly, whether I like it or not ! Fascinating. Also really shit. Sometimes a bit of food will turn this entirely around. And sometimes it does fuck all. Sleep is always the answer. Regardless of how much sleep you've had already - even if its 20 hours and you've only just got up. Sleep is the answer. Which if you're sleeping all day is frustratingly shit.

 Mental problems.

All of the above does not lead to mental well being. It is. Challenging. And then you add on top of that, or beneath that, or whatever, my mental health can be sketchy anyway. I am not going to go into the reasons for that, but I think I have a pretty good handle on them. In any case. The result is serious mental health blips. Suicidal ideation. Spiralling. Mania. Mood swings. And long term. A slow changing of personality. Long term going nuts.
Anxiety all round. General anxiety - a feeling of dread, fear of doing anything. At its worst, fearing leaving the house. Putting a foot outside the door. Scary. You don't want to do it. But also. Anxiety responses of being startled and trauma response from sudden sensory input. Like a neighbour opening a backdoor. Any sudden noise. There is an immediate fear response, stomach drops, adrenaline dump, anxiety. Skittish. To say the least.
Intense sadness with it all. At times it gets on top of me. And I absolutely despair in realtime about my predicament. The ground opens up and I feel so exceptionally sad. And I will cry. At random. Feeling like shit. I will cry about how shit it is. Feeling sorry for myself. Not, it has to be said to not be a dick to myself, unreasonably so. I think it's more than ok that I do fucking feel sorry for myself at times with all the shit going on. It seems. REASONABLE. To be sad. That you are suffering a lot. My inner critic does tend to keep quiet on that one. Yes. Ok. Fair point. I wont kick you for feeling sad. Agreed. It's sad. Thank you Mr fucking Picky Over Critical Asshole.

Eh.

Meh.

I didn't intend to post a list of things. And I'm pretty sure that's not all of it. Just all that comes to mind.

Anyway.

It's difficult.

LOL.

Difficult. It sounds so... simple.

Just chuck it in a conversation. Oh yes. Life is difficult at the moment. Have you seen the weather ?

Ho. Fucking. Ho.

Sigh.

I am struggling to eke out any existence at the moment. Twilight stuff.

I guess in better news I did actually perk up enough on Wednesday to do, just about, if you squint, a full days work. And a high level one at that. Much crunching. Shocking. Tuesday. Yeah. Not so much.

Work is being nice to me though.

I cannot fault Andy. I cannot fault anyone really. Those that know. And interact with me. Treat me nicely. Carefully. They are being thoughtful about it. In a brutal dog eat dog world, they don't have to be. So I am thankful for that. Grateful for that. Work is definitely making exceptions for me. The vast majority of people don't get that kind of treatment. So. It's good. "Good". I mean. Nothing about it is good. But work isn't being an extra asshole problem to me. Mostly, hilariously, it's ME being an asshole to me. Because I don't think I'm worth it. Or valuable enough. And yada. I am, uneasy to say the least, with just how much shitter I now am. Incapable. That being said. It's not a sliding scale, but more of a flicking on and off of the switch. I can still do some very high level very effective bits of work. That others struggle to do, or even begin to do. And I can nail it and clock it out of the park. My problem then is. I flake out. And fizz out. Can't maintain. No guarantee of uptime. Yada. Not good. Plus. My days of being able to maintain for hours and hours upon end. 12. 18. 36. Are hilariously long gone. I am lucky if I can maintain for 8. That's an amazing achievement. Let alone pulling all nighters. Typically I am doing pretty well if I can maintain for 4. And then have to have a nap. And come back to it. Or not.

The thing I really wanted to talk about today was two things.

One.

How important at times this blog is to me. I can scream into the void. 95% uncensored. I am aware. As its public. That maybe sometimes I should curb my words. But, it's rare. And mostly I ignore it. And it's not like anyone reads this. Albeit. You always have to consider that anything public, even in some sleepy corner, is 5 seconds away from some bizarre widespread reveal and sudden international outrage or delight pile on. Such is modern fucked up society. 

But at risk of revealing too much, and people being pissed off, or outraged, or whatever. This place pretty much reflects my inner dialogue. It is. Honest. With a capital H. Which I know, these days, is absolutely wild. Honesty these days, intellectual honesty, is like some mythical fucking beast akin to unicorns. 

That level of open honesty has a bunch of caveats of course. IE. You don't typically get to hear peoples internal dialogues in normal social discourse and the actual reality of what someones thinking can be alarming or a lot to deal with if you aren't well versed in.. eh... a lot of thinking and philosophy and psychology and blah. Basically. A lot of education. 

People are used to dealing with a veneer of politeness. A filter on crazy. A censor on truth. Ironically. People like living in a state of dishonesty. It makes things a lot easier ( I am not denigrating this, just stating it as a fact. There are good reasons for somethings to be hidden, or lies to be told, not all deceits are evil in nature, consider lying to kids about Christmas, or letting people go in peace rather than crushingly brutal reality that would not serve any purpose ). 

I think, for the most part, I have no ill will in me. Ish. I'm human. I am imperfect. I can get pissed off like anyone. But I don't go round with an axe to grind on people. I am not. An asshole. I think. So. My inner dialogue is not full of secret desires to start up the next authoritarian jackboot empire or other not entirely uncommon negative thought patterns. I went off on a tangent here listing the whys and wherefore. Meh. Unnecessary. Jeez. 90% of what I say is unnecessary. Ah ha ha. Anyway.

Getting my thoughts out here is important.

I mean. The shrinks always bang on about it.

Keep a journal they say.

Write a diary.

Write it down then burn it. But get it down.

Why do they say that ?

To me, it always comes across as quite vibey. Not science. More voodoo. Hell, you can, from some angles, declare the entirety of psychology to be vibe based and unscientific ( it's detractors say exactly this ). I can't say I agree. Psychology IS vibe based for sure, but it's also trying to do science in an area where your hands are very tied to what you can reliably test. Everything is a swamp of variables and unreliability. As if physics was performed in a reality where no test result or measurement ever came out the same way twice. Of course any one thats done even slightly half assed science work knows that this is actually a lot closer to the hilarious reality than not. The joke always is you can never actually quite repeat the results.

But anyway. Jesus. Tangent.

Writing stuff down. Or talking about it. Feels unscientific. Stupid even. Like someone telling you to drink a nice herbal tea to combat <insert any ailment here>. I mean. Nice sentiment. Absolutely zero fucking basis in reality. Are we vibing. Or trying to legitimately solve problems ? No problems with vibing. But just dont mistake it for being able to build bridges.

However.

As it turns out. And I don't think this gets properly explained enough for the skeptic semi autistic logic monsters in the crowd ( uh, me ), this shit does work, and it is doing something it's not just a vibe. Because it pushes all those thoughts and feelings through a different bit of your brain.

Thinking something through in your head. Or just bouncing around with it in your skull.

Is very different from properly composing it into a string of communication and spitting it out.

Not just the exercise of it.

But the bits of brain you need to do that. The very different physical circuits. 

Consider it this way.

On a network of roads.

Having to get a message to point D. Goes along an entirely different set of roads from when it just has to get to point B.

And in the doing of that. The going to point D. Something about it fundamentally changes.

Like anything in life. Everything you do has an impact on you.

If you decide to spend 2 weeks in Africa. That has an impact on you. Positive. Negative. Experiences. Understanding.

You are not the same person you were after visiting somewhere compared to who you were before. Things. Change. Just because of the journey. The doing.

And writing shit down. Or communicating that. Is internally. Physically. In your brain. A journey. It also makes you think about it in different ways. From an outside point of view. Inside. All sorts. As well as that very important bit of shoving it through a different physical part of you.

I can't emphasise that enough.

The difference between reading a script to yourself. And then switching a radio on and transmitting that script out. The radio is a different piece of equipment. It might be better or worse than your own reading voice. It suddenly adds in a whole different thing, different variables, changes the message, changes the process.

And so.

As it turns out.

There is something about writing shit down that changes it in your brain. At least it does for me. And judging from what others say, do, and shrinks encourage. It does it for others too.

There is some quirk in our thought process. Some weird trigger. That changes thoughts when they have to be communicated. I would take a guess that it's something to do with socialising. And us being social animals. And that line between purely internal and, I need to communicate intent to Bob over there. Writing shit down turns it from purely internal to a communicate intent. Even if. And here's the kicker. There is no one there. No one to communicate intent to. Doesn't matter. The brain has to treat it like there is and has to format it for that purpose. And in the doing so...

subtle changes are made.

There is a very well known cathartic property to "getting something off your chest". This isn't an unknown phenomenon.

For whatever reason, the world is different - to our senses - when we are forced to communicate. It rehashes, rewires, reformats a set of ideas. And in general. Provides a relief to whatever bullshit pressures we are under these days.

Not always true.

But often true.

It's one of those fascinating little, huh, why is that then, I have no clue, aspects of being human. All the more fascinating because its an internal non visible one, a meta level product of a conscious mind. And such things are typically hidden in a layer of abstraction and murk. But here. You can test it. Get a result. Huh. That works. How interesting.

Wow.

What an endless waffle.

My second point.

Two.

I am starting to lose my mind. Who I am. My personality.

I am melting into some dysfunctional, permanently ill, permanently traumatised warped version of myself. Bits of me are falling away. Other bits are getting set in stone. Stuck. In an awful pose.

I am self aware enough to notice it happening.

It is not good. At all.

But it is I think inevitable.

It is something I have seen in many people I know around me. A slow accretion, narrowing of mind, of view, of possibility of purpose.

I first saw this in action years ago when I Was a lot younger. And saw my peer group, my friends, slowly become ever more stuck in their ways. They went from being open minded, adaptable friends and people I knew and thought would always be like that, to people who got stuck. Were left behind. Couldn't get past things. It was. A real loss at the time. That the people I knew. Were slipping away from me. It was also my first lesson in how people change. And that the people you once knew. Liked. Loved. Could disappear. For good. Not physically. Physically they were still there. But the person you knew, was gone. And just like someone dying. There was loss there. Grief. Of course. It's not rocket science. People change. All the time. From kids to adults. No one is the same person they were as a kid to when they are an adult. But beyond that super obvious change, people change all the time anyway. And. Often I find. Not for the better. I don't mean that in a nasty way. Just that. The world has a bad habit of knocking people. Grinding them down. Burning out their joy and happiness. I think. It is perhaps no different to the car analogy. A car with 100,000 miles on its clock is a whole different animal to one with 5 miles on it. You pick up damage over time. Scars. Problems. It is inevitable. It is life. But. It seems to me that where life could go in a number of directions. Instill in you ever more happiness. Or wisdom. Or peace. What life actually does is negative. It grinds you down, scars you, leaves you with traumas to deal with.

For me. Look. I love all kinds of people. You can strongly argue I love fucked up people more than anyone else. But. As it turns out. Watching someone I know turn from happy to sad. From open minded to closed. From innocent to cynical. I find sad. I miss the happier person. I miss the more open minded person. There is in there an inherent bias for me. As much as I love fucked up people. And accept them. I love the less fucked up versions of themselves that there are. 

Perhaps in the end this is just a fancy way of saying I miss innocence. I miss simpler things. And more carefree minds. I miss - in some ways - being a kid. And having kids as friends. Of course thats an enormous simplification, because as an adult, to be hilariously mean, kids are a pain in the ass. Ho ho. But that sense of innocent delight is not a pain in the ass.

I don't know. Maybe it's not just a kid thing. I think I appreciate people as adults who can be like that. Although. Yeah. Fuck that. I don't know any adult like that. They all carry scars. It is. The nature of the beast.

In any case.

Back to me.

Losing my mind.

I have for the longest time not succumbed to the same shit I see going on around me. Particulary dysfunction wise. I can see how people get stuck. Or fucked in the head.

But now. I too am there. I can see. Incredibly stuck. Dysfunctional. And. Like a fast collapsing star, not only have I succumbed to it, I think I have accelerated and in many ways overtaken my peers and am now worse.

I can feel bits of me solidifying. All round. From behaviour. To sadness. To thoughts. Stuck. Fixed. Accreting. Whatever it was I once was has burned away. Is burning away. It was, of course, always inevitable. I am not like some alien species. But. It's one of those human things I think. Where we imagine that couldn't possibly happen to me. Except of course. It does.

In my defence. I think for the most part my deterioration is down to my ailing health. It is a bridge too far in challenges. And a war I am not winning. And it has ground me down. And pushed me to a point where all that other shit also can start to kick in. I think without the shit health. I would be doing a whole lot better with that stuff. But even so. I can still tell that age and habit has had subtle warping effects on me.

I think being human in a way is like flexibility.

You start flexible and lithe. Move this way and that. And then over time. It gets harder and harder to move. Until one day. You are stuck in a position. Like a statue. And that is then you. Forever more. Stuck. Literally. In your ways.

A very slow medusa effect. Flesh to stone. Stuck. In your final shitty inflexible, unable to adapt ways. 

I think this is why the older you get the more people fear what it is new. Because they cant move to adapt to it. Stuck. Like a statue. But suddenly finding the sun has moved, they are now in the shade. And they hate that it has had to change, the sun has shifted, and their formed sun dappled place has fallen into shadow. Fear and shout at the change.

It makes sense. And is a legitimate fear. One that is often just mocked by those that can still move and follow the sun. Just get up and move ! Duh. Such a statue. Ugh.

Anyway.

I am losing my mind.

Not just a changing of who I am.

But bits of me are peeling off.

I am doubtful of things I do and write.

I go back. And I moodswing. Idiot. IDIOT.

I lapse into too long explanations ( like this ! ). I get lost in so much accrued information. How to communicate one tenth of it.

I am lost in grief and loss and suffering. Everything around me is indelibly coloured by it. Rose tinted glasses. Grief tinted glasses.

I am aware it sticks me into one subjective pose. That statue. Immobile. Stuck. In agony. Unable to move to the sunlight anymore.

But it's also that onslaught on my mental health. Increasingly skittish. Anxious. Fucked up. Crazy. It is. Of course. A casualty of the war. You cannot fight an endless brutal war without picking up scars, losing limbs. Trauma. My trauma is warping me. Permanently. I cannot stop the trauma. It is an ongoing avalanche. And its burying me.

At some point. I think I might lose it enough that I can no longer reliably be communicated with. I will be. Weird. Well. Weirder than I am now. Crazy. Licking the paint off the walls and people around me forced into pretending they dont notice.

Sigh.

It is.

Inevitable.

I cannot dance the dance I do. I cannot fight the wars I do. Without there being consequence.

It is life. It is what it is.

I am sad that it does that to me.

I am. Again. Sad. About the slow loss of who I used to be. To the fucked up trauma monkey I now am.

And I am aware enough. That I can see it happening to myself. I am aware of the deterioration. Unusual. People often can't see it in themselves. I see it in me.

Just another sadness to stack on the pile of sadnesses.

Another reason, like I needed anymore, to want to push the off button.

Enough.

For christs sake.

Just turn out the lights.

This game sucks !