Apr 30

 Hmm.

Work has come and gone, and for at least half of it I was upright and productive. I've had far far worse work weeks than this one and of late, few that have been better. So. I guess. That's something. I have been up on time, not languishing in some awful eternal sleep, and, have stayed awake for most of the day, a nap here and there. Work is no longer easy for me. The work itself is easy. Dealing with my bullshit is the not easy bit.

Nausea. In general all the stomach issues and nausea has ever so slowly continued to edge down. I thought I was kind of through the worst of it until yesterday I felt sick during the evening, and the following morning felt sick as a dog. As it happened I needed to get to the docs bright and early for a blood test. I went there feeling absolutely shit. The nurse looked twice at me. I saw it. As clear as day. Oh. You don't look very good. She didn't say anything. But I saw the body language flinch. One of my shitty superpowers. Reading people. Hypervigilance. Cascading data always logging. Every micro shift. Noted.

I decided to try out the anti nausea meds they have given me. I am super unimpressed about just getting meds to cover up a really fucky symptom that should be ignored, but, I felt like shit. So. Ok. As it turns out they are just strong anti histamines. This figures. I had already in the past been taking anti histamines on and off to help with stomach issues and also because they sometimes do make me feel generally better - remembering that there was some evidence out there that regimes of anti histamines had been reported to help some - but not all - of those suffering from long covid. So the fact the docs prescribed me strong anti histamines for nausea makes sense. I was, in my own way, already there.

Johnny is not stupid.

I took the meds without much expectation of them doing shit. But. Whether it was coincidental or they did actually do something, the bad nausea subsided soon after and left me feeling much better.

Huh.

Ok.

Interesting.

By that evening I was feeling much better. A bit of a high. Ok. Interesting. 

As I went to bed I could feel the nausea beginning to stir, a faint queasiness, so I took another med - you can take them up to three times a day, and went to sleep.

Eh.

Meh.

Anti histamines have a habit of fucking me up when I sleep. Not always. But often. They push me deeper. Into that quagmire of groggy brain fog, terrible feeling. I woke up the following morning from a pit of ooze. Not the worst I've ever had by a long shot. But super not cool. It took me a few hours to shake off the shit and be something approaching alert.

So.

My health continues to be variable. But it is better than it has been. On average. It peaks and troughs throughout a 24 hour cycle.

I have mostly maintained my careful diet watching. I have avoided bready things until a day ago, when I have lapsed and binged a bunch of bread - to no real ill effect. But I've been eating my yoghurts in the morning - a very very low slow food start to a day, but crucially not zero. Just a little. It seems to help a bit. And taking vitamins and probiotics and blah.

It's hard to see the wood for the trees. But something is doing a bit better.

I doubt it will last. And it's not great as it stands. But it's better than being entirely bedridden.

I even managed to do two lots of washing today, pottering through the kitchen on breaks from work. So. Uh huh. A bit better.

Today I went for a very short walk to the top of my road - I am literally not getting out again. I walked slowly up the road, the weather already warm and summer like. And I felt so out of place in the world. A hundred memories crowded in. Of walking dogs. Of other peoples dogs - also now long gone. Of times past. Everything. Everything. Is viewed in the past for me. I cannot break out of it. I am entirely haunted by ghosts. There is no present. Only the shadows of the past.

For the millionth time I missed my babies. I missed who I was. I missed what I had lost.

This is me.

Stuck. In a loop. Grieving for a past. No future to look forward to. Just a day at a time of survival.

I have no interest in things. Nor people. Nor places. Hollowed out. Depression. The shrinks would say. Maybe. I don't know. It feels like a rational response to my situation. Not everything is sunshine and rainbows. Things can be shit. There can be hopeless situations. I sometimes think the shrinks and the strategies they lay out are sometimes maximally wishful thinking. Always looking for the positive amongst the shit. Don't get me wrong. They are right. 95% of the way. But I do think they tend to end up in some weird manic over positive desperation loop. Physician heal thyself. I don't think the mental health industry copes very well with a reality that is actually grim and hopeless. It prefers optimistic delusion. Which is definitely a strategy. I'm just not sure I entirely jive with it. I am a bit of a stickler for intellectual honesty. And some of that starts to feel... overly bright. And not particularly honest. It has I think, it's roots in the whole philosophy of life is always right, surviving is always right, look for the positives, no matter how thin, and soldier on. It is a relentless drum beat of always choosing life and facing away from a different solution of a peaceful end instead. It is. I think. Deep at its core. Twisted. But maybe I am the one who is twisted. Maybe life should always be accepted, no matter the cost. But then again, we seem to mete out death to other lifeforms that we think are better off. We just shy away from it ourselves. Smells like hypocrisy. Back to that intellectual dishonesty.

Anyway.

There are points in a day, a week, where I will collapse into sadness. If I let it. If I open that door a crack. If I don't watch points. A tidal wave of sad overcomes me. Awful .Terrible. I have never been this sad in my life. Never. It is a different beast to Plain Old Depression. This is much more. Sharp. And torturous. Depression I find is often dull and drawn out, and grey and mute. With troughs into suicidal ideation and sharp suffering. But the sad I feel these days. Is always sharp. Always too much. I don't know. I suppose it is grief. Still. Always. Ever. I suppose when you look at it, I have lost a lot in a very short period of time. Health, mutts, mom. One year to the next. In quick succession. Fuck you.

Today amongst my sadness, I wanted to go out. Sit on a beach. Feel the wind on my face. Just listen. But I didn't want to do it on my own. Couldn't face doing it on my own. It would be far too sad. And too many ghosts would come along with me. So. I didn't go anywhere. I just shoved it down. Ignored the feeling until it went away. Not good.

A while ago my brother reported on a brief bit of conversation with the old man. My dad had lamented to my brother that he never imagined life would be like this. He never imagined his life would end up being where he was. It was filled with sadness and despair. It is one of many of the things he had said and done which is just a cry for help. A person in pain with no way out. My dad does not live a good life. He carries on just out of.. I don't know. To not give up. To just keep repeating the same old thing. He has turned down medical care because "if you could see the life I lead, you wouldn't be trying to give me treatment". He very much wants it all to be over. But. Interestingly, despite many close calls in the past, has not chosen to commit suicide. He's just waiting. For it to finish. Ostensibly my dads life looks.. kind of ok. He has money in the bank - more money than he knows what to do with. His pensions give him more income than he can spend. He has a roof over his head. Food on the table. And freedom to do as he pleases.

And yet.

For all that.

His life is a horror. Isolated. Miserable. Locked in grief and depression.

It is not lost on me the parallels there between me and him. I don't suffer from his isolation - or at least, I haven't dug my own grave like he has in that respect. But in many other ways we are the same. Like father like son I guess.

I understand what hes saying. Even his darkest bits. I understand. Bone deep. He isn't wrong.

Hum ho.

Very slowly I am coming to terms with living a very small life. And that the good things - what there were - are in my past. The person I was, is in my past. I am different. Smaller. Quieter. Crushed. The spark has gone out. And slowly. I accept it.

What is the point of any of this ?

Madness.

We are all stuck in a pointless loop of bullshit. Heads buried in the sand. To avoid the inevitable.

We have evolved past a point of usefulness into mania instead. We are fermis paradox slowly unfolding. We just haven't realised it yet.