Aug 2

 I think a combination of sleep apnoea and CFS is driving me into the ground. I am doing my best - and to be frank overburning - to at times stay upright, but, I am slumping hard and suffering a lot.

Yesterday I dragged myself out to visit Hazel. Drop off a book. And whilst there I crashed. The final bit of energy gave out. My brain filled with fog. And I couldn't move. At one point I just fell asleep whilst Hazel was on a phone call.

The exhaustion is something else. It's hard to describe. For me personally, trying to compare it back to when I wasn't so fucked up, it's the equivalent of taking a point in time where I was the most tired I had ever been, where you get to that point where if you sit down you struggle to move again, but then, multiplying it out in some horrible way, where that exhaustion goes down to your very bones. I don't know how to describe it better than that. But you feel it. In every bone. It reaches deep down and feels like a dense weight AND some awful drain. Like something is sucking the soul out of you.

I suppose really, it's just beyond insane tiredness. Utter exhaustion.

At the moment. I am unaccepting of it. Apparently I am back into my angry, fuck you phase with it. I refuse to lie down with it. I refuse to gracefully accept rest. I am fighting against it and trying to squeeze in some games. Some TV. It's... not smart. But. I am sick of being knocked out all the time.

As is ever the case, I suppose at some point it's going to absolutely nail my ass to the wall, and I will have to accept it, give in, go right down to the bottom mood wise. And... rinse and repeat.

Ho hum.

Today I caught sight of a few pictures of Athena and Poppy. Both of them running around together. It is both beautiful and awful. And like some crazy properly insane mantra the words form, nothing lasts forever. Nothing lasts forever. Nothing lasts forever. Each iteration of it twisting the knife in harder. And I realise I must be some kind of insane. Screaming into the void that nothing lasts forever whilst tearing myself to pieces.

I think.

Ultimately.

Much of it boils down to that.

A big part of me. Is horrified at the passing of time. At the loss of things. I cannot accept it. And I see it for everything. I can see that clock, that loss in everything. Everything and everyone has a timer on them.

I don't know.

Very fucked.

Tilting at windmills Don Quixote style. Except my windmills are death, and time, and the universe itself. Raging against the cruelty of it all.

I read some stuff the other day, noting that some neurodivergent types, ADHD in particular, have their brains wired differently for emotions. Apparently they can experience them much more acutely, for longer, and they take a lot longer to "still".

This has made me ponder somewhat on my own debilitating levels of emotion about somethings. And how long it takes me to recover from major knocks. Like Athena. I can say it has taken more than a year to get even half a dose of calm about it. A long time. And when I think about it, it was the same with Ares. It takes me more than a year to come out of some real deep dark shit in the event of a major loss.

I know I am not alone in that.

But that doesn't mean to say it's typical either.

I have had this discussion with the shrink over the weeks. How I think the modern world trivialises and indeed avoids discussion about loss. There is more than a little avoidance on the issue. The shrink agrees with me. That there does indeed seem to be quite the downplay in grief. And, it's also noticeable in a historical context, where once upon a time it was not unknown for people to be in mourning for years. To forevermore dress a certain way. Or change personality. Grieving back in Ye Olde Days could sometimes be a life transforming event.

These days. We seem to have forgotten that. Swept it under the rug. Buck up. Soldier on. It seems to me an unhealthy avoidance of the actual value of things and what you lose when they are gone. A false desperate bravado.

Anyway.

Today I had some insight about how our abstracting pattern matching brains always jump to conclusions. And how that in some cases is immensely unhelpful. And also how that directly pertains to science, and stuff like psychology. Always getting hold of the wrong end of the stick basically. But I have let it drift into the ether.

The basic premise of it is that our brains are wired to make fast, just good enough approximations of any given situation. This has biological evolutionary origins. Your brain needs to make fast judgements about whether that shadow over there is a plant, a trick of the light, or a tiger about to eat you. It's not about accuracy. It's about making a decision quickly. And one that prioritises safety probabilities. This keeps you safe from being eaten by a Tiger.

However.

What it isn't so good at is correctly determining that that wasn't a Tiger after all, and all your decisions based on that are now bullshit.

This goes properly into the, when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And fitting narratives. Framing of problems.

We makes these fast approximations. If this. Then that. And for a lot of rough, just be safe considerations, it's good enough.

But long term. That can be wildly unhelpful. It can lead you to conclusions that are entirely wrong. You can see it in psychology. Framing of issues. Editing away the things that cause problems with the frame, and underscoring things that strengthen it. Everything becomes a game of subjective narrative building. Where rather than taking a truly objective look at things, instead, people tend to just hunt about cherry picking facts to back up their hastily made subjective narrative.

I think in a nutshell, this is human thinking, decision making and much of society.

Quick rough approximations that can be disastrous long term. That are fiercely defended, and slow to be rejected. And make an enemy from objective viewpoints and facts.

The lesson I think is to take a breath. Count to ten. And realise there are more ways to look at something than just one. And consider many options.

This is also, interestingly, a key tenet in CBT for depression.

Where a depressive person is most likely to grab onto the most pessimistic reasoning for a given situation and ignore the optimistic ones. That person ignored you because they hate you. As opposed to, maybe they were lost in thought. Or incredibly anxious about an emergency they were dealing with.

CBT teaches you to snap out of spiralling doom mongering.

It seems to me, that this is again that approximate, fast, defensive decision making in practice. Don't consider all the options. Just pick one. Quickly. That potentially keeps you safe. In the case of a depressive, that's one that already had factored in harm, that someone doesnt like you or somesuch, and now you need to protect yourself.

Long term of course, it's disastrous. And self re-inforcing.

Your "quick math" brain is doing you no favours. Your evolutionary evading of shadow tigers is causing you long term immense harm.

But then again. Evolution just wants you alive long enough to procreate. What happens after you bang someone doesnt matter. So short term solutions that are flawed in the long term are not bugs, they are features.