Jan 27

 4AM.

Sometimes. Around about here. Just a little earlier. Is the very worst bit of being alive.

It is the 3AM portal to hell. Or more popularly the "3AM vortex" in psychological terms. No. I am not making it up. But it's not just a psychological thing.

It's a combination of things. It is - typically - a low ebb in the rhythms of your body. The point of lowest blood pressure. The point of lowest cortisol. The point where your heart has its most variable patterns. Where your sympathetic system is lowest. Your immune system dips the lowest. Your body temperature cools to its lowest point.

In real terms this time of night correlates with a bump in the general populous of death. And incidents. And a peak of suicidal ideation. Most suicides happen around this time.

You might even say, for me, particularly, uniquely, it is my absolute nemesis point. Because a lot of the things that are not working in me, are working least well of all at around that 3am point. A whole slew of things line up. From shitty autonomic function. To worsening apnea. To plummet in psych state. All of my vulnerable points. Down to the minor ones of body temperature nudging bits here and there. But. I don't even need the real world data for this. I can tell you from experience, this is my vulnerable point.

That time of night for me has been some of my very worst, touch and go moments. And after a number of these all lined up at the same fucking time of night the pattern was made apparent to me. Oh. This is a thing.

Ok.

I woke up. In pain. Not unusual. My lats squealing like a fucker. My traps soft squealing in sympathy. The all over hug of pain. The sharp stabbing knives like you have a kilotonne of lactic acid everywhere. This old chestnut.

I rolled over to a series of glittery knife thrusts in all my muscles.

Eyes half fucky. Foot half swollen. The venous pooling doing its thing. Autonomic system fucked. But doing a little better with the hydration.

But the hydration is a temporary solution to a permanent problem. Ironic wording. It is a hack, a workaround, to support a fucked system with a compensatory mechanic.

And the thought train unravelled.

It crosses my mind often that I should have died in 2021. I came pretty close. And I limped through to the other side. I don't know how I made it. Some of it is blurred out.

But the reality is.

I did die in 2021. But not a quick death. A slower one.

In 2021 some bits of me died. They broke. Not temporarily. Not reversibly. They broke for good. Damaged. Fucked. And the long term spiral out of that. Is as sure as shit death. Just slower. And more painful. A car crash in very slow motion.

It is very clear to me now the functional aspects of my "CFS". The demons haunting me have been dragged into the light and named. The functional errors in me, the bits that are broken are clear. For the first time. It all lines up. And. As I adjust things in understanding to that, I watch for the first time ever the needle move. I am directly interacting with the sore points. And watching them jump. I have finally found some of the light switches. Good. And bad.

What I have. Is not going away. Will not be cured with a diet. Or excercise. Or a cheerful disposition. It's not going to be cured by a doctor. Or a pill. And it's not going to be in any forseeable future either. Not on my timescales.

It's not something I can control. It's not something I can think my way out of. There is nothing that can be done about it. I am fucked.

And as time ticks on. And slowly I get older. And slowly that subtle damage that happens every day accretes.I slide. Ever closer to a breaking point. An end. A painful point where finally one of those supporting systems, some random unsuspecting system just trying to do its best under shitty operating circumstances, breaks. And I enter a final spiral of horrible fucking out point.

This is where I am. This is the reality. And my time is absolutely short. How short. I don't know. But it's shorter than someone without this shit. And the experience is going to be always miserable. Always suffering. Always operating at some point of hypovolemia. Starving my body of oxygen. Brain fog. Things that don't repair. Exhaustion. A very discernible sense of fade of not being able to operate properly. And an autonomic squeal of alarm, of illness.

No hope. No fix. Just this odd little downward decline, poorly mapped out, beyond the reach of your average GP - who is lost somewhere in the naive foothills of oh its just a sore throat, or oh, your bruised eyes don't meaning anything, or oh, just trying coming back in two weeks.

And.

I am on my own with this.

No one is going to help. Very few are going to understand. There will certainly be no medical help.

This is a horrible path I get to walk on my own.

So.

There you have it.

That's my early morning, lowest ebb, psychological nuclear powered land mine. One last existential revelation. This is the shape of your demise. You always knew it probably would be, ever since getting ill. But now you know. For sure. The debug is in. The code is checked.

( according to Dr GPT I am wrong about the prognosis. not degenerative. just "out of gas". system has gone from oscillation from bad to worse, to just worse - a defensive physiological strategy to stop the see sawing. but. signs are. not degenerative. miserable. yes. degenerative no. some control can be taken over the miserable. some. but no cure. I suspect however Dr GPT is being a little too optimistic here. if nothing else. stress will kill you / make something fail out. ) 

This is not, for the record, uncommon. There is a common saying from chronic illness psychology which is this :

Meaning does not survive first contact with diagnosis. It must be rebuilt. 

There is a cost in Finding Out. Because it moves things from a hypothetical. Even a magical sense of, well, maybe one day will turn over and I will suddenly feel better. Into a. That's never going to happen and this is why. It is the grief of clarity. Or. Sure. Another existential revelation - and with it, the attached grief. 

It crosses my mind how people deal with terminal illnesses. I think. Those people have a timeline. A timeline. Oddly. Makes things easier. And harder. Harder because it extinguishes all hope of any indefinite length of time. Easier. Because you can prioritise. Giving up jobs. Not bothering with that diet. Not worrying about what your pension looks like. It just starts to come down to. Make what you can of the next six months. And then you're done.

And I am reminded of the brief chats I had with the terminally ill girl. How so very bright she shined at the end. She is still, to this day, the brightest flame I have met. So present. So. Ironically. Full of life. Something. Visceral about her relationship with life, all bullshit removed, just some pure, joyful, intense honesty and openness. And then. Some months after first getting to know her. Some time shortly before I was going to meet up with her and show her a few of my favourite places. She finally sputtered. Declined. And in the very final moments. Took herself off to Switzerland. And was gone.

I think about her and that experience quite a bit. It is something I still have trouble properly reconciling. I can see all the moving parts. I understand. Intellectually. But again. Somewhere in there. The final meaning escapes me. I don't entirely know how to feel about it. What you do with that information. Other than it being a tragedy.

The shrink asked me - again - today. That all that empathy and sympathy I have for others. Does it reflect back to me. Can I be that kind to myself. And we have already covered this. We already know this. No. I am getting better at it. But yes. There is an enormous discrepancy there.

Today in therapy we skirted over a number of things.

I said I had already had half a dozen conversations with them that day. We talked about that. How I can "game" everything out. But it's not that. I simulate everything. Everything is pulled and prodded in a multitude of permutations. I have many conversations with people that don't happen. A roleplay out. This is I think the normal thing people do where they have "an argument" by themselves, but turned up to 11. I do it across the board. With everything. Of all the things I know. That I know about people. Or stuff. What that conversation looks like. Or idea. But also. Just. Academic. A room full of different bits of me. Discussing. Turning it over. If this. Then that. Chasing down philosophical rabbit holes. Uncovering those existential revelations. Continually re-inventing things from first principles. It is. Part of my problem solving brain. It crunches through all the possibilities. It is why I often seem to have all the fucking answers. Because. I already crunched it. Yesterday. Last week. Last year. Ah. Scenario #4521. It leaves people struggling to keep up in my wake. They need time to process. And understand. In a given conversation. But for me. Its recital. Everything already worked out. Clever bits already formed. Eloquence built up. Practiced. Studied. I already had this conversation. I already thought all the way along this philosophical hole.

This is me. I don't even do it consciously per se. It just happens. And I follow not just the common solution point. I follow the ever increasingly unlikely paths too. In fact. The common path to me is a given. It's the uncommon ones where I really dive down. Because invariably I want to know what a large set of the edge cases look like. Where are the common failure points that buck the trend, that don't meet the typical expectations. This. Is also. Or was. My job. Where common failure points are well understood. You don't need me. But where the failure points are uncommon. Rare. Those are the confusing ones. That's where I would get parachuted in to help the stuck professionals. And in such cases. All you see is the uncommon paths. It is I suppose the pattern of the experts expert. An episode of House. House doesn't go round fixing a sore toe. Or an angry pimple. It's all about the weird. The odd. The 1%'ers. And when that's what you do. The common. Is not exactly boring. It's just. Given.

But without thinking about it. I apply this to everything I think about. From philosophy to relationships. I see the probables and the less probable.

This is also why when someone asks me a question, not only do I have the answer, if you have side queries, I also have the fucking permutations. The. Unlikely but possibles. Many answers. 

When Hazel lost Poppy. I plotted out all the paths. It is stupid. STUPID. To tell people of these things. It rarely goes well. It comes across as too. Calculating. Cold. I told you so. I have learned. To shut my mouth. In so many things I do. I have learned to shut my mouth. With varying degrees of success, but mostly these days, I succeed. 

Anyway. Meandering crazy tangent. 

The shrink - obviously - wanted to know what I had talked to them about.

Which one to pick ?

Pick the one that kicked the hardest. That made you cry.

I recalled it. And immediately clamped shut.

Emotion overload. Speech impossible. Shutdown.

Breathe.

In. Out.

I squeaked out the explanation. This one is emotional. As you can tell.

I sometimes wonder. What it's like to live in a reality. Where you can say "I'm ok", and mean it. Where your day is filled with a hum of background tasks. Where nothing is bearing down on you. And you go about your life. Where you can make a plan to go out to dinner this evening. Or watch a film. Or see a pair of shoes you like. What it's like to live like that.

Because when I start with the shrink. I always ask how they are doing. How are you.

Invariably it is, I'm doing ok thanks.

What. What. Does that feel like ? Genuinely. Tell me. What that feels like. For the love of fucking everything. Please. Tell me what that feels like. Because.

And this is the gut drop.

Because.

I can't remember anymore.

I can't remember what it feels like to have a day where you're not fucking scrambling for breath. Where it isn't an existential fucking threat. Where there isn't a major war. Where there aren't deep horrible fucking psycholgical wrestling matches, where your body isn't fucking betraying you. Where you have to think constantly defensively. Where you can't do shit. Where there isn't even room to think of doing shit. Because its pushed out. By feeling ill.

That's my reality.

And I have forgotten what normal feels like.

It is. A very distant memory. I can vaguely remember I had days like that. Where. Life was just life. You could have plans. Be lazy. Be motivated. Easy come. Easy go. Nothing was an emergency. There were bumps. But life. Was just an ongoing experience. But I don't really remember it. I just. Know that I too experienced that.

But now. I've lost it. Everything is a defensive snarl.

And that. Drops the floor out from under me. And makes me horribly fucking sad.

So.

There was that.

We also talked a little about boundaries. About my friend thinking that I desperately needed boundaries. That I needed to be able to say, no, I can't do this right now. Can we raincheck this. Instead of just ploughing on. And burning all my energy on others. When they are in crisis. In need.

We went over a few recent specifics. A lot. A lot of support. When I was already burned out.

I don't regret any of it. I don't have feelings of resentment.

But it was pointed out to me by others that it was a lot. Too much. For a healthy person. Let alone a fucked one. It is not the first time it has been said. By multiple people. Sometimes angrily. People get angry that I burn on others behalf. It also at one time used to be Hazels perennial complaint. You have no energy. Are unwell. And then I watch you burn out on someone else. Stop it. Tell them no. Stop doing that.

As I wryly noted to my friend. Saying, can I raincheck this, I don't have capacity for this.

Doesn't sound like something I would say.

Ho ho.

The shrink also found that funny.

High five. Making the shrink laugh. I am so winning my therapy. Tears. To laughter. All the things. *finger guns*

It also caused us to wander into the therapy thing again. The problem I have with therapy. I once again related my viewpoint on therapy. That it was like someone with a 12 foot pole, with a marigold attached to it, patting the head of someone on the opposite side of the room. Like interacting with a leper. And under no circumstances were you to get closer.

The shrink liked the visual.

To me. Therapy leaves half of the possible things on the table. It maintains an alien relationship. With unnatural boundaries. And cool objectivity. It pushes against human contact, the usual human relationship, the usual handshakes, checks, binds, relating. It is a scientist studying a rat in a maze. It is not one human giving another a hug. And with that. You can never achieve somethings. You will always fail to put a fire out if you never engage with the fire. It is the difference I said, between watching someone from afar in a trench fighting, and jumping in the trench with them to help them fight. And the way therapy goes about it. Is correct. Right. Sustainable. It does that to protect people. To mean that you can fight another day. All the days. It is sensible. BUT. It is not the only model. There is another model there, that fucks the boundaries, that crosses the line, to jump in, to save someone, to pull them out of the water physically to prevent drowning. And yes. There can be a cost. The highest of costs even. You can enter the burning building to rescue someone from burning to death and end up dying of burns yourself. But that is not wrong. You can save people like that. That pattern. The self sacrificing pattern. Is not an aberation. It shows up across evolution. And that bit. The save at all costs. The save with costs. Is forever unobtainable by therapy.

The shrink. Somewhat surprisingly agreed with all of it this time around. Perhaps I was better at putting the case. Perhaps the shrink had adapted a little. Regardless. The shrink agreed with all of it. Nail on head.

I related this to some very, very direct examples in just this last week.

I can feel how very heavy that responsibility is the shrink said. 

Yes. As. Heavy as it gets. No greater responsibility.

And how much it must cost you.

Sure. But. That doesn't matter so much. It's easier for me. Because. Whatever. Compelled to do it. Compelled to martrydom. But also. I don't count. So burning myself up. Is not a problem.

Which circles all the way back to childhood.

And that learned response.

Both the pattern of me having to game everything out. Because as a child I had to be very careful of my environment. And to do that. I needed to carefully simulate all possibilities. What is the best way to be safe. To avoid getting shit. You learn. To get really fucking good at game theory. And also. You are indoctrinated. To placate mental anguish. If you dont. You get punished. You end up. With a good simulation of where a fire is going to break out. And how best to avoid that happening. But if a fire does break out. Immediately put it out. To save even worse consequences.

Me. In a nutshell.

But. This week I also noted that I had started to understand that although a lot of what it me originates in that traumatic horrible pressure cooker. That does not mean to say those traits are then tainted forever. Bad. Failures. Because some of those forced traits are useful in an adult world. Learning how to predict shit. Observant. Helpful. Are extremely useful - and demanded - skills. And some of those I had leaned into as an adult. Developed further.

But still. The compulsion aspect makes them. Dubious. At best. For me, the person compelled. From the outside, it's all sweetness and roses. How helpful. From the inside. It's dragged ass backwards to something I have to do regardless of the cost to me, to the point I will sacrifice myself entirely. No boundaries. No qualms.

Anywho.

The shrink wanted to know, circling back a bit, if my view of therapy was what I had learned, or what I had experienced. ( a neat little small abstraction from their real question which then followed once I pushed a little to get to it, because I really knew what they wanted ). The real question being was that how I viewed our relationship. A 12ft pole. And the marigold. This. Little dance. Is to me, less therapist. And more human. It starts with the roundabout, oh, in theory, is this academic, or experienced. Covering the *actual* vulnerability, anxiety, doubt. And once you get to the real heart of it, the question actually becomes Do you like me ? Very. Human. Very. Not therapist.

This. Is where we got to before. And I had - surprisingly - hurt their feelings. Surprise. The shrink is emotionally invested in what you think of them. Wait. Wait wait wait. That's not. Right ? This is supposed to be purely objective. Yes. But. Shrinks are also human. And fallible. And those rules are not rules just for the theoretical. They are rules because of the gravity pull effect.

Last time we got here I spent time reassuring the shrink that I did value them. And they weren't a houseplant. So. Less objective. More subjective. A bit of a hug.

The irony at that point was for that brief blip the tables turned, and I, the client, reassured the therapist. Role reversal. And we also briefly touched on how therapists are also human. Not machines. But still. Ok.

This time. I was more careful. Ah. We are here again.

I picked my way through very very slowly. I understand the meta of why you are asking that I said. Why you ask if that's how I view our relationship.

The shrink decided to test me.

Ok. And why's that.

Careful. Because. I can see. It's not just a theoretical for you. There is. Careful. An emotional component in the question. You. Care. About the answer. From a personal point of view. Not just a therapy point of view. And. Last time this came up. I. Hurt your feelings. Which. Shouldn't. "Shouldn't" - I scrunched up my face - happen. Conveying that "shouldn't" was doing a lot of bullshit heavy lifting here.

Shouldn't, the shrink echoed. Also communicating the dubiousness of the word "shouldn't".

I said that series of sentences with a lot of deliberation and pauses. I was being super careful. And testing each word before saying it, conscious of walking a very tight rope here between over stating, under stating and causing an emotional wound. I clarified further.

I am not saying. It's a problem. For you. I closed my eyes struggling with the caution. You have. Your shit together.

The shrink scoffed when I had my eyes closed. That's a statement they said.

I laughed a little. Yes. YES. I air quoted it. You have your "shit together". Ho ho. You are. A functioning person. ( I Was communicating to them that I didn't think they were overwrought ). But. There is emotion in there.

I said that our relationship was something that had crossed my mind a few times. I had pondered whether to bring it up last week. This week. No. But here we are. And I said. It's something that could probably be its own session in and of itself, or more. And it also then fed into, what I thought I needed in my life. What I wanted. What I couldn't have.

Well. That sounds very relevant the shrink said.

Yeah.

And the session ended. Next week. We will talk about us. Which is. Weird. And meta. And weird. And weird. And weird.

The end of this week was a bit of a dance. I could feel it. It was different.

A weird one. One that starts pushing right up against those boundaries. But surprisingly. Not from my side. From theirs. Ok.

Also.

I did not fail to notice the major major relation drop. All my flags went up.

My shit is not together.

The shrink thinks their life is something of a mess.

I think next week - if we do talk about our relationship. Is going to be. Impactful. In a number of different directions.

And yes.

I've gamed them out already.

 

Back to big picture. It is sometimes, the small little distractions. The inconsequentials. That make the bigger awful terrible suffering picture. Tolerable. Even if for a short while.