cosmolinguist | Entries tagged with bodies!

I slept for something like 12 hours last night.

And, barely nine hours later, here I am back in bed again.

I'm fine otherwise but I'm just so exhausted. I blame my period.

Tueaday I felt okay through the work day but crashed very hard as soon as it was done, and had to just hug a water bottle and get people to bring me things like in the early days of ankle recovery. Wednesday I was brain-fogged as hell through a difficult day at work.

By yesterday I was thinking oh I'm feeling better now! I should be back to 100% by tomorrow!

Yet this morning...well, afternoon, when I got out of bed I was like why am I so exhausted?!, lol, sob. Luckily I had ( disgusting symptoms )

to "remind" me.

Here's hoping I'm better tomorrow, I've got big plans...that I'm too tired to tell you about, ha.

What a fun time to get the worst period I've had in years: in the middle of the night on a camping trip.

It was our last night there, which was good from the perspective of going home that day, which means I'm not far from soap and water and hot water bottles.

But going home that day also means all the work of getting our huge amount of camping gear dismantled and taken to the car which feels miles away, was done with cramps and tiredness and brainfog.

I slept a lot last night. But the tiredness was still present today. And the brainfog, which was really rough on a very demanding work day.

But almost as soon as I finished work, I started getting such horrible cramps that my pain spiked into "this is preventing me from doing things" levels. Ibuprofen and a hot water bottle and a pre-dinner nap helped a little, but I still barely ate any dinner, couldn't walk the dog, and other dispiriting things. I'd have had to call in sick to work if it had been that bad during work hours..

I haven't missed any of my meds that help deal with periods. But even when I have, the resulting periods have not been like this. I'm going to keep an eye on it but this is still well within my experience of periods before I started hormonal birth control so I'm not worried yet. Just tired and sad.

I woke up from bad dreams -- usual anxiety stuff, plus the disappointing feature of imposing gender dysphoria on myself to attend friends' wedding in a frilly pastel dress; even in the dream I was confused about why I made myself so miserable and I wasn't convinced by my own thought process which was just well, it's a wedding so I have to; even reminding myself upon waking that the first time I wore a masc shirt and smart trousers/dress pants to friends' wedding was ten years ago now didn't release the grip that this unsettling image had on me all day.

Anyway, I woke up from bad dreams with nystagmus so bad that D could tell just from looking at me that my eyes weren't working. It's not a subtle condition, heh. He gave me a much-needed cuddle for the bad dreams and then went to fetch me my work phone from downstairs so I could look at my schedule and see how annoying it would be to skip work today. Fairly annoying, it turns out, and also I started to feel a little better pretty quickly (while still being bad enough at seeing that I didn't even take my glasses downstairs with me much less wear them, until after noon). Determining that I would not sleep, I figured I might as well sit in front of my computer rather than just sit around and be bored.

By the time I came back to my computer after lunch and I was thinking hm I think I might be starting to feel better from this migraine... Then I typed in my password and it didn't work. I frowned, sure it was correct. Did it again. Definitely got it right this time! But I was still locked out. Then I realized I was using the password for my own laptop, on my work computer. A thing I'd never previously done in almost two years at this job!

So yeah. The thing about migraines is that they affect your brain which is also what you rely on to do stuff like "assess how badly this migraine is affecting you."

I wasn't in pain but I was having other weird effects. Like, I was sitting in a fairly dull work meeting (punctuated by the odd moment of absolute shock, like when I asked how a person whose sight doesn't allow them to identify the ID that a public transport support staff member apparently wears on their jacket, like in a little laminated pouch, someone suggested putting braille on the ID which, even apart from being useless to the 90% or so of visually impaired people who don't read braille, would necessitate grabbing the stranger's chest and groping at it for the braille)... Anyway, even sitting in the dull meeting I was so physically anxious that I was shaking like a leaf. Mentally I was fine and it was weird to almost observe myself in this unwarranted physical state.

Then kinda the opposite happened after work when I remembered that the trans weightlifting class I go to some Saturdays now has an associated circuits class on Monday evenings and now I really wanna go tonight, even though I probably still have a migraine and even if not I'm always exhausted by the postdrome so this is just a ridiculous idea. I took it as further proof of how broken my brain is right now. And how much I like circuits. And how my migraine-riddled brain craves endorphins.

Saturday was such a dramatic example of how I can be one of those happy fuckers who ends up absolutely gleeful from exercise: I'd slept very little on Friday night and felt truly awful but had booked for the gym and D was going too so I didn't have to get the bus and the tram...but even so in the car all the way there I was fantasizing about just not getting out of the car or running away or just doing anything at all rather than an hour of weightlifting. And then long before the end of the hour I was bouncing off the walls, delighted and full of enough energy to get me through all the rest of my plans for the day. It doesn't always work for me (often I am left only tired and with the vaguest sense of accomplishment) but when it does work it's a hell of a drug.

It was one thousand percent the right idea not to go to the gym when I didn't even know if I still had a migraine or if I'd moved on to the always-exhausting postdrome stage. But now that I've had to go to bed without my endorphins, of course I am wistful about them, heh.

I slept badly, woke up with a nasty headache, woke up early for an online meeting I couldn't access, didn't enjoy the noisy work going on next door, couldn't call in sick from work, slogged through many meetings, tried to nap afterwards, couldn't even do that.

My mental health has been pretty bad all day too. Maybe the headache is a migraine, that would help explain this (it has some features of one, but not all the symptoms I usually get). Maybe I'm just too busy and work is too frustrating. It sucks being so drained by it that I can't do anything else; I can barely communicate with the people I live with and rarely even make dinner any more. My life is just work and Gary and failing to sleep. And I'm still surprisingly fucked up about my mom refusing to visit. I stood in my kitchen this morning thinking how much my dad would like it and the view out on to the garden, and I was angry and despairing that apparently he'll never get to see it. I keep noticing little things like that.

My manager at the beginning of our one-to-one: "Hey, how you doing?"

Me: "I'm alright"

Him: "That doesn't sound your most convincing."

Me: "Fair. I have a headache and I hate spreadsheets." [He knows I've had to try to extract the little useful information from a giant ghastly spreadsheet we've been burdened with.]

Him: "I'm sorry but I have to postpone this 1-1 until Monday because [reasons]... If you have a headache, why don't you just...not work the rest of today."

I love him so much.

I woke up this morning barely able to see again.

It had been even worse on Monday, when I had to go lie down about three in the afternoon. I dozed and listened to podcasts until dinnertime and felt okay that evening. I attributed my difficulty with getting through yesterday to postdrome, but when I woke up playing the "migraine aura or nystagmus?" guessing game again this morning I wondered if the migraine had ever really gone away at all.

Still, I got through a very busy day at work (I'd have taken it off, but there are hard deadlines today and this week), I finished re-organizing the shed (having taken advantage the opportunity of all the camping stuff being out of it to sort through and rearrange the rest, in between airing it out and spraying for mildew/mold), and I finished my fifth day of holding Gary down for every one of the eyedrop doses he needs six times a day.

I haven't done anything about talking to my parents about logistics yet. But it has sure taken up a lot of processing time in my brain.

Hardly slept. Combination of bad mental health and shenanigarys in the middle of the night.

I had Friday off and that's when it was decided that me and C from my team were going to present at a thing for a big chunk of our organization this afternoon. I'm almost kinda glad that my big boss knew she could say "hey sorry for springing this on you, you don't have to do it, but I think you'd be great at it" and be confident that I'd be fine speaking to a large group (it's only a Teams meeting after all) on little notice. It was after all on the topic I worked on all of July, and a lot of time since.

It really wore me out though. I didn't get the other thing done that I hoped I would today -- actually hoped to finish last week. Tomorrow I'll be closer to the deadline for that than my anxiety is usually comfortable with, but I just was way too tired to even think about that piece of work.

I fell asleep almost immediately when I finished work, and didn't wake up until 6:30 and then only because I figured I should make dinner.

I've been feeling grim ever since. Nauseous, spacey, I'm worried I have a migraine but it might just be the nystagmus. Both are exacerbated by tiredness.

We've had the same kind of disruptions from Gary the last couple nights. Just old dog things. I've tried to change the circumstances in hopes of stopping the same thing from happening again tonight. I really hope it'll work. I don't know how I can keep going like this otherwise.

All week I've been feeling like a migraine was starting but it never appeared. It's a grim state to be stuck in.

I woke up about one in the morning in some of the worst pain I've ever had. As if the week's worth of migraine finally hit me at once. I wanted to get a washcloth and soak it in cold water, to put on my head, but I couldn't get out of bed. I did manage to take some ibuprofen though, because I keep some in my room, and I had a snack to go with it because I was already so nauseous I was worried about having it on an empty stomach.

I did fall back asleep eventually, and I felt fine when I woke up this morning so I went off to the queer photoshoot I'd volunteered to do. Local queer charity wanted pictures of crips, among others, who use their services for use as stock photos. It was the first time I'd been to their new building which was pretty nice.

I forgot the CO2 monitor so I left my mask on (except for sips of water and a quick snack). Including for the ptotos of course, which occasioned a little bit of discussion. They were clearly surprised by it rather than hostile to it, and worried that I might not be able to convey the emotions they wanted (happy, strong, thoughtful, etc.) but then seemed to think I did great at those. I think the mask is important representation too: you simply haven't depicted disabled people in the 2020s if everyone is unmasked. And of course everyone else was, staff and fellow volunteers alike.

By 1pm I was really hungry, and the event had free food but I can't eat it. They were careful to include vegan, gluten-free options and so on... but of course there was no mention of a room that's ventilated enough that I could take off my mask to eat.

At an event for disabled people, it's especially disappointing. Air quality is an access need! It feels exactly like my other access needs. Especially when it's the only way I can eat or drink. And, unlike other access needs, it is universal. Everyone benefits from it. It should be the easiest thing to accommodate.

diffrentcolours moderates a local group on social media and he mentioned tonight a lot of people are testing positive for covid again. I saw something online today too about how many unconnected people in one person's circles were coming down with it. I saw someone else online saying the same thing, with a screenshot of a Daily Mail headline: "Covid cases jump by 14% in a week." I even went and looked at that article: "Leading experts have called for the return of face masks to thwart the virus." "The North West recorded the highest Covid prevalence in England."

By the time I got home I was feeling the migraine symptoms again. I needed a rare for me nap, and I couldn't go to the queer roller disco this evening.

I worked through the beginning of a migraine today.

These things always seem to turn up on days when I can't just call in sick. Today I had a meeting with my boss's boss (which was actually incredibly helpful in dealing with a big intimidating confusing thing, and she called me "very astute" when I was just trying to frantically pretend I wasn't completely over my head so I was surprised to hear such an effusive compliment!) and I was waiting all day for any details at all of the all-day training I am delivering for the first time tomorrow, which I finally got at 5pm. The guy in charge of the training seems to think I'll be fine at it but I have no idea why!

It was a miserable day, of aura and nausea and a kind of dissociation that made it impossible to get any work done. As soon as I finished Gary made me the target of his clingy mithering. When he finally settled down to sleep (after going outside, having more food, playing games, and playing with one of his toys) I tried to sneak upstairs but he followed me instantly and kept mithering.

mother_bones is having an ME flare so I'm glad to have given her a bit of a break but sorry it had to come at my expense. It seemed like a rough day for all of us. I hardly saw diffrentcolours today. Some days are just like this.

I really hope I sleep. I really hope I am better tomorrow. This training I'm running is 10 until 3, and then immediately I have a meeting about the most bleak topic area of my work (climate change). What a day.

I woke up with my worst migraine in a long time, and I couldn't take the day off work without leaving people in the lurch. If I didn't work remotely I would've had to call in sick but all I had to do was stumble downstairs and be presentable from the shoulders up, and I could do that.

I did five hours straight of interviews and then a big meeting with the government department most relevant to my job. I managed to convince myself that I was better but when I was done with my last call I collapsed a little. I'm very glad diffrentcolours was up to shopping for and cooking dinner.

"I don't know why I'm so tired," I said all floppily yesterday afternoon.

"You've had an emotionally exhausting day,"

diffrentcolours said. "You've had a bunch of emotionally exhausting days lately."

"I feel like that's all I've had lately," I said smiling a little. "I'd really like to have some other kind."

Today is another kind. I had no plans (finally) so I planned to do nothing. And I have. I've been helped in that endeavor by a sinus headache (not covid, yay) so doing nothing hasn't been fun but it has been necessary.

I tried to stubborn myself out of having a migraine last night and it just seems to have delayed it until I got to work this morning...

I got through work but it's been a tough day and the weekend will be tough as well. Going to bed now.

After my nice day yesterday, today I've just had a ton of anxiety and a migraine (the current migraine might explain some amount of the debilitating anxiety, and generally how difficult I was finding it to function this morning) and had to go to work! Not as good.

However I did come home to some good stuff that had arrived in the mail -- a festive card from

ludy, a new issue of Bi Community News, and a birthday present of booze -- so that was really nice.

A couple of weeks ago, when the first vaccine was licensed for use here, a lot of my friends were happy and excited about this news. I was too! But they did something I didn't do: they shared news articles about this on social media.

I didn't do this because I rarely see a single one that isn't illustrated with a close-up photo of a needle. Often right near someone's arm, in an action shot (ha, pun not intended). But it's not much better if it's just the syringe on its own. The rare exception to this kind of image is something like a vial of the medicine on its own, which it turns out still isn't much better for a needlephobe like me.

I felt a little queasy just after a few minutes of looking at Facebook that morning.

So I'm really glad to see that this is part of a problem that's starting to be explicitly addressed.

The stock photography commonly used in stories about vaccines are often medically inaccurate in a range of ways, from showing the wrong syringes to showing shots being administered incorrectly. In addition to that, you typically see a lot of crying babies, anxious-looking patients, and close-up shots of oversized needles. While it’s no secret that getting a shot isn’t usually a fun experience, imagery that’s frightening and inaccurate only further perpetuates the idea that vaccines are just scary, painful, and something both parents and their children dread. And look, there might be some truth to that—lots of people dislike needles. But it’s also true that vaccines save lives.

To my shame, I hadn't even noticed the wider points -- I think I notice the race of people in stock photos, but none of the other matters being addressed here had ever occurred to me. And it's especially important, especially in places like the U.S. that already have an embedded anti-vaxx ideology underneath the covid-specific animosity, that articles particularly about the benefit and importance of this vaccine portray it as the enormous positive it is, and not legitimize the fear and stress some people are already having about a covid vaccine that will change all of our lives when enough people get it.

I know this isn't the most important problem anyone is facing right now. But I must say that looking at the photo accompanying this did make me feel better, calmer, more positive than any other photo I've seen next to talk of vaccines lately.

And while there was never any question about me getting the vaccine -- I cannot wait! which feels really weird for something I know I'm going to struggle with so much! -- I've been really dreading the experience already. Sure it hasn't been the biggest cause of my anxiety lately, but I'm surprised how noticeable it can be, like it was the other morning. These things can actually make a difference.

Representation is always important, both in accurately including the variety of people doing something, especially something so crucial to public health, but representation is also important in accurately portraying what the things we do in the world are like themselves.

I went to sleep with a headache last night and I woke up with it this morning and it's lasted all day, despite my efforts with painkillers, a bit of fresh air, water to make sure I stay hydrated, and resting as much as I can.

So yeah I'm feeling sorry for myself and don't have much to say. How are you?

It's been a long time since I've turned up at work thinking "I shouldn't be here, someone should be coming round to my house to help me" but today is one of those days.

But I did it and I even went to Tesco again. Easier this week since I wasn't shopping for myself as well. But people have gotten really uninterested in following the one-way system of arrows and that frustrated me a lot (even as L and I were frustrated by trying to follow it; I don't blame him for being skeptical of the rationale behind it since it isn't making anyone better at distancing themselves). There seemed to be more people who were just rude and selfish, but then by the time I got done with that and had put the food away in L's kitchen, it started to dawn on me that I might be getting a migraine. So it's possible I was extra short-tempered because of that.

At least I hope a migraine all I've got now, because last week for about four days in a row I felt like I was having the beginning of a migraine -- nauseous, brain-fogged, struggling to do anything -- for about four days and the rest of the migraine never seemed to appear. I really hope I'm not like this for four more days! I'm going to go to bed early to try to fend it off. Or because I can't do anything else. Why not both.

5 What’s your favorite way to spend a Sunday morning?

The gym at the end of my road has a yoga class at 9:15 on Sunday mornings. It wasn't as busy as the ones I went to in evenings other times of the week, and it was a nice way to start the day. I can't go any more though, as I work Sunday mornings.

Indeed this Sunday morning was my first day back at work since before Christmas. It was very difficult to get up when my alarm went off! But it was also kind of nice to get back to the routine of shower-breakfast-dog walk first thing in the morning.

Unfortunately while I felt absolutely fine when I left for work, by the time I got off the bus I was feeling a little dizzy and nauseous. I told L, when he asked me how I was, that I thought it was the bus driver's driving: lots of going too fast only to have to stop again, jolting turns... But I didn't feel any better after a few minutes of taking things easy. I felt worse. Eventually I figured out that I was getting a migraine.

So I got through work (pretty brain-fogged by the end of it, though), had tea and Migraleve and a nap, and felt better enough to eat some leftovers in time for Doctor Who. Which I enjoyed!

I'd have liked to get some essay work done, but I guess it wasn't meant to be. Migraines are so frustrating, they can just sneak up on you and eat up a whole day when you really can't afford that.

My cold is finally receding, yay! So naturally I celebrated by being very busy to try to catch up with what I'd hoped to get done this reading week: I was doing housework first thing this morning and then I typed up some uni notes -- I can see the shape of my essay a bit more, which is a relief as it was seeming beyond me as recently as yesterday. Still lots more work to do than I'd hoped for at this stage, but I think I did about as much as I could so I'm trying not to beat myself up about it.

Then I did lots of social stuff but that was nice since, Tuesday night notwithstanding, I hadn't at all since last weekend and that is too long for someone as extroverted as me. In the process I had lots of nice food (poached eggs with halloumi/avocado/spinach, spearmint tea, cheese and spinach curry, a black lager and a delicious porter), most of which I could even taste! Being able to taste and smell things again is always such a joy after a bad cold.

I literally hardly slept last night. My eyes were burning and I was so tired I could cry but I just wasn't able to sleep. I drifted off twice, for a total of maybe two hours, but it was a miserable night.

Yesterday or another day in reading week this wouldn't have been such a big deal, but today I had stuff to do both this morning and this evening so this morning I was honestly scared about how I'd get through the day.

Turns out I've gotten through the day by not doing either of thiose things.

Andrew's dad had invited himself over this morning since he'd be nearby. I got showered and dressed and did the kinds of tidying and quick swipe of the bathroom that I do when we're having company. I sat down in a chiair about ten minutes before his dad was due and must've looked pitiful becuaes Andrew said "You don't have to be here for this, you can go back to bed, maybe get some sleep, and I'll wake you about 4:30." So I, gratefully, did. He didn't have to wake me, I only slept for a couple hours.

I got up again, got dressed again, hung up the laundry I'd put on this morning, put a frozen pizza in the oven and ate it, all the while thinking I'd be well enough to go to Leeds this evening for another Nunkie performance, the guy who dresses up and recites M.R. James stories by candlelight. He's wonderful and a little group of friends and I go see him whenever he's around; Andrew and

miss_s_b and

strange_complex are on their way there now. But I'm not: about twenty minutes before we'd have had to leave I decided that I really wasn't up to a late, cold night out.

I have to go to work tomorrow, having cried off yesterday, and I feel worse now than I did yestrday so I really don't want to be overdoing it. I'm so sad to miss this though; it's always so much fun. But I walked the dog as Andrew left and I felt so horrible just being outside for a few minutes that it absolutely assured me I'd made the right decision.

I hate it when the right decision is to not do the fun things, though.

I hurt my back yesterday in the very old-person way of turning slightly to reach something next to me (in the not-old-person context of an undergrad lecture, admittedly).

As always, being in transient pain makes me admire my friends with chronic pain all the more. I can hardly do anything, I can't concentrate, I'm grumpy and impatient. Heat or painkillers help a little but I'm still not myself and I'm not getting anything done. So of course I had to do work and uni yesterday (this semester is one or the other usually) and it felt very unfair. I'm behind on my reading and should be working on an essay ideally. The only reason I'm keeping myself fed and I'm not behind on laundry is Andrew has been very helpful.

Having had a different kind of distracting and life-impacting pain over the weekend, I am weary of this already.

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Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

finally, struation for men!

Work vs. uterus

Migraine

Bah

spreadsheets

[242/365] one foot in front of the other

[226/365] ugh.

[84/365] represent

[339/365] this Monday is especially Monday

[230/365]

[364/365] invalid

[113/365]

[358/366] ugh

[350/366] vaccine stock photos

[164/366] headache

[121/366] migraine

[5/366] Sunday morning

305/365

303/365

[288/365] hurty again

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July 2025

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