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

Yesterday was worse.

Making dinner was so hard I couldn't eat dinner. I just laid on my bed and couldn't talk or think properly at all.

It was scary because it meant that the problem wasn't contained in the immediate aftermath of counseling or whatever (not that I really expected it to be, given that I'd actually spent most of the session talking about how I was surprised not to be triggered by something that very reasonably could have been expected to leave me feeling really bad). And it was miserable.

I ended up sleeping for three or four hours and woke up because I needed to pee and D came to bed about that time. He thought I was asleep because I didn't move or talk. Until I had to get up for the bathroom and then after I came back to bed I was sobbing and we talked a little.

The conversation was good and useful. We came up with some plans. I know D has been struggling with poor sleep and I wouldn't have done this after midnight if I'd had much choice about it. But I did feel much better afterwards.

Today has started normally. But then so did yesterday (I was relieved when I could open the curtains and do chores while feeling okay), so who kmows.

Ever since D's girlfriend broke her leg while roller skating last weekend, my ankle has been sore, something it hardly ever does any more and I've done nothing physical (like walk a lot) to cause it.

So I have tried yelling "Shut up, this is clearly psychosomatic! You're fine!" at it. Repeatedly.

Disappointingly, this doesn't seem to be working. (I didn't really expect it to. I'm just saying it woulda been nice if it did, is all!)

Today I had to ask the other two for help about something that's been making me shut down.

It went well and needed to happen so I'm glad I did it!

But even talking around it gave me a little panic attack.

Soon after, a combination of a crumb at the back of my throat and putting my mask on to go into Aldi, left me coughing and hyperventilating. The panic came right back. I had to stand in the aisle and wheeze for a bit

It has left my throat feeling sore and raw...and my brain is of course too.

Today was such a stressful day at work. By 3:30 I was frantically doing as little of it as I could get away with in hopes that I can be functional by the time I have counseling after work.

I was expecting to do a social thing after that, which I had been looking forward to but by this point vacilated on from one second to the next. I could equally easy make the "ignore your bad brain and do the potentially overwhelming thing!" argument and the "listen to your brain and body and stay home" argument. Both felt plausible. Neither felt more likely to be correct than the other. I hate it when my anxiety and depression gang up on me like this, leaving it feeling impossible to make a good choice.

I spent all of counseling talking about feeling isolated and not having roots or a sense of belonging... And then I was like "oh I don't know if I can make myself go to this local queer event's first birthday, which I'm so lucky to have in my neighborhood and where I've met so many nice people..."

Even knowing it's exactly the thing I need, it was so difficult to get myself out of the house.

I rode my bike there, which was a great decision, really enjoyed that. The weather was beautiful even at 7:30 (ckear skies, just starting to come down from the day's high of 77°F), and it was a quick familiar ride.

I didn't feel good at the event and left about halfway through.

Came home (smooth and quick on the bike!) and had a beer with D in the garden as the sun went down, the bats came out, and we admired the tiny crescent moon. A nice end to a long day.

My fellow co-chair of the staff LGBT+ network and I recorded a thing for Trans Awareness Month.

At last year's event, they came out and told us their new name! (I wasn't a co-chair yet so I wasn't involved.) There's nothing that dramatic this time.

But this time, as well as them updating us on what the last year has been like for them as a genderfluid person (apparently it's harder than being the only blindie in the village but easier than being the only goth), I talked about why gender is relevant at work.

And in the course of our conversation, a couple of points involved me explicitly saying I trans -- something I've so far been...not secretive about, but quiet about at work.

But I have good experiences to share. I feel like it's really important to do that for the sake of other trans people who are otherwise only hearing about "rainy TERF island." And if me saying "You might not think gender matters at work but you treat people differently in meetings and emails based on it, ask me how I know" and that gets anyone thinking about this who didn't before, I'd say that's worth it. (This message is not my favorite, because it should be possible for people who've never been perceived as women to believe anyone who ever has, but I feel like this is still the level we're at so, in the hope of meeting people where they're at...)

I hope it's well-received.

The funniest thing about it, though, was that when I told the others after work that my sinuses were bothering me, D, who'd been in the next room and overheard me, said "oh I thought you were just doing a particularly masc voice for your podcast!"

No artifice here! That voice is all the natural effect of my terrible sinuses.

Handily, in a call I had with my manager at the end of the work day, he suddenly said "are you sick? You sound weird" so I was like "yeah I'm super sick" even though I'm not, thus laying the groundwork for calling in sick tomorrow if I wake up to a world I don't want to make small talk about as the only USian in meetings....

In the big organization I work for there is one other USian that I know of; we don't work together but I know her slightly (as the co-chair of another network actually) and she's absolutely lovely. Right before I turned off my work phone for the day, I messaged her to check in and ended up giving her my personal number so we can cling to each other on WhatsApp if I can't face work tomorrow.

Just having to do pastoral care for my countrymen, normal things for a normal election.

2016 cured me of wanting to stay up to watch election results come in. The Trump one (as opposed to the Brexit one, sigh) was the occasion of my worst period of mental health outside of my brother dying, and the only exception to the fact that I can usually say my depression doesn't tend toward self-harm or suicidal thoughts. Considering this, I feel like I should have realized before the last fee days that making a bit more of a plan to look after myself in advance would have been a good idea, but I didn't. I'm just gonna have to grit my teeth, distract myself, and let my little wonderhouse family prop me up.

Did it have to be Bonfire Night too, goddammit, I feel like my head is exploding every time I hear fireworks going off. Which is every few seconds now that it's been dark for an hour.

But the night won't last forever.

My mental health has been pretty bad lately.

I cried at a bunch of things I wouldn't usually on Wednesday night. It didn't feel like oh I'm having a bad day, it felt like I'm the little pebble at the beginning of an avalanche and I don't know how to stop things feeling worse at increasing speed.

I finally remembered I have a few diazepam left from a year ago when I wasn't coping with the broken ankle and the impending operation. I took one of those at bedtime and I didn't feel any different but I did sleep.

But it's freaking me out to go from such an obvious and clear reason to need benzos then in the complex trauma of the broken ankle and its treatment, to nothing particular going on now.

Why am I finding normal stuff so difficult lately??

Of course there needn't be a reason. But I want there to be so I can address it.

Thursday morning I had to go to London for work. I felt okay until the train to London was actually moving, and then I felt so claustrophobic. Which I'm not normally; I love trains! The only other time I remember

I can't stand all the people talking around me, it's not even loud it's just overwhelming. So weird. Normally I love trains. But I'm seriously struggling not to get off at any stop and go back home...

I calmed down eventually, and did the presentation I was in London for (not after arriving late and flustered thanks to more crip-travel assistance -- luckily everyone was super nice but I think it still contributed to me going almost completely astray from my carefully constructed notes, sigh). People seemed to like it and it was fine.

I wrote most of this on social media and at the part where I said it felt so different to struggle so much now without anything obvious like a horrible broken ankle, a friend of mine made a very wise reply.

from my pov you have been dealing both with prolonged stress (from discrimination and the demands from your work, which sometimes cross or double themselves too)

plus the covid isn't really gone but everyone acts like it is too situation, plus just the overall decline in society and it's economic consequences

those alone are heavy enough

but also short stressors, like the situation with Gary and all that entails, he might be technically a dog but he is a family member none the less, his sickness is also a great demand

that plus the current season, while you are a summer person, plus the confrontation with the upcoming dates

pfew

i do not wonder why your system is sending you alarming signals at all

prolonged stress does really bad things to you, and the pile seems to get bigger from my POV

but maybe it helps to tell yourself, there are reasons for this, you are not weak (you really aren't!!!) and it's just very complicated for you right now

I could assure them that I wasn't feeling weak, more...frustrated and exhausted. But not beating myself up about it at all, so I guess that's something.

Work was busy and stressful (if not as miserable as it had been for the last month or so!).

Then I had counseling where I talked about how I had to abandon a dozen years of volunteering and almost all my friends/socializing abandoned me, just as the pandemic started...so just as I was also becoming physically isolated and convinced that my marriage wasn't going to last.

Like everything else about March 2020, it feels very long ago and also absolutely up-to-the-minute

So uh. Yeah. I'm pretty exhausted now!

Yesterday after work I turned the TV on because it's a cue for Gary to chill out and know that nothing is going to happen for a while.

I think the last time I used my own Netflix profile was that day I was in the hospital waiting for the operation on my ankle. I downloaded Netflix on my phone and watched a little of a documentary about the Broadhaven UFO to distract myself. It didn't work that well. Seeing that show in my "resume watching" list conjured up a miserable day of waiting in a yellowy hospital room on my own, not able to eat or drink, not at all sure what was going to happen to me.

I'm trying not to let stuff retain bad associations with that time. The rainbow overalls I was wearing, which had to be cut off my leg, have been mended recently. MB had to pick plaster off them too. I'm so happy to see them again but... I've been a little wary of wearing them.

I watched more of the UFO show yesterday. I'll wear the dungarees soon. I do not need more weird little triggers.

I feel like I've absorbed so much toxic positivity around my disability that it's very easy to say about today "Thanks for your kind words everyone, but it all went fine and I didn't have anything to worry about!"

It did all go fine, especially because my friend was able to pick me up from the train station which removed the most stressful part of the journey I'd prepared myself for, which was getting to a new place on my own. My kryptonite, I called that earlier today, and it really is.

Before I could know that my friend could rescue me from this (they were waiting for something that was going to happen "between 9:30 and 2:30," could pick me up if it happened before I got there and couldn't if it didn't), I really was struggling.

Occasionally my nystagmus can be so bad it leads to feelings of derealization.

Or maybe it's just that the nystagmus is worsened by stress and derealization also happens when I'm really stressed. Maybe they just share a common ancestor. Regardless, it's really inconvenient and uncomfortable to deal with this.

I said so on social media as I was getting the bus into town, having left the house just too late to get a train that would've been quicker.

And by the time I

• got a tram across town from where the bus dropped me off
• bought a ticket (thank goodness I could do this from a person! I had no idea if the ticket office would be staffed at that station and I physically cannot buy the ticket I needed from a machine even if I'd been able to use the machines (apparently 3% of blind and partially sighted people can use those touchscreen ticket machines without difficulty and I'm in the 97%!)
• just missed a train
• thought I had to wait 40 minutes for the next one
• went for a pee (yet again bemoaning the lack of hooks or shelves or anywhere to put anything in accessible toilets)
• came back to find two staff near the display boards which also had a big sticker on the floor saying "Passenger Assist meeting point" and a little kiosk saying "information point" which was now staffed, but by someone busy chatting to his station but the other staff member so neither of them paid any attention to the guy with a noticeable limp and a white cane peering very hesitantly at the display boards above them
• found another train 15 minutes sooner than I expected which gave my slow self just enough time to get there
• determined the platform
• found the lifts to get there (I'd only ever used the stairs at this station but there are a lot of them so with my ankle as it is today I wanted the lifts)
• worried I was on the wrong platform because I didn't think the next train expected there could be out of the way in time
• heard an announcement minutes before my train saying it was now coming in on a different platform)
• got to the right platform (luckily no more lifts were needed)
• got on the train
• found a seat as far as I could get from others (which meant being near the toilet and I guess that was smelly because the one person sitting near me made a point of getting up and closing the door when someone leaving left it open, but I didn't notice anything -- yet another reason to wear a mask!) and
• read the number of very kind replies on my phone

...I was able to feel much more grounded.

So yeah, it went fine. All that stuff happened though. And that's part of what I'd call an incredibly smooth journey. Maybe it's okay that I get anxious and exhausted when traveling or sometimes just considering traveling? It's not as if I'm incorrect in the assessment of the situation that leads me to such anxiety.

I don't want to minimize that just because it all went smoothly.

Anyway I had a great day with my friend and the kids: two of whom have grown so much since I saw them, the littlest of whom didn't even exist the last time I saw her family and she's already a year old! It was great.

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.