i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

cut for medical stuff around body function

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I know my body is doing the best it can, but.

so ... last week I was talking with one of my support team (not quite a therapist) about some of the intrusive thoughts I get

(like, uh, being intensely painfully aware that Yahtzee won't live forever ... every single time I look at him, not just occasionally)

and how it had the same feeling -- if thoughts can be felt, not so much emotion as, like, quality? -- as the nightly thought when I was a kid that I absolutely HAD TO say "good night I love you see you in the morning" or else bad things would happen (not guaranteed just a lot more likely) and it would definitely be my fault

and he looked at me and said "I'm not an expert but... have you considered that you might be somewhere on the OCD spectrum?"

(he may not have used the word spectrum, but he pointed out that humans inherently tend to be superstitious critters, and there's a range between "wearing lucky socks" and extreme clinical OCD, and while maybe I don't have enough disruption to be diagnosed as OCD, I'm still somewhere on that range, kind of parallel to how I'm maybe somewhere on the autism spectrum but too masked for diagnosis)

and my kneejerk was that I don't have enough of a germ phobia (even though I know damn well that is not a required element)

but second reaction was thinking about the persistent suicidal ideation I sometimes get, and the thing where I was literally unable to *not* pick at hangnails and dry skin (I could literally be telling myself "stop that you'll just make it worse" and still be doing it), and the only reason I stopped is my fingers don't have enough flexibility (and also sometimes I use tools even though they're less efficient and more damaging), and --

There's a lot of vagueness and overlap between various possible explanations, e.g. intrusive thoughts aren't necessarily OCD indicators; it could be depression and/or anxiety. With depression and anxiety and ADHD and maybe-autism all in the mix, figuring out my brain is like putting together jigsaw puzzles where the pieces of several images have been mixed together and there's no lids, so this set of pieces forms a bird but it's not clear which puzzle it belongs to, and this hole doesn't seem to have a match but either I just haven't found it yet or it's totally lost and I can't know which until everything is put together (only there are infinitely many puzzle pieces so they won't ever be fully assembled), and this other piece doesn't look like it belongs with the already assembled bits but I can't tell if that's because there's one more puzzle in the mix than I thought or just I haven't gotten to the correct spot of the known puzzles...

mrgfhhh. can I just be a cat instead???

Too spoonless to tell this in any entertaining way, but I seem to be having gallbladder issues. Two separate attacks of very severe pain just under the breastbone and radiating to the back, rather like I was being impaled by a spear.

Went to doctor today; she wants me to get an ultrasound, but in the meantime avoid fatty foods, like, y'know, eggs and cheese and peanut butter and ice cream and pizza and stuff.

...all of which I now really want...

Whine.

Also I somehow got extremely saladed out a few weeks ago and have been very resistant to salads since then, which ... really doesn't help.

some of this c/p from discord b/c lazy

I.

me: wanna knit something
also me: has no actual motivation
also also me: lemme browse rav, that'll fix it!

II.

[isabeau] me: when $aide gets back I'll have her get me out some yarn to play with
$aide: gets back
me: stares numbly at reddit
[other person] Some days are low energy reddit days and that's okay.
[isabeau] yeah but 2020 has had about 600 such days...

III.

[isabeau] ...I had my aide make me up a margarita & have not had more than two sips. it is sitting on my desk and just ... sitting there, lol. ah, Executive Dysfunction v2020, how fun you are.

IV.

my AC island is still full of halloween.

I have done barely any yarncraft

my netflix queue is full but I've watched maybe one thing? in the last month

V.

half of my aides are going home for winter break, as is my roommate

I have a few replacements lined up but not enough

do not have overnight-stay replacement. really really don't want my mom staying over.

strongly tempted to just stay alone even though that's stupid and also unsafe.

VI.

brainweasels say all of above is proof I suck

not sure they're wrong

I saw a thing the other day that was basically this: if you're feeling tired and crappy and unproductive, it's not a moral failing, it's covid brain. Your brain is in (extended slow-burn) survival mode, so it shunts effort (and blood flow and stuff) away from things like higher-level thinking / planning / etc and towards staying alive, and if you're feeling less creative it's because your brain is putting all your creative muscles towards staying alive, and if you're sleeping more it's partly because your brain is burning energy much faster than usual. Etc.

I just realized: combine that with my realization a few months ago that I've basically been living with impending uncertainty for years, much longer than the pandemic, and that aide stress/uncertainty and health stress/uncertainty has probably been fucking with my brain

and you get a major dose of "why the fuck am I surprised I can't write"

Especially since typing is hard (can't physically access keyboard for touch typing, computer typing is done by mouse and onscreen keyboard which is painfully slow, phone and tablet typing is done with thumbs and a lot of typos (and autocarrot) and is faster but more prone to error) and ... ... yeah.

I mean, I'm also getting fewer ideas, definitely fewer "this story is basically writing itself" / "this story is requiring that I write it, and won't leave me alone until I do" stuff, but it's not that I don't have any (I was going back through my "fic I'm not writing" tag and found fairly recent stuff I'd forgotten about). It's just they don't get written. Or I write the sort of thing I call a fic sketch where it's not really fleshed out (or even necessarily grammatical) but has the important bits, but don't have the energy to go back and finish it.

But.

If, in survival mode, brains are less good at thinking and being creative--

--and if I've been in survival mode pretty much for years--

--well, *fuck*.

so earlier tonight I was going to write up this thing about how getting to see my mom's new (rental) house today was giving me Teh Sadz because I likely won't ever have a house and normally I'm okay with just an apartment (and i don't really need more because not a family) but it's just part of this Life that I expected as a kid that I would have -- to a five year old (especially growing up in the early 80s) that's just the way things are, you grow up and get a job and get married and get a house and kids and maybe a dog, but the only part of that I have is the dog, and the reality of moving into a new house is not the same as the romanticized Hollywood fantasy of moving into a new house, but I still ...

--but I just could. not. keep my eyes open. At all. It was only like 8:30, which is a time I'm usually in bed but nowhere close to going to sleep, but I just couldn't; and I tried listening to an audiobook but couldn't keep track; and I so I listened to music instead while drifting in and out, really more out than in. And now it's 2am and I'm half awake again and my lungs feel oddly heavy like I'm about to get sick, and I *really don't want to get sick* argh

hoping it's just "feeling slightly off because weird sleep schedule" and not because getting sick

it would also be nice if I could actually get solidly to sleep, not the in-out thing...

I wrote a poem?

Not the white collar sestina nonsense, just

poem

of me

( brainweasels n stuff )

The last couple of days have been ... miserable.

Yesterday I got tired of my iPad (which I mostly use in bed) nagging me about updating the iOS, so I backed it up and then tried to update. Which required updating iTunes first, rebooting the computer, and *then* doing the iPad update.

...except it wouldn't. It stalled out and gave error 2003, and meanwhile the iPad was stuck in recovery mode, therefore unusable.

Cue google searches and various unsuccessful attempts to get it working.

Three hours later, literally in tears, I called Apple support, who said that 2003 was an odd error message (it was in the range of USB errors but not one of the usual ones. He suggested rebooting the computer ... which of course decided that was the perfect time to apply updates ... and when it finally got in my control and I went into iTunes, updating of course still didn't work, so he said maybe try a different cord, or else bring it in to an Apple Store for help.

...the closest Apple Store (I have no idea why my autocarrot is capitalizing that) is in Sacramento.

I didn't have a spare cord.

My dad probably did, but wouldn't have been able to come until today. And while some usage of the iPad is optional (reading, Netflix, games, etc) i really really need music to help me get to sleep, since it gives me something other than brainweasels to listen to. And boy howdy were the 'weasels active, because of how "I" fucked up the iPad.

At this point -- around 8pm, well after I'm usually in bed (because it's way more comfortable than sitting upright) -- I was pretty much in meltdown, and hating myself for it, because it’s such a first world problem and most people sleep perfectly fine without iPads. Not that hating myself did anything helpful like stop me from crying.

My evening aide offered to have her ... er, gentleman friend ... run out to Walmart (which is about 25min drive away but it's open 24/7) and pick up some cords. I was desperate enough to say yes; and of course I couldn't go to bed because I needed to be able to sync up the iPad once the cords got here, and there was a good chance it would require my Apple ID password.

Hour (and some chocolate) later, cords arrive. And they work. But at this point the iPad is fucked up enough that it required full reset to factory defaults and then restoring from backup.

OS installs correctly. Backup requires my password, then starts ...

...time remaining: one hour.

:sob:

I finally got to bed at 11:30, and then had to do all the stupid "new"-iPad setup before I could get to the music. Plus I was in post-meltdown crap mode that "naturally" included suicidal ideation and then hating myself for getting that upset over a stupid tablet.

It was maybe 2:30 before I got completely to sleep.

...meanwhile, to add insult to injury, the yarn I was using for the newest project wasn't enough to complete the project, and the sensible thing is to start over with a different green yarn that I have, but I really just wanted more of the yarn I was already using. So I did end up ordering it today as a reward for surviving yesterday. It’s stupid but at least the thing I’m making will be cute. (its a cactus bunny. I am in a cactusy mood.(

Today hasn’t been fun. I’m more tired than usual, and kind of in meltdown hangover. And not all of my games are behaving; one is treating me like a new player, and I tried logging in with the various sets of passwords I use for mobile games in combination with the three emails I might have used but nothing worked. It’s not one I spent money on, so I could theoretically just start over, but losing progress and starting over is just ... discouraging.

(And there’s one game I still miss that flat out won’t work in os11 because the app is too old and un~updated. There’s a different app with a similar concept but instead of being a daily free puzzle it’s done as packs, some free and some that you buy, and it’s just less fun that way. Sulk.)

Ugh.

Too much shit going down right now.

CW: pet death (not mine)

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and on top of all the aide shit (for those not on my access list, short version = getting into a screaming fight sunday that included lies and gaslighting and emotional manipulation (incl textbook DARVO) on my aide's part, subsequently firing said aide and changing locks and dealing with emotional rollercoaster aftereffects) I'm just

a complete mess

(understatement)

It's kind of weird / disturbing / perplexing just how hollow and unemotional I'm feeling about Advent and Christmas this year, at least religiously. It's sort of the same disillusionment I've been having with Easter the past few years: the message is "the world is depressing and full of sin but ~yay Jesus~" and the first part is still true but I'm so not feeling the second half. There's only so many times that you can be told (twice a year, even) that Hope Is Coming and have nothing happen but the same dreary everyday reality, before you stop believing.

I think it says something that lighting Hanukkah candles this last week was more fulfilling than the advent concert my church did.