Crow Puns And Other Bullshit

on the advice of my therapist, I reached out to the friend who kinda replaced me. Got an actual response, we chitchatted for a while. My foot is in the door and she's receptive. I don't think we'll ever be quite how we were, but as long as we're still friends, I'm satisfied honestly. Now to just keep chattering at her since she invited it <3

also therapist agreed my behaviors with food sounded akin to addiction, what with the secret eating and the shame and stuff. but it's an awkward addiction because unlike other things you can't exactly cut out food entirely. you HAVE to eat, and you have to eat varying amounts depending on the situation or day or energy spent, and you're surrounded constantly by temptation to eat different things that you shouldn't. it's stressful. but hearing someone who deals with addiction and eating disorders point blank agree with my assessment of the situation and provide feedback was very comforting. i'm not being overly dramatic. it IS a thing. it's not just in my head.

 

struggled to focus today, didn't get much done. DID go grocery shopping tho and got healthy food stuffs that i like and will eat, lots of fruit and some stuff that's easy to make. very very fucked up tho afterwards. Just. Hours later and I still feel really icky. My bp is low but it's not Danger low whatsoever, i just feel like fucking trash. pain flareup as well. not having a good time honestly.

 

my sleep schedules been fucky the last few days. i had a big adrenal episode that kept me up all night, then had a crash and sleep day the next day where i just couldn't stay conscious... and every night since then i've just. not wanted to go to bed. i eventually lay down at like 2-3am and then rise fairly early but. i did that today as well and i don't think i actually napped...? or if i did i genuinely dont fucking remember doing it.

i don't mind staying up, there's nowhere to be and nothing specific to do. ive got therapy tomorrow and an alarm set for that, and the day after is my appointment at the clinic but everything else is just asynch classes i need to focus on. focus has been another beast entirely. not much focus. we are a focus poor society of 1. i think today's lack of focus and feeling Off is thanks to my period starting up, which i only belatedly remembered when i felt a cramp despite... having pre-symptoms for days now. and being on birth control. and knowing specifically when around im gonna start bc of that. nope, always a fucking surprise.

so here i am again, going on 1 am, wide awake, low blood pressure feeling funky, watching booktok compilations on youtube bc i cannot actually function in a coherent manner to be like.. productive in any useful way, but i have absolutely no desire to sleep. gonna try to make myself lay down around 2 at the latest anyway so i don't wind up second winding and staying up all fucking night for no reason.

 

i was up ridiculously late last night from anxiety about a big dr appointment today. did homework and reading for class before finally trying to lay down and... lo and behold i was woken by a phone call from the clinic saying my appointment needed to be rescheduled because my doctor was delivering a baby today. im happy for her, and im happy for the reschedule, but holy christ alive am i tired.

 

feel like I've lost the entire day, but I've got no idea what happened. i was reading some manga after i checked the assignment lists for the week for class and... just lost hours of time. zoned straight out. mood's fluctuating a lot though. not straight up depressed but very distant feeling, which would line up with the zoned out sense. i feel very detached from everyone and everything the last few days, increasingly so. ...dissociation i guess? not the alarming level yet but enough to feel annoying. not really sure how to ground myself out of it.

 

slept 11 hours and woke up with muscle spasms in my legs for some reason, so muscle relaxer time. but. i THINK the dissociation feeling is gone now? i hope? i feel a bit more with it today so far at least, let's try to keep it going.

 

doc says the leg discomfort/aches are likely not caused by the liver but instead the pots, so she told me to up my fluid and salt intake and if it keeps up we'll do labs when i see her on the 13th. so i made myself some shells and cheese with tuna for a quick salt hit. couldn't focus on jack shit yesterday, slowly slowly slowly starting to get work done today tho. generally just feeling... meh? not bad-bad just... not 100%.

 

moved some recycling out of my room. cooked an eggplant, didn't like it much sadly, the aftertaste wasn't the best even with all the yakisoba sauce masking it. might experiment with a different dish in the future but for now. Eh. No thanks. slowly working on classwork. wanna write instead but need to focus. feel like crap physically but what else is new.

vibe is... not great but not terrible either. i just feel bleh. uninspired. unsatisfied. just kinda drifting along... i'm not in therapy right now, not till i contact him asking for an appointment again. we do this occasionally, cutting me loose for a while then gradually going back to work when i start faltering. i wonder how long i'll last this time.

 

had a bit of a flashback induced meltdown earlier, after hours of struggling to focus on a paper that's due tomorrow. I'm still not done with the paper but I'm calmed down now. upset because the flashbacks were brought on because I was on facebook and saw my ex's name where i'd tagged him in a memory like. A decade ago. just seeing his name was enough to set it off. not his picture. his fucking name.

it makes me wonder how much better i'll feel once i get my name changed and have zero ties to him anymore in any way.

 

god i had such intense dreams i woke up paralyzed again. i was a dog. i was a dog and i was going to investigate some kind of paranormal event in a snowy mountain. i had little doggy shoes and a thick warm jacket and eye protection, and a snood for my ears, and i was toting a little trailer by a harness that was an emergency shelter bed i could curl up into if it got too bad and wait for rescue. it was gonna be in the negatives and it was going to be really really really hard to get to the top of the place and people kept asking if i could do it and if i'd be okay. i just kept wagging my tail.
...then suddenly i was a human trying to do the same thing. but i couldnt find the snowboots that would work best with me for the situation, and people kept making fun of me saying i was just trying to get out of exercising instead of approaching this terrifying paranormal thing in the dark in the snow at the top of a fucking mountain.

 

think i recognized a key issue of why i struggle with food. portion sizes, control, etc.

i like food. like. a lot. i very much am a taurus, i enjoy my creature comforts and among those is Good Flavors. but the thing is, Good Flavors/Textures translates to This Makes Me Happy. and i don't want the happy to stop, so i keep indulging to prolong the happy comfort feeling without even thinking. it's like autopilot. like, i only have successfully stopped autopiloting a ridiculous amount of grubhub (last month was STUPID jfc why did i let myself do that) by removing all the autofilled information so it'd take me longer to do the action and have to stop and think about it the entire time. i'm trying to eat less of what i've got here and i can make do with considerably less, but i get the idea of "this would be tasty/comforting" in my head and i move like an automaton to make something even if i'm not starved. doesn't help that my Hunger sense is broken and only goes off when I'm already crashing and shaky and weak.

so now that i'm aware of it, i'm just. doing the riding the waves thing. indulging in thinking about it, savoring the idea of it, then drinking something instead of indulging in it really. gonna see how long i can stretch till i need supper later, and it's a controlled supper of baked beans and some low fat string cheese on the side. does it make it better or worse that i recognize these things? in some ways it makes me feel incredibly weak willed, that i just... go for it without even pausing. but then i remember: I've got major depression. I've got c-ptsd. I've got chronic illness fucking with my senses. I'm on multiple medications that fuck with my senses too. I've got a lot of stuff stacked against me and this relationship I'm trying to build with food, and I need to give myself a little grace with that in mind.

 

drs appt in the morning, bluh bluh bluh don't wannaaaaaa

 

happy valentines day

slept 12 fucking hours. felt weird and sad so i laid down early and instead of waking up early i slept 12 goddamn hours. aaaand woke up still feeling kind of off. need to do a lot of classwork to catch up because I haven't touched anything yet this week. hmmbleh.

 

weird dreams last night. cant really remember most of it, just that the vibe was v strange. no remnants of the panic spiral from last night aside from a bit of head pressure. got one of the 2 classes i had left done, working on the second one now. excited as fuck to draw afterwards. might be a nice bit of stress relief, honestly.

 

i had some kind of weird ass dream... i was at some kind of expansive theme park and able to get around but kept losing where my brother was (we havent spoken since 2009 when he abruptly refused all contact with everyone so. dunno why he's in this dream at all, we barely knew eachother as it was) and also kept trying to figure out how to get my favorite food i can never get.
and eventually, still lost from the group, i find someone from the park trying to deliver something to me. its a nice grouping of presents from the theme park, including snacks and stuff. when i finally realize its for me he makes me follow him to this big decorative area to receive it properly, but its christmas setup still and suddenly he's dressed as santa while everyone nearby is like "?????? its not christmas?????" but it was beautiful to me and i was kinda in awe as i got my stuff.

then i was going to find my favorite food on special delivery in the park but birds kept stealing it or it kept being infested with something unpleasant... i apparently had figured out how to do it but i woke up before i got my goodies.

 

told my therapist about the Writing Grief thing i signed up to partake of at the college (I mentioned it in the shut-in thread). he said he's enthusiastic about me doing it because it's crossing things I need to work on already with my schooling. still nervous. but... it's more incentive to follow through and do it even if i'm scared.

otherwise... am ouch. am v ouch. pain days suck.

 

feeling kind of bleh today. dreams were intense but disjointed and disrupted. the only main thing i can remember is at the tail end i was in india and i got bit by a snake i accidentally disturbed. it was def venomous bc my hand started swelling up and i got sick, but nobody would believe me. i was being treated like this complainer/like i was being dramatic while my hand swelled up like a softball and i panicked. apparently dream meaning wise it means "Being bitten by a snake in a dream is a very common motif. It is a warning from your subconscious that there are issues you need to deal with."

which. tracks lol. i've got a lot of shit i'm not properly dealing with or working on. frustratingly so. maybe this is my brain going "ok stupid you know the problems, you are keenly aware of the problems, fucking do something already."

 

stocked up on drinks. water, energy drinks, diet soda. should last a while. but. blegh. no energy. no energy at all. discomfort. suffering. couldn't fucking breathe or function after i'd finished at the store, had to tell roomie we'd need to hit the other place another day instead of stacking up by surprise. because i just. cannot functionally handle two stores in one go most days anymore. part of me thinks i should make another dr appt to talk to her about this because like... its definitely gotten worse.

 

was gonna go shopping today, didn't because roomie didn't get around to replying to me when I said Yes to her asking this morning till... twenty minutes before the fucking store closed in the evening. gonna go tomorrow morning instead. did manage to get my trash out, move cat litter upstairs, and clean kricket's box. managed to get a little homework done. woefully behind though. again. because i can't get myself to focus on work at all. didn't even do anything exciting tbh, just zoned out. the day kind of passed in a blur. a painful blur, bc of my hands, but a blur nontheless. made a dr appt for a few weeks from now to talk about symptoms of the POTS getting worse + pain issues since my last dr appt i didn't get to actually see my GP I got sent in to someone else at the last second bc they were swamped and overbooked somehow bc i guess some appointments ran over time. not sure what to expect but. eh.

looking into derealization more, because that fits my situation a bit more than depersonalization. when i get my panicky episodes i start feeling like nothing is real, nobody i'm speaking to is real, the world outside of my room doesn't exist, it's all fake, and everything I say or do is just going into a nonexistant void where nobody will ever find me. which sounds dramatic and stupid but in the moment it's terrifyingly easy to believe. even seeing other people or doing things like shopping or riding the bus i still feel it off and on. sometimes it's just easier to cope and ignore it than not. like right now, i feel like nothing's real and nothing matters, but i'm not like... having a breakdown about it. i'm calm enough i might sleep soon actually. it's a weird juggling sort of thing.

still debating whether i should continue therapy or not. my meds doctor wants me in weekly therapy for my own well being, but at the same time like... what am i supposed to really do? if i'm not getting better/more functional and am just kinda stuck in the same position over and over again, should i even bother going still? is it time to find someone else and gamble on if i'll get along with someone new at all? or just keep with what's worked so far and try to stretch myself into a new direction? i've got all these tools but i'm still miserable. i can't tell if i'm just not working hard enough or if i'm just broken enough the work doesn't matter.

plan for tomorrow is to wake up, work on some classwork, go grocery shopping, come home and rest, do more homework. maybe finish that shitposty smut oneshot i started writing and get it posted. it's reached the smut finally, after 7.5 pages of lead up and work setting it up, and it's not meant to be anything deep or too interesting because as i said: it started from an idea i got from a fucking shit post. i don't even know if the characters are properly written outside of the ones i usually write, because i've not actually watched the anime aaaaaand i missed the entire Middle of the fucking manga because i only really know the beginning and where i started reading weekly on the way towards the end a few years ago now. i own it. it's on my shelf. but i sure as shit haven't been able to get myself to read it, like everything else, because my fucking brain won't let me. which is an issue in itself. i can read when i make myself do it. i can even quite enjoy it. i'm not AS fast as i used to be but i'm still quite quick, and i parse the information well. but i don't have the willpower to sit down and make time and make myself read, not even manga. i have a bunch of novels i've gotten that im dying to tuck into as well. nope. not a sentence. i haven't even really been drawing lately, i tried this weekend and saved none of it because i wasn't happy with the results at all. stiff and miserable and dead. disconnected.

i don't even know why i'm updating here aside from getting my thoughts in order as i go to bed. it's easier for me to type than write, because i can get my thoughts down much quicker and easier. maybe it's a signal i should type my journal entries and print them out or something instead of just hand writing, but hand writing is good exercise for my fingers and hands so. eh. idk. who knows. i sure as shit don't.

i wonder if I'll dream again. if i'll actually sleep well tonight or not. i feel like i'm going to be going to sleep with an occupied mind even after brain dumping here, but i can't really help it. i feel pulled in a dozen ways at once but no progress is being made. no differences, no changes. stuck in the mud but still somehow making progress, even if it's invisible to me. i feel hopeless and full of wonder, and nothing is real. it's a very strange sensation.

... im gonna go to bed before i start talking myself in circles and getting worked up on the nothing is real feeling. everyone i know is offline and unable to talk with me, so there's nothing to actually combat those feelings with currently, and historically that doesn't wind up leading to a good night once i focus too much on that.

 

i am in. so much pain. jesus fucking christ. i slept like dogshit all night, POTS symptoms and pain kept me up all night with minimal sleep. hot flashes, cold flashes, ColdHot, pain, throbbing legs, constantly having to pee. you name it. jesus fuck i hate nights like this ow ow ow ow ow i just want to Exist.