Oh Look, Another Insomniac Shitpost

I can’t tell if tonight’s insomnia is just another episode in a three week-long saga of broken nights and lost days or whether it is special in its own right because I’m anxious about a visit to the doctor’s surgery tomorrow morning. And it doesn’t really matter to my sleeplessness which category of insomnia it belongs to because the basic function of the insomnia remains the same – I can’t get to sleep.

I’ve suffered from problems with sleep since I was young when inexpressible, incomprehensible anxieties twisted my mind into shapes of wide awake and worry. All the years between then and now have brought effusive means of expression and a fair amount of comprehension yet anxiety doesn’t actually care whether you can describe it in eloquent terms: it’s primal, it’s murky, it’s emotive and all the thesauruses in all the world can’t get to the roots and dissolve the fucking stuff.

Nor can fighting the fact of anxiety-driven insomnia induce sudden, satisfying sleep so I accept it as best I can and find things to occupy my mind which are not entirely shaped by worry. Except they are, because I wouldn’t need to be occupying my mind at fuck o’clock in the morning if I were not hoping to prevent it running off into anxiety overload. I’d be asleep. Sleep may not be immune to anxiety but at least it is a form of anxiety with the decency to throw some Freudian jokes and general wish fulfilment into the mix.

The doctor thing? Blood tests and sputum samples to see if I’m just responding slowly to recent antibiotics or if something unusual (for my already far from usual body) is going on inside. And now back to some or other distraction which will hopefully keep me distracted at least until the seagulls start to yell like drunken wankers amazed they’ve reached another morning.

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It’s All Erroneous Information

D’oh! In marble format.

You’ve experienced instant regret, right? That feeling of having decided upon a course of action that immediately reveals itself to be an idiotic choice which leaves you no further option but to then choose remorse, regret, rueing and other words beginning with ‘R’ that denote wishing you’d made an entirely different choice.

I made several choices earlier, only one of which is causing such instant regret. Showering was a good choice because I was full of stink after days and days of bed. Trimming my beard was also a good choice because I was full of itchy hair face after days and days of bed. Coming into town…

…aha, and now we come to it. I really should have quit while I was ahead. But, you know, when showering and trimming your beard face doesn’t kill you, you can imagine you’re on a roll. I wasn’t on a roll; I’d reached the limit of my capabilities. Silly, silly man. And now I shake and feel dizzy and want to fall over into a giant vat of dead. Please can I? Please, please!

Oh well, if nothing else I have learnt that I’m still rather unwell and ought to call my doctor later to see them about the fact that I’m still rather unwell. You live and learn. Or you die and you don’t.

Encore Une Fois

Je suis fatigué. Which is French for ‘slightly misspelt, tired Jesus’. No, not Jesus: me. I’m the fatigued one. Because, you know, buying groceries is exhausting and requires an entire day of recovery. If you’re rubbish. Which I am.

Pizza is a good food for someone who keeps falling asleep all the time. It doesn’t matter if you eat it cold or not cold, and it doesn’t judge you for not eating it all in one go. It’s like a relaxed Italian friend who wants you to carbload in your own sweet time and maybe introduce you to his sister.

It doesn’t seem like I’m missing much, in terms of blazing August weather. Inside is dry, which is more than can be said for the outside of this month. British Summer Time – If it were a private company it could be sued for malpractice, false advertising and for not being a Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwich.

Taste the rainbow of fruit flavours.

Call Of Doody

While I’m not convinced my antibiotics have improved the current flare-up much these last two weeks I have at least managed to go outside today. To a grocery store, no less. A small matter to most but, given I’ve struggled finding the breath and energy to reach the bathroom recently, it was a big deal to me. The fact that I did so today after a complete lack of sleep last night and that I also did the washing up when I got home elevates it from big deal to supermassive big deal, actually.

And now I’m back in bed, safe in the knowledge that there is food in the cupboards and the fridge. I’m watching Star Trek: Discovery (Season 2) and sniggering because someone just said ‘duty’ in that American way which makes it sound like ‘doody’. Tee here. It’s been a while since I sniggered at anything so this may also be an achievement.

I have to take each moment as it comes. Good advice for life in general but usually life is too full of activity to do so without a concerted effort. Not mine, my life is full of ow and coughing and whinging about the ow and the coughing in blog format. Which is to say that my life isn’t very full of activity really, just the side-effects of having a chronic health condition. Two, in fact. Maybe I get a prize for having two conditions? No, not more ow, thanks all the same.

Barking

Hello there, ominously bleak-looking, apparitional dog, I’m Steve.

Hi, I’m your depression.

Oh, I’m depressed again, eh? Still, it’s nice that you’re a dog. I like animals.

Why wouldn’t you be depressed? You’re a week and a half into treatment for your latest respiratory flare-up and the meds aren’t doing anything. And by the way, I’m not a real dog, I’m an anthropomorphic projection of your shadow, a piece of Churchillian word-play.

So you don’t want this stick?

I didn’t say that. That’s MY stick, anyway.

I’m not well enough to throw it. Or take you for a walk.

Like I said, I’m not a real dog. I’ll just chew the stick a bit to relax you.

How does you chewing a stick relax me?

It helps convince you I’m playful rather than aggressive. Plus, if I’m chewing a stick I’m not chewing your leg off.

Metaphorically?

Now you’re getting it.

Um, so, not to be rude or anything but, how do I make you go away?

None taken.

I didn’t say “No offence.”

I took it as implied.

Ok. And…?

Best not to fight my presence, that jut wastes extra energy you already need for coping with being unwell and being depressed. Accept I’m here, let me chew that stick and the time will simply fly by.

Fly? Really?

No, not really, but what do you want me to say, that it doesn’t matter if you accept me or fight me, I’m here and adding drag factor to your already slovenly recovery? I’d be quite mean to say that, wouldn’t I?

Spose. Are you even here when I’m asleep?

Not unless you dream about canine archetypes of low mood.

Not normally. Earlier I was dreaming about a cosmic life force threatening the gigantic spacecraft of which I was a crew member.

Scary.

No, it was fun.

Go back to sleep then.

Ok. Look after my stick while I’m sleeping.

Arf arf.

Just Say Meh

I did an outside today. Did you see me? I was the one looking really out of breath and muttering about not wanting to do an outside. But I had to do an outside to pick up some meds. I added on some sitting down trying to get my breath back and ordering someone to make me lunch. In a restaurant, I didn’t just demand food from some random stranger on the street. Although I have done that before. Just do drugs, kids. Er, don’t say no, I mean.

And now I’m doing an inside, which is my preferred side while I’m feeling so crappy and unwell. Of bed. I am of bed. Again. When I can afford to motorise my bed I shall be of bed all the time. Except for the going to the toilet times. I’m not going to shit in my own bed as a protest against the Brexits. That would be as stupid as voting for a Brexits when the people saying they are going to deliver a Brexits have no fucking clue how to deliver a Brexits and thus plunge the country into fiscal ruin. Because of bendy bananas.

Medicine and toothpaste and Lucozade. Isn’t my life exciting? Oh and the restaurant menu claimed they were selling ‘feel good food’ and yet I have not made a miraculous recovery since eating my lunch. Lying bastards. I bet they haven’t even been to medical school. It was just food. Also, when will people learn that unless you’re Scottish, food and good do not rhyme? Just do drugs, kids. I mean it.

That Cuprinol Man Can Sod Off

Has anybody mislaid a truck load of depression and pissed offness? There’s a lot of it in my flat right now and I’m sure it’s been stolen and dumped here by miscreant mood fences. That’s fences in the sense of those who handle stolen goods rather than slatted wooden barriers coated with creosote to make them smell of long lost summers.

Oh hang on, apparently all this pissed offness and depression is mine. Don’t remember asking these moods to call round but now they’re here they seem to have pretty much made themselves at home. Which must be why my fridge is becoming worryingly empty, right? Unwanted emotions, allegedly invited in by the part of my brain that would rather ignore ill health when it regularly crops up. Incapable body, not keen on the supermarket experience.

Not keen on the outside world experience. Or on dealing with other humans. This last is frustrating because I’m also bored and there are only so many games of imaginary solo Jenga a guy can play before that boredom swells up to the proportions of a heffalump. Just checked for woozles: none in evidence, which is a relief.

Oh well, I’ll just go back to sleep like I’ve been doing for 83% of the last eight days, shall I? Wake me up when September begins.