24 April, 2020
I’m so tired. My grief has been cyclical. Sometimes I’m fine, sometimes I’m happy, sometimes I’m devastated, sometimes I’m guilty, sometimes I’m empty. Past trauma has complicated things. I’ve been backsliding. I’d worked so hard. I’d gotten so much healing done. I’d gotten so much growing done. How did so much slip away so fast?
It’s been slowing down, lately, though. I’ve settled into it. I deal with things as they come, and am prepared for the next things that come.
I have new aches and pains. Staying sedentary isn’t good for my joints. Sitting all day has actually been worse on my knees, though I’m not sure why; I assume it’s because, since they subluxate so easily (hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome) and depend on my muscles to help in keeping them stable, not using the muscles nor exercising them makes it worse.
On the other hand (literally), my wrists and knuckles have been having a harder time than usual, lately. I’ve been typing a lot as my university’s switched to synchronous online learning, and despite my setup I’ve been encountering a lot more pain, including nerve pain. They don’t exactly subluxate more often or anything; rather, of of their new tricks is sometimes to *pop* and it sends static tingles up the affected nerve in my arm. My knuckles are constantly red.
I can pull on my finger and pop my hand off my wrist. My fiance doesn’t understand why it’s so hard for me to help him in the kitchen, or why I take so long.
I used to take pride in my strength. I was the second-best in my grade in elementary school (US) at doing pull-ups in gym class. I carried heavy loads. People came to me for help in opening jars.
I try to open a jar now and all my fingers disassemble themselves at the joint.
I miss climbing trees. I wish I weren’t in the city. I’m not meant for this. I want to be somewhere it feels *good* to be isolated. My dad grew up in an old mining town, way up in the mountains in the rural US. His mom made bread from scratch every week, measuring things out with nothing but her hands and eyes, and it turned out amazing every time. His grandparents – my great-grandparents – had a farm, chickens and all. Dad used to work on it. I got my love of that from him. He misses his mountains, too.
I can’t work a proper farm with a body like mine, not any more. I spent part of a summer helping with tree conservation at a national park, going down the rows, checking sprouts and pulling weeds and pulling up and cutting out old roots in our way. But a small garden of my own? I need that. Not something on a balcony or a windowsill or indoors, but something on my own plot of land, with a rotating selection of crops laid out optimally, a compost pile, and a couple of fruit trees. Something that opens up into a deep, thick forest with wild berry bushes. I used to live on land that had wild raspberry bushes, and for a number of years I’d go out with my dad to pick them. We’d come back with piles of the stuff, and I’d make pies and tarts and there’d be so much I’d have no other option but to make preserves with the rest. 50/50 berries to sugar, no extra ingredients needed.
I miss canning.
My tinnitus has gotten worse lately, probably because of the amount of time I’ve been spending wearing headphones, even though I almost always use the lowest volume setting I can get away with. Gotten to the point that I can feel the crackling on my ear hairs sometimes when I have them on. Learned a good trick, though: cover each ear with the palm of your hand, with your fingers facing the back of your head so they’re touching the softer part where your skull meets your neck, then put your index finger on your middle finger and push so that it slides off to thump that spot. Keep doing that for about twenty seconds and it helps for some people to get it to go away for a little bit. I’m getting new headphones tomorrow, though, which should help. The ones I’ve been using are cheap and old.
I’m scared. My roommate (flatmate, as my fiance says) keeps going in and out, and her girlfriend’s often over. She says she tries to get out of the house at least once a day. Not sure if she’s properly social distancing, but she’s not doing what we’re doing when she gets back, which is basically a decontamination process that involves immediately taking off all our clothes and sanitizing our hands and phones and washing up. It’s more than a little frustrating. She says she’s social distancing, but I don’t think she even has a face mask… Not to mention, it’s often difficult to do social distancing in a city, even if everyone’s trying, which they’re often not.
I don’t know. I’m tired. I want this to be over. I see what’s going on over in the UK and the US and I despair. Hungary is now openly a fascist dictatorship, and the US isn’t far off if we don’t get our act together. Scotland’s close to putting its money where its mouth has been and going independent, especially after that England-only supply decision disaster, and I wish it all the best, and a full EU membership status. I’d love for Wales and Northern Ireland to follow suit. Anyone that can, honestly. Of the English themselves, I hope they get a halfway decent government soon.
Trump can suck the shit out of my ass like the bottomfeeder he is.
Dr Kristopher Lovell 