Stressed, Uncomfortable, Nervous...

I don't want advice about this stuff or for anyone to tell me what to do (I feel like I've had enough of that lately and it stresses me out), although I don't mind comments. I'm not looking for any one to feel sorry for me either. I'm just putting this out here because it happened Wednesday evening and I feel like expressing it to an extent.

As some people know (and some people don't), I have occasional seizures, as a side effect of another health issue I had about 15 years ago. Hard to believe my stroke happened that long ago now, but then again, not really, because time flies faster and faster.

I'm not going to get into an elaborate amount of detail abut my seizures and related factors, but I will say I can usually tell less than a minute before one is about to happen, so I can at least sit down on the floor.

But then afterwards, I don't know exactly what happened (I mean I know I had a seizure but I don't remember the part right after that involves getting up off the floor, walking into a different room and so on). This time I think I was even more confused than the last few times. I was confused about what time it was and how long ago the seizure happened (although that's usually the case). I had trouble finding my phone (it was just on my bed which is where I often keep it). I had trouble figuring out how to use my phone, how to find the contact info on my phone, what to press to make a phone call (later I saw that I had sent Darryl two little random emojis on facebook messaging which might have been me trying to use my phone but being confused). So I felt more confused (and for a longer time) than I usually do after a seizure. I feel like it took me at least 20 minutes to figure out how to use the phone.

I had been upset, stressed and sad on Tuesday. I then felt somewhat better on Wednesday, but still sad. Even though I've been in menopause for about a year or two now, it felt somewhat similar to a variation on PMS, which I haven't had in quite a while.

Then shortly before the damned seizure happened, it suddenly got substantially worse. I started to feel guilty about my FB Wall Posts/personal blog post from Tuesday, my heart started racing a bit, I felt very unnaturally negative and off-filter and as if I was on the brink of a panic attack. I couldn't make it go away and it was getting worse. It was very uncomfortable (mentally more so than physically). I thought about lying down because I didn't know what else to do. First I was going to pee, but then while on the toilet, the sensation I have right before a seizure came over me. I quickly wiped, flushed, moved into my computer room, sat down where I usually sit down there and had the very uncomfortable out-of-control sensation as if my neck is suddenly twisting itself to one side (the right side) and in my mind, I'm randomly sitting on my computer chair (even though I'm actually sitting on the floor) and seeing some random cartoon-ish images. I remember seeing a cartoon chicken.

Next thing I know, I'm in my bedroom, looking for my phone, and after finding it, having trouble figuring out anything about it for quiet a while. I was confused with words, which happens for a while after one of my seizures. I finally managed to call my mom about a minute before midnight (I know she stays up late). But then after we got off the phone, I ended up calling her back again, because I then felt a sore lump on the right back of my head, saw two red marks on the left side of my neck (probably/hopefully just scratches?), and saw that I had bit the inside bottom of my lip. I am not sure how any of those things happened, especially the lump on the back of my head, because last I knew, I was sitting on the floor. Maybe I somehow bumped my head into a door or a wall after I got up. The lump on the back of my head and the scratches on the left side of my neck make me uncomfortable and nervous since I'm not sure exactly what caused them. It sucks not knowing how something happened. It causes me to think a bit about my damned stroke.

The seizure itself also makes me feel uncomfortable and nervous because it's only been a tiny bit more than a month since the last one I had. The last one was October 7, three days after I got my latest Covid vaccine. Normally I don't have seizures anymore near that close together. For a while, I was only having one or two a year. Not one in October and another one in November. Maybe this has something to do with the latest Covid vaccine, because I remember feeling low energy, down and oddly out of it for several days after I got that (more mentally out of it than physically out of it, which I'd not experienced to that extent after one of my previous vaccines). I'm repeating myself again here, but it's bothersome because I don't think I've ever had only about a month before the last seizure. I certainly don't want my seizures to start getting worse or more frequent.

I suppose it could have something to do with hormones or stress. Despite trying not to mentally overreact too much about the election, (not that I'm ignoring it, but I didn't want to escalate my stress into some sort of toxicity) perhaps the disturbing fact that Trump won kicked in more about a week later, plus which some stressful seizure pill oriented paperwork I've been trying to deal with that has to do with health insurance suddenly telling me I might not be eligible for the pills I've been taking for years being largely covered by insurance, so I might have to switch to different generics and deal with different side effects and that's very upsetting to me, because I remember what some of my previous pills side effects were like.

Anyway, apparently it's just been one of those bothersome weeks and hopefully I feel better tomorrow. And hopefully everyone else who is overly stressed out or upset feels better too (but without ignoring real issues).

in less than one day...

A face-focused rant (that nobody should read except for me - but for some reason, I felt the need to write it) :

Not a fun day so far, although hopefully I can somehow manage to improve it. I woke up with uncomfortably puffy, swollen, itchy eyes (not the inside of my eyes; but the eyelids and the area underneath my eyes). It was probably caused by my eye cream, although I've been using the same eye cream for years, because it's been successful, but maybe they changed their ingredients or maybe my annoying skin suddenly developed a new allergic reaction or something.

When something unexpectedly unlikable happens, my mind has a tendency to feel like it's my fault and like I did something wrong and then after that, if it's anything body/skin related, I start worrying it might be the sign of a serious health issue.

Part of the reason for that is because I too frequently follow the accidental error system of looking up health-oriented stuff online and then I end up mentally inundated with seriously scary possibilities.

So I woke up with swollen, itchy eyes and then I ended up worrying that I had some form of Periorbital Edima (mainly because a guy's eye in an online photo seemed to resemble what's going on with my eyes), which has all kinds of different causes and effects, some of them not very serious, some of them very serious (allergies, skin disorders, kidney issues, heart issues, and something called periorbital cellulitus which is a serious skin condition caused by infection and inflammation of the eyelid and the skin around the eyes, which may require emergency treatment if symptoms last beyond two to three days).

But I think suddenly developing a serious health-oriented eye condition in less than one day seems to make even less sense than suddenly suffering from some serious eye irritation caused by an eye cream in less than one day, but what do I know? All I know is that I woke up with fucked up looking, uncomfortable feeling, inflamed eyes and I must have somehow brought it upon myself.

Puffy, swollen and uncomfortable eyelids and at the bottom of my eyes too - and it looks like there's water retention there and why? Due to an all natural eye cream I slathered on yesterday? I'm certainly not immune to under eye bags and wrinkles (which is why I use the eye cream), but this is more extreme. The bags look like little water retention balloons.

Part of me wants to buy a new eye cream, but what's the point? All natural facial care products tend to be expensive and lately nothing I use on my skin seems to have good results, so why spend 15 more bucks to fuck up my skin even more with another natural product?

If my eyes still look/feel like this this weekend, then I won't want to leave my house or do anything with anyone else. I'm upset because I feel like in the last few months, I've been trying to do a slightly better job than usual with my diet and my exercise, yet it's one annoying random side effect after another lately. Am I being punished for my past mistakes or is this a part of perimenopause or what? For several months, I had bloated stomach discomfort - then shortly after that finally got better, I had some random vaginal or urinary tract discomfort going on for a week - and today I wake up with swollen eyes and I feel like a bad person.

Also, today I received a poetry rejection less than one day after sending the submission and I'd blame that on my perimenopausal eyelids, except that three of the poems were collaborations, so...

Anyway, time for my apparently pointless exercise routine, then a shower, then making one of my apparently pointless smoothies, then trying to get some stuff done that doesn't involve looking at my own eye area, which is reminding me of nuts stuffed inside a squirrel mouth.

Just one against lots?

I desire to feel super-strongly about someone who is extra-special to me and vice versa but…

It is very hard for me to figure out exactly how I feel about someone and why due to my ongoing difficulties with memory issues related to SPECIFICS.

Mind you, I used to have great memory skills. I didn’t used to easily forget things both little and big.

But these days, since it is so hard for me to remember specific details, if someone starts interacting/communicating with me less than they used to, that might lesson our relationship (no matter how long our relationship has been going on), because I can’t specifically recall all the positive tidbits if they don’t continually happen.

Every week I seem to forget the specifics of many interactions, thus even if you said some fabulously positive and delightful and wonderful things to me last week, I’m back to worrying; wondering why you like me and if you still do. This is really frustrating to me; it is probably frustrating to you too – knowing you’ve expressed oodles of yummy remarks to me and wondering why I still seem doubtful and terribly insecure.

On one hand, I would like my strong FEELINGS to outweigh my worries; on the other hand, I think that people largely create their own feelings. Feelings are not necessarily based on how other people think/feel about you, as much as they are based on your own mind’s perceptions.

So one week you might offer oodles of scrumptious supportive remarks to/about me and it helps me feel utterly great; the next week I forget those words and start to deflate and feel doubtful again.

I wonder if I am someone extra-special to you or just another semi-interesting, semi-casual, semi-new friend who you might not be able to stay attuned to for a very long time due to my ongoing insecurity and other challenges.

Is anyone ever going to desire to adhere to my convoluted brain and stick with me again & again?

***

On a semi-related note (the next day), I sometimes think that I am semi-anti-social, compared to many of my friends, who are very fun sociable people. I tend to be more sociable in writing than I am in person.

And so with a man-friend I feel strongly about who has all kinds of other fun friends too, why would he want/need much more of me? Maybe I'm a draggy inundation of sorts instead of just another fun morsel of a more sizable feast.

Sometimes I'm fine with being by myself; sometimes I'm not. I don't like to watch movies by myself, for example, so I don't. So it was super-duper fun this past weekend to be inside an awesomely large artsy rococo theatre multiple times, seeing lots of darkly delicious, horrific horror movies with a yummy friend to squeeze up against.

Now I want to lie down with him, cuddle up with him, whisper with him, and watch lots more...

***

On another semi-related note, still looking at children’s books for therapy depresses me, stresses me out, and gives me a headache. I’d like to be above & beyond the First Picture Dictionary. I dislike looking at its kid oriented content (and some of the not so hot memories it stirs up in my mind) plus the rather ridiculous level of concentration it still requires from my brain. Words like pinky and index finger and bracelet don't make sense.

I worked on it for about 15 minutes and then felt so depressed/tired that I layed down and took a nap for a couple hours and why the heck not? What else am I going to do?I mean yes there's lots of stuff that I COULD work on, but is any of it really all that essential? Probably not.

I don't think I've ever been this much of a 'what is the point' type person in my life, but I sometimes am now. Sigh.

I wish to be impassioned again.

Marabou Deaths Head

I've been feeling low energy lately and that bothers me on several levels. I've always been a high energy, productive, passionate person, so feeling low energy is not my style and it worries me.

I’ve been frequently overly tired and am starting to think what if I have cancer or something (granted, I can sometimes be some sort of...what's the word? not “nymphomaniac” which suddenly semi-randomly spurted out of my head; not “kleptomaniac” either; probably not maniacal anything, but the word for people with a tendency to exaggerate possible health issues they might have; I don't do that all the time, BUT if I am more frequently than usual experiencing some symptom of physical discomfort, then that also seems to lead to more mental discomfort for me too).

So lately I’ve been thinking, “What if I have cancer?” and “What if I'm pregnant?” and then realizing that I can’t even remember the last time I’ve been to the doctor for a regular physical not to mention a gynecological exam (and why did the word “kleptomaniac” spurt forth again, before my brain got “gynecological”?;) I can hardly remember time/timing at all, but I do know that in more recent year(s), I had so many non-regular hospital/doctor appointments, that the regular visits stopped AND my health insurance changed AND my location changed and I’ve never been to a doctor in my current locale, so…

My over-tiredness made me think of cancer, because I remember my ex-husband telling me about how his first wife (who suddenly died young of cancer) had early symptoms of losing her energy and feeling overly tired. My pregnancy concern is because my stomach seems to be sticking out a little more than usual and feeling a bit oddly uncomfortable too. Is it my stomach or my cervix? I am not entirely sure. Do I need gynecological testing? Who wants to give it to me? (Just kidding and teasing my own sudden frequent infiltration of the “nymphomaniac” word.)

Speaking of teasing and words, this morning I thought about how yesterday my dad was jokingly making fun of someone because he drove past their garage sale sign and they had spelled the word “sale” wrong; they had spelled it “sail'. Even though I didn't say anything about this out loud, I IMMEDIATELY thought something like, “Well what if the person who wrote that sign had a stroke and that's why there spelling is off?” I used to be an excellent speller, but now I have trouble spelling easy little words; for example, the word of that thing you take flight upon at an airline - is it spelled “plane” or “plain"? I think it's “plane” but I'm not sure; I'm never sure. In fact, editing this very blog-style piece of writing, mainly due to spelling reasons, is literally giving me a headache right now. Oftentimes when I am unsure how to spell an easy word, I just switch to a different word (often a bigger word, oddly enough), so at least I have that capability.

Back to my possible new health issues, maybe I have just not been sleeping very well. Maybe I have often been staying up too late and ought to work harder on adhering to a more consistent sleep schedule. In any case, I sure did not stay up too late last night for cripes sake.

I was at my sister's place for several hours yesterday evening (with family members, dinner etc...) and got back to my place a little after 7:00. My other sister and her family checked out my new place for a little bit and then left. I played with Sockeye for a little bit. By the time it was only a little after 8:00, I was feeling really tired. This is nothing new these days. However, despite feeling tired, I usually stay up and work on things until about 2:00 A.M. (sometimes even later), in part because getting things done takes me longer than it used to. So last night I told myself I'd have a cup of coffee and then start working on Margaret’s chapbook for a while. I started drinking that cup of coffee and after just a few sips, I felt so tired that I told myself I would lie down for half an hour or so and then get into my swing of things. I'm not usually a nap taker at all, so this was already unusual for me. I took another sip of coffee and then placed my coffee next to my bed and laid down.

It wasn’t even 9:00 yet when I laid down, but I ended up laying down and resting until after 11:00, STILL felt really tired after that, and so decided that instead of getting up at midnight and then maybe staying up way too late, I was just going to bed for the night. So I did. I meant to bed at 9:00 for fuck sake.

Since I went to bed at 9:00, I was not about to sleep in as late as I usually do, so I got up at about 5:30 in the morning. It was actually quite interesting to get up much earlier than usual (even though I STILL felt tired) because when I first took Sockeye out for a walk, I loved the cool almost autumnal way it felt outside.

While walking Sockeye, I saw this other little disabled creature (I can't think of its name; it's a creature that is very similar in size and shape to a mouse, but has a different kind of mouth). Unlike some people, I like mice and mousy critters. This critter was alive but lying on its back, moving around as if it couldn't get upright on its stomach. I carefully used my leg to shift it upright, but then found out that something was seriously wrong with it, because it swiftly shifted onto its back again; then I realized that it was uncomfortably twitching rather than simply stuck in an unusual position. I made a second attempt to position it upright, but no luck. The creature continued to twitch and I felt strangely sad.

A few minutes later, I took Sockeye back into our home, but then went back outside with my camera and took a few pictures of the twitching creature (only a few, thinking that if someone happened to see me doing so, that might seem rather perverted, or worse yet what if they thought I had smashed the creature and now was taking perverse photos; this is the way my weird mind works sometimes). Interestingly enough, less than a month ago, I took a substantial amount of photos of a dead baby mouse (as did my artsy photographer friend K. who was visiting me for a few days, thus I am not the only one who enjoys unusual photos), but that creature was dead not twitching and about to die.

Less than half an hour later, when I walked back out to look again, it was gone. Perhaps a bird seized it up.

As for me, despite having now been up for more than five hours (whereas I would usually just be getting up at this hour), I have not gotten much accomplished yet today, I am STILL feeling tired, and my head hurts.



P.S. Mole. (Pasta.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

New update: Today will walking Sockeye, he suddenly started rolling on the ground. He is not the type of dog with a tendency to roll around in other dog's shit, so I looked to say what on earth he was rolling upon. It happened to be a dead version of the above mole that I photographed a few days back while it was alive and twitching. Perhaps it was dropped back down to the ground by a huge death's head moth. In any case, I have now found out that my dog likes rolling around upon death rather than rolling around upon shit. No wonder he's my dog.