Eeeeyo

Time for a late night bath after spending AAAAALL day waiting for a delivery that never showed up!! An important delivery too! Not okay.

Sweet dreams from England!

Boiling brain

It's worse than the usual "full of bees". It's storming in there, I can't sit still, intense, panicky anxiety and stress takes over body and mind.

Chachachachaaaanges

Changes are so stressful! I've had a ... not good, but not very bad summer. I've felt lonely and isolated. I've missed Sweden. I've dealt with psychiatrists that did not give a flying flunk about me, my feelings, my experiences and my thoughts. I've mostly been indoors. But I've been with my darling. I've been in love. I've been carefully dreaming a little about the future instead of only trying to shut all thoughts up. I've been feeling hopefull. Now fall is here and it brings storms of change, good change but still stressful because it's change.

It's difficult when you have a lot to do and remember, and your brain just sort of shuts down. I get to keep some functions. I can cook, even though I get really stressed if there's anything that doesn't go according to plan. I can worry about stuff. I can make stuff even though I also make a mess. I've been patching my infinity skirt the last couple of days, at the moment I'm on patch number 20 for this specific round and there's still a ways to go. It makes my back ache but I want to get it done. I've been making some cards and spinning some yarn and carving some stamps.

And I've started thinking about Christmas! Mmmm Christmas. I still love Christmas. Even though I've experienced some shitty ones.

More specifically I've started to think about what I should get for Chris. He's a super tricky guy to shop for.

And of course having several panic or anxiety attacks every day! Woop! Fun stuff!

Anyway, I'm going to bed.

Denmark

You smile at a stranger with a cute dog. They don't smile back.

You call somewhere. A clinic perhaps. They say that someone will call you back shortly. They never do.

You're waiting to cross the street. The light switches to green. Before you're half way over it's red again.

You speak to a shopkeeper while being a woman. They are rude and unwilling to answer any questions.

You lie in your bed at night. You're trying to sleep. Outside your window people are screaming or singing. It's late at night on a Tuesday. A motorcycle drives past, the motor is very loud.

You exit your apartment. The stairwell stinks of cigarette smoke, piss and beer. 

You want to sort your garbage. You want to throw paper and plastic in separate bins. You cannot. There is only one bin.

You want to go out and do something fun without drinking. You cannot. There is nothing else than pubs.

You want to eat at a restaurant, but you don't want to eat meat. You cannot.

Denmark.

Minus thirty

On the angst scale. I was at -20, and slowly I got up to -15, and now I'm at -30 and everything feels difficult and horrible. I sleep a lot. My head feels like a blender. My body feels tired, worn out, electric, aching. My stomach hurts all the time. I cry a lot. And of course I feel bad about feeling bad.

Overdrive

My head is full of bees. Panicked bees, spinning around and around, buzzing, buzzing so loud it's like a scream. A loud, sharp, high, shrill scream. A scream containing a thousand different screams.

Marathon

I've had some serious netflix (and vlc I guess) quality time the last few days. Sleepy Hollow, Wayward Pines, Kimmy Schmidt, Brooklyn 99. Spinning tons of yarn (actually grams because it was silk. But probably kilometers), drinking tea and generally relaxing. And also cleaning up a lot. The apartment looks like a place where grownups live! Amazing!

Prep stress

So much stuff coming up! SO. MUCH. I'm so exited but also - even more - stressed out. Travel used to be one of my favourite things, but now I'm obsessing on details, building anxiety over dumb stuff.

Headache and anxiety

Sometimes the anxiety brings so much chaos into my mind. I try to control my thoughts but they rush in all directions, making memories that used to be good feel bad to think about and bad memories extremely painful. It's like being covered in bees and trying to not think about it. I can't not think about stuff, because whatever I think about makes me anxious. Whatever road I follow leads into darkness, fear and stress.

Teamed up with a headache it just takes all my spoons and throws them in the bin and charging new spoons take ten times as long as using them, even if I'm just using them to not scream hysterically. I have a broken battery. I wonder if there is any way out of this that I just haven't found out about or if "rest" is the only thing that I get to do for the rest of my life?

Adult weekend

The last bit of port, some dates, Sleepy Hollow (the show, not the movie) and spinning silk thread. A very enjoyable Saturday evening.

Soon: dragon age origins!

Peace

Life with C is so incredibly comfortable and comforting. He makes me feel safe and loved like no other ever have before.

He's incredible.

Miracles

Today a stressful thing happened and I was hungry and I handled it. I was completely in chock. I would normally start shaking really bad, panic, cry, get angry, need to just put everything down and go sit down in another room and generally not handle it well at all. Today I swore loudly and then carried on with what I was doing, not realising until after a little while that I managed to handle the situation. The thing that happened was that the chord for the immersion blender slid onto the stove top because the kitchen counter was too cluttered, and it melted a tiny bit.

Anything to do with things breaking usually garners some hysterical tears at least. But I just finished making lunch like a boss! Even though it had already been a pretty long day with some major bad news concerning a close friend, and I had low blood sugar.

I feel so proud.

The last few days have been really good in general, and usually a few good days means that I get emotionally unstable and have a few bad days since I used up all my happy. This will probably still happen, but I'm impressed that it hasn't happened yet.

We did a pretty big cleanup on Sunday. On Monday I went to the dentist and got my temporary filling swapped for a permanent one and on Monday evening an old friend came to visit, and she stayed until this morning. Last night C's workmate came over and I made a large dinner for the four of us before we went to the board game night, and after that me and my friend went for a glass of wine (beer in her case) before returning home. So several quite intense days without running out of spoons!

Today in the evening I've felt like life is a little bit difficult but I did manage to make a really nice dinner (sweet potato/coconut/lime/ginger soup with roasted chickpeas)! So I still feel proud of myself. Everything counts. Every small bit of progress is worth being happy about.

Now I'm planning on a few days of proactive rest before C's family comes to visit and soon after that we go to Sweden for a wedding! So much stuff happening!

Whoa, it's almost three in the morning. Time for bed.

Thanks for reading  <3

The rage

I'm so sick of myself, so sick of this uncontrollable anger that bubbles up inside me without warning, sometimes without reason. I get so angry that I want to tear apart the whole world, I want to rip down the sky. It rises like pressure and I can't do anything to subdue it, it rises and then I explode. I hate it. I can't keep it inside, I can't silence the screams that tear themselves from my throat. Primal, hysterical rage grabs my entire body, surges through me like wildfire, like an explosion in a vacuum. I don't have the slightest idea how to handle it, how to de-pressurise my mind, how to make it stop. It comes from nowhere and takes over everything, and after I feel empty and weak and stupid and powerless. And mean and selfish and horrible, for the things I've said and done.

What's wrong with me? Why am I like this? Why do I get this way?

Poop brain

Sometimes depression feels like a mental upset stomach. You ate something bad and now your guts are telling you about it big time. But mentally. Like you had a bad experience and now your mind is either refusing to let go, just getting completely mentally constipated, however you try to get these thoughts out of your head it won't work at all, it just hurts and doesn't get better. Or your mind is going a bit nuts, expelling random feelings explosively. There's a steep pressure build up and then you can't hold it in anymore, you explode in rage or sadness and it feels horrible and afterwards you're weak and tired and feel a little bit gross.

One year

A couple of days ago me and my lovely darling had our one year anniversary, we celebrated by being ill! Yay! Now it's the weekend and we're still both pretty crappy. But we love each other and take care of each other and cuddle extra much, as usual.

Being physically weak always makes me super sensitive and moody, and I end up thinking too much about small trivial things from my past. I think my shrink would have told me to be okay with thinking about difficult stuff but I really don't want to! So I end up listening to audio books, watching movies and TV shows and playing tons of games (especially the super cute Seabeard!) to drown out my thoughts.

While listening to books (the Joona Linna-books by Kepler and Mists of Avalon By Marion Zimmer Bradley) I've been knitting on a brioche scarf and matching mittens for a friend (who asked AGES ago), spinning yarn (as always) and drawing a LOT! And trying (again) to learn some Photoshop! Very rewarding and fun. Definitely balances up my sadness and moodiness a bit.

In a couple of weeks it's time for me to finally fix my tooth, an anesthesiologist has been booked and I will be in a drug-induced sleep during the procedure. It's super expensive so all of march will be in super-saving-mode. No excesses. But in a couple of months we're going to Stockholm! I'm so incredibly exited, it's not completely final yet but we're pretty sure we can make it. That means I might get to see my friend's play about Ayn Rand AND the Vivian Maier exhibition! And of course hug some of my favourite people on the planet! Yay!

All hearts day

Is the Swedish name for Valentine's. We're celebrating pretty seriously, it's our first Valentine's. I've never really celebrated Valentine's before, not properly.

I've been preparing all week and today it culminated in a super intense full day of crafting, wrapping gifts and... well, preparing. I don't want to give anything away.

I finally got an appointment for getting my tooth taken care of. It's ages away because I need anaesthesia and the special dentist only has the anaesthetologist (?) come in every hundred years or so.

And I've seen a psychologist, and I'm seeing her again next week, and then she's going to decide what kind of treatment I'm getting and putting me on a waiting list for that specific type of treatment. It can take six months, or more. But still, a step inthe right direction.

Now I'm going to bed because like ten or eleven hours of crafting and prepping has pretty much worn me out.

Heavy days

What is it that makes certain days so much harder to get through? Could it be something as trivial as a bad tooth? Is it the antibiotics? Or the infection? The fight inside my body?

Or is it finishing The Shepherds Crown? Because now it really feels like Terry Pratchett is dead. Like The Discworld is dead. Like the portal to that place is gone and lost forever. And that place is one of my favourites. I love his last ten or so books. I like all of them but they did get better and better.

My feckin tooth. Let me tell you about it. In may, while in England, I got a crazy infection in my jaw. I went to a doctor who gave me antibiotics and told me to see a dentist as soon as I got back. I did, they immediately pulled out a wisdom tooth and gave me more antibiotics. They also told me I needed a root canal. However since I was moving to Denmark social services didn't want to pay for it.

So I moved to Denmark. I tried to figure out if I could still get the root canal in Sweden - if I paid for it myself - but I never managed to find out.

So the problem was that "me paying for it myself" meant that Chris pays. I knew that I had to find a dentist, my tooth was hurting more and more, I couldn't eat or drink anything colder than room temperature but I kept putting it off. I knew it was going to cost.

Finally I called the closest dentist. Just around the corner. I got an appointment and went in for a consultation and x ray. Yes, I needed a root canal. It would probably take a couple of go's. Fine. I came in for the first step of the root canal last week, got an injection of anaesthetics (the thing that makes you numb, not the thing that makes you fall asleep). They started to drill. I screamed. It was horrible. More injections. More drilling. More mind shattering pain. I was crying and apologising. They told me not to worry, we would try again on Monday.

On Monday morning I took a diazepam and a citodon. I went in, had 5 injections of anaesthetics (one in my jaw and the rest around the tooth) and then got to wait more than 30 minutes for them to kick in properly. Half my face was completely numb but, of course, the second that drill touched my tooth it felt like an axe hit my lower jaw. I was crying again. They stopped, because there was nothing more to do.

They told me to call my doctor to see if there was any way to figure out what was going on with my anaesthetic receptors, or something (the diazepam had me pretty lost at this point). I called my doctor and they said they could not help me at all (they literally said "this is not our problem" and I said "that is not helpful at all" and hung up). I called my dentist again and they called my doctor and then my doctors office called me and told me to come in an hour later. I slept for 40 minutes and then went to see my doctor, who talked to an anaesthetic...ologist? She told me that there was no way to find out why the anaesthetics didn't work (they had worked before, I have several teeth that have "mendings" in them) but they were confident that it would be possible to put me under (the only other time I've been under anaesthesia - the sleep kind, not the numb kind - was when I was 12 and had to pull out a tooth that hade grown out in the roof of my mouth, super freaky. The thing was that I got a double adult dose and it still took me hours to fall asleep). A lot has happened in medical science during the last 20 years, according to my doctor.

So. I'm sure my doctor told me some more stuff but I was too woozy to understand much. I went back home.

On Tuesday I didn't call anyone. In the evening I realized that I probably should have, but I wasn't sure who.

On Wednesday I called my dentist. They said that they can't do anaesthetics (the sleep kind) so I had to contact a specialist-dentist. I tried to process that information but felt confused and had no idea how to find a specialist. A while later my doctor called me (maybe she's a bit psychic?) and told me where to call and what to say. Today I called that specialist and got an appointment for a consultation for Monday. So we'll see what happens after that.

Until then I'm still in pain and my half-drilled tooth is not making me happy at all. My face is still swollen and everything feels completely horrible.

BUT! I have gotten a time at the psychiatry!

New year

Same old lactose intolerance. Note to self; don't buy the cheapest cheese. Because it is not naturally lactose free like most cheeses that have been aged like a month or something.

On the other hand I got some super awesome gifts this Christmas! Me and Chris spent it with his family in England, vegetating on sofas for most part of a three week vacation. It was wonderful.

And it's equally wonderful to be back home. Where clothes are optional. And where tap water is drinkable (if slightly more rich in lime (not the fruit) than I thought was even possible).

We finished season three of x files and I watched season one and two of black sails. We're watching parks and rec (we're at the end of season four I think).

We started a couple of art projects together.

Life is pretty good.