I won’t bother linking the Kate Bush song. Google it yourself.
Something that occurred to me during therapy today (Therapy Thursday) is that I need to learn to choose the higher stimulation option.
Right now I can’t, for the most part. Thus my languishing at the bottom of the stimulation scale in this farcical tragedy I call a life.
*sigh* Or being alive, anyway.
It’s a steady downward gradient. And I am so far down it that the very idea of choosing to do something that would increase my level of physical or social or emotional simulation gives me the cold sweats on my heebie-jeebies.
It’s like the overcompensating reflex of avoiding stimulation in order to avoid my anxiety became in and of itself a phobia of stimulation.
It’s very unhealthy.
And this means that in order to get out of this hole, the only way to go is up. Uphill, against the grain, away from the cold and dark and into the hot and bright.
This will not be easy. All my instincts will fight me on it, at least at first.
But at least I have a potential answer for the dreaded “why can’t you do this?” question.
Because that would involve increasing my stimulation level and therefore the idea of doing whatever it is you’re suggesting scares me even though the suggestion itself seems like the least scary thing in the world.
Time to learn to ice skate uphill, I guess. At least until I figure out how to reverse gravity.
Today has been OK. I’d say I am mostly back to my normal level of debility.
But I am pretty sure I lost more ground to my mystery ailment as a result of my most recent attack of the “flu”. I feel weaker and more frail and my heart, in particular, feels like it is working a lot harder now.
And that ain’t good.
Time to go to see Doctor Ebtia, my cardiologist, I think, And it probably would not hurt to run it past my GP Doctor Chao first, too.
After all, I will get to see Chao a lot sooner. And it might be something pretty bad.
One thing I know is that it sure as fuck ain’t heartburn. When I stand up, it feels like my entire weight is resting on my heart for a moment. Said heart starts beating VERY hard, and I feel a sort of squishing, squirting feeling going through it.
That might still be acid reflux, I suppose,. but I am still pretty worried. I don’t want to pop a stent and have a heart attack like so many of my male relatives.
They say one little heart attack or stroke can ruin your whole day.
At least I know I don’t have a bad diet. I don’t eat a lot of carbs, or fat, or unhealthy meat, and I don’t drink the alcohol either.
But I barely move. Wish I had moved a whole lot more back when I could. What I wouldn’t give to take all those walks I meant to take back in the day.
Or at least take a leisurely spin on an exercise bike.
More after the break.
Second verse, same as de first
Still doing alright. Nothing new there.
I noticed when I was wandering around the kitchen getting food that I had this odd “big” feeling, like I was actually a balloon shaped like me gloating around and somehow occupying a space slightly larger than my physical boundaries.
Not sure waddy fug is up with that, but it feels potentially vestibular. Like something subtle is up with my inner ear.
I also still have vestiges of that “covered in ice” feeling from last weekend. I can feel it almost like static electricity on my skin. Like I can feel it crackle as the breeze from my desk fan ripples over me.
It worries me almost as much as the cardiac symptoms I alluded to earlier. I know I just got a pretty good bill of health (like a B, maybe B+) from Doctor Manhani, but my peripheral neuropathy (affecting my fingers, feet, and printer) feels like it is getting worse, and my index finger and thumb on both hands continue to feel tingly.
And that’s new.
What’s not new is that I am back at Zero Point Appetite again. I thought I was over it. I was able to eat lunch with a healthy if not exactly hearty appetite.
But lately it’s like my stomach is playing Red Light / Green Light with me. One minute traffic is flowing normally, but the next everything shuts down and it’s a ghost town.
Well, I hate to admit it, but normally when my appetite shuts down like that, it means I am constipated and my body quite sensibly has decided that if nothing’s going out, nothing’s coming in either.
Problem is, I still gotta eat. Mikey no eat, Mikey get sick. Ergo, I once more have to force myself to eat.
At that point, all I can do is treat food like medicine. Eat it like a robot. Get as much of various food groups into me as I can before revulsion kicks in.
And hope to feel better soon.
Because, at the risk of going meta, it feels good to be hungry and want food. It feels even better to get it when you are hungry.
And I think it takes a loss of appetite to make us realize that.
It’s like when I first went on Paxil, and my libido went into hibernation. At first, I didn’t miss it. Didn’t want sex, didn’t get sex. No problem.
But then when my libido started coming back, I realized I did miss it. I missed the heat of it, the passion, the craving for more connection with another.
And heck, even now, I have great nostalgia for how horny I was in my 20’s. I was having text sex with everybody on FurryMUCK. I was a happy and enthusiastic slut.
Plus I was a gay man trapped in a small town in Canada. It’s not like I had a lot of other ways to explore my sexuality.
These days. even when the mind is willing, the flesh is weak. I rarely get off, despite all the porn I keep making.
Oh well. Maybe some day I will be off the antidepressants, and horny again, god willin’.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.