Pea soup, that is. The mental fog is very thick right now. 

Q : What’s the difference between roast beef and pea soup?
A : Well anyone can roast beef… 

You either get it or you don’t. 

I experience so many strange mind states. Right now, my mental fog is thick and glutinous. I feel like confusion and disorientation are a mere window’s thickness away from overwhelming me. It is only be dint of the expenditure of a very large and continuous of mental energy that I am able to cling to the here and now and real at all. 

Or at least, that’s how it feels. 

It feels, in fact, like I am adrift on an uncertain sea, slowly spinning due to the influence of a strange and unknowable current, and lost in fog so thick I can’t even see the prow of my boat. 

And my boat is tiny. 

Part of that, I suppose, is hunger. By which I mean low blood sugar. Hunger might suck but it alone rarely makes it hard for me to think clearly or give me the feeling of fluttering faintness that makes me feel like the flourescent light bulb of my soul is flickering and could go out at any moment. 

Don’t worry. I will be OK. I have snax. 

But another part of it is the clinging clammy clutches of my mental illness, no doubt. Bolstered by my sleep apnea. 

About that : so I bought this blood oximeter so that I could measure my blood oxygen levels and do what I can (breathing exercises, fresh air, oxygen vampirism) correct low levels when I found them. 

Problem is, all my readings are coming back normal. 99 percent. If anything, that might be TOO healthy. 

This puts me in a bit of a bind. 

See, one of the ways I clawed my way up out of the depths of my total mental collapse into paranoia and hypochondria in my early 20’s was to make the firm and final decision that I would believe what I was told about myself, no matter what. 

So if the doctor said I was fine, I would believe him. If the tests came back negative for whatever I thought I had, I would believe that too. 

So on that level, I am heavily inclined to believe my new toy when it says that my oxygen levels are normal even two or three minutes after waking up and getting out of bed. 

Admittedly, I have not yet taken a reading the moment I wake up. 

But either way, the results make no sense. I know damned well that I smother in my sleep dozens of times a night. That’s what the tests showed. And given how I often feel when I wake up, lack of oxygen while sleeping is actually the least scary possible explanation. 

In order for the readings to be consistent with that, I would have to posit that my body gets all the oxygen it needs to restore healthy levels in those first few precious breaths upon waking. And that seems unlikely. 

Either that, or my naturally unnatural sleep cycle is such that the really bad smothering happens way before I wake up and so I don’t have low oxygen levels at that point. 

It’s possible. That would not explain how lousy and out of breath and bruised I often feel upon waking, but it is at least plausible. 

The third option is, of course, that my eximeter, despite its sleek design and attractive color LED display, is a cheap and inaccurate piece of Chinese knockoff crap and I would get better results by slaughtering a yak abd poking the entrails about with a stick. 

But I can’t afford to think that way. I have got to believe the readings, at least until I have some solid reason to doubt them. 

Something better than “they don’t match how I feel”, I mean. 

But if the readings are true, that would seem to indicate that I somehow do not have sleep apnea any more. 

Aww crap. I just realized I am trembling. Not good. 

That is not entirely impossible. I do seem to be losing weight lately, juding my how loose my pants have become.  Losing weight could in theory correct the obstruction that causes my sleep apnea. 

It doesn’t seem very likely, though. 

God damn it. My twitching just cost me the sauce that came with the spring rolls I ordered as an appetizer with my Indian food. 

I was holding the little cup of sauce when a twitch hit me and I involuntarily squeezed the cup like it was a ketchup packet in the claws of a lobster, and sploot, that lovely sauce all over the damned place. 

What a waste! I almost wish I had not had a chance to try the sauce with the spring rolls before spilling it, because then I wouldn’t know how good they taste together and how nice the sauce is. 

Oh well. At least I am eating now, and therefore my blood sugar will go back to normal and I will stop the goddamned twitching. 

I don’t get why my blood sugar was so low, though. I had a totally normal lunch at a totally normal time. And I didn’t do anything that would have accelerated my metabolic rate. 

I give up. Life is arbitrary and terrifying. One day soon I am going to keel over and die and the autopsy will reveal that I was suffering from dozens of major issues and people will be left wondering how I could even have lived as long as I did, let alone make it through the day. 

How’s that for a hypochondriac thought? All that is missing is the wounded-angel martyrdom of “I told them I was sick!”. 

Then again, I did try telling doctors about a lot of things that got dismissed for insufficient reason….

Well whatever. At this point, find out it is all in my head would be a blessed relief. Then it would just be a matter of increasing my meds. 

I swear I can be sane if I am on enough drugs! 

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.