Living Through History, Part II

I'm not even going to sugarcoat it.

Today was spectacularly hard for me.

I didn't sleep well last night -- maybe just under three hours of sleep total, and we went to bed reasonably early? I think? But there I was just... staring at the TV, "aggressively awake" as I told Jack at about 3:00 am once I had given up entirely and was researching what I was feeling.  Because I was feeling strange.

I've had a bit of a ... journey ... since Halloween (that's not important other than I know it was the day that kicked all of this off because it was the day I almost lost consciousness during first period APEL) to sort out what's going haywire in my body.  There have been three or four office visits (only one with my new primary care) and a CT scan of my head on Thanksgiving, and so on and so forth.  So far, I have no answers, and with the state of medicine being what it is, my problems are obviously small potatoes in comparison.  But my hormones, and then by extension my blood sugar, have gone a bit haywire -- due likely to stress and my underlying PCOS becoming more of an issue as I get older and my hormones just naturally change -- and I think I felt a lot of that today.

Today was probably the single biggest shift I've ever felt in my hormones all at once, ever.  Perhaps I don't typically notice it because I'm at school during the week when it would, cycle-wise, happen, or because typically civilization isn't collapsing around us when I'm entering this delicate monthly lady phase.  But man oh man, today has been emotionally really hard.  There has been lots of crying. Lots. And lots. Just in waves.  I tried a lot of my go-tos for distraction, but I felt SO distracted and antsy that I couldn't really do some of my go-tos, like cross stitching or reading or video game playing.  I tried watching When Harry Met Sally (mostly to see if I could nap) and then I put on Anne of Green Gables (another go-to movie when I'm blue) but those didn't really suck me out of it.  And the lingering weirdness of my body has haunted me all day.  Maybe I should just give it a name, like I did my dizziness friend. Her name is Patty. Patricia when I'm REALLY dizzy.  That came back all at once on the couch last night, and I have mostly already linked that to hormones. So it wouldn't be surprising that this new weird thing -- these weird tingly/shivery phases -- is, too.  (And I learned today that the period flu is a thing.  Who knew?) (Bodies are weird.) (And dumb.)

So that was my day: being distracted and freaked out about the new way my body has found to engage in treachery; being exhausted from lack of quality sleep; and continuing to be generally unhinged when I let my brain go too slack and start to think about the hows and ifs and whens of all of this.

But I vowed before I opened my laptop to write this -- which I didn't want to do because I was finally emotionally a little settled -- that I would end with some positives. Let's see if I can make it to ten.

One: we're having a new dishwasher installed tomorrow!  It might not be the absolute most responsible thing we could do in this moment, having work people in our house, but our logic is that we paid a pretty penny for it, and it needs to get installed, and if one of us does get really, really sick, it's going to be a pretty important piece of the sanitization battle.  My plan is to make sure everything is clean when they get here, let them in and run away, and then wipe every thing down again in the kitchen when they leave.

Two: I took a candlelit hot shower just now and it definitely improved my mood. I cried a bit in the shower again, but overall, it was a net gain in emotional boost.

Three: I'm enjoying the daily prompt posting and I am loving how many different people from all different aspects of my life are connecting.

Four: Bless Jack.  Poor thing came home to me as an absolute wreck, but he snuggled into bed with me and just held me.  And then we feasted on leftovers.

Five: I'm reading Jane Eyre one chapter at a time aloud and posting it to my APEL classroom. I have no idea if anyone cares, but it's helping me have some structure to my day.

Six: Buying a Switch for myself for Christmas definitely felt a bit selfish at the time, but I'm thankful I did it because it is providing a pretty solid distraction when I need it.

Seven: Thankful that I invested in a weighted blanket. Spent a LOT of time under it today.

Eight: Thankful for streaming services that make it so that I never have to actually get up to watch a movie of my choice. Heh.

Nine: Thankful for all of my friends -- Summer, Bonnie, Erica, Sarah, Kaitie, Kim, Satin -- who provide a constant stream of conversation and distraction.  Especially Summer, who keeps me sane by keeping it real and helping me talk through everything.

Ten: My little neighborhood that enables me to safely and easily get a mile or so in each day simply by walking in circles. I managed to get a walk in between bouts of rain and while I don't think it did as much good as I hoped it would do in the moment, I'm hoping tonight it'll help me sleep a bit. We'll see.