{"id":22,"date":"2005-02-06T23:07:40","date_gmt":"2005-02-06T23:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ladle\/wordpress\/?p=22"},"modified":"2005-02-06T23:07:40","modified_gmt":"2005-02-06T23:07:40","slug":"sorry_for_the_b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/?p=22","title":{"rendered":"Babette’s Beast"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sorry for the break in transmission. My gastric symptoms really took a hold, and after a hyperactive mailing list day on Friday (sorry, robots) came a very big and I suppose, very predictable mood swing yesterday: so low and tearful and afraid I can’t remember when I’ve been like this for a long time. Just trying to tread tread tread water today, so writing this will either be therapeutic or another bad anxiety trigger. I may quit and run. Oh and my pee went green. Which apparently can be caused by asparagus, which I don’t eat because I don’t like any vegetables beginning with the letter A<\/strong>: there’s four I can think of in British English, count them out for me. So I guess it must be some kind of vitamin\/mineral overdose from my silly scoop mistake, which by now three lovely people have apologetically laughed at, quite understandably. I hope<\/em> last week was all about stupidity and not illness.
\nI’m currently very scared and feel my leg’s being chewed off by Wolf Dread<\/a>, although, actually it’s a cousin of his, called Depression, and he’s a bad, bad wolf. It’s hard to describe just how he eats away at your bones. Someone in a #depression<\/strong><\/tt> channel yesterday, bless him, suggested I “take up some hobbies” and take my mind off it. So hard to describe how, if you haven’t felt the deathly depths that depression can really get to when you can’t even think or move an arm without intense pain, guilt and fear, that stamp-collecting really wouldn’t help. To be bitten repeatedly by the wolves of anxiety, and then when they’re having a break and chewing at a detached limb, to have their cousin wolves of depression attack just doesn’t seem fair. But the jungle’s not fair, as taught by countless David Attenborough programmes about big monkeys eating little monkeys, and sea lions nibbling at penguins; TV that should have a health warning on it, because it’s so upsetting. Human beings can only bear so much reality, and some of us can only take a tiny scoopful at a time.
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\nAnd it’s so chilling how intricate<\/em> the details and subtle flavours of these mood changes are. Anxiety isn’t like depression, it evokes a completely different sensation to the palate, and you can taste the change immediately. And each episode of each condition has a differently horrifying flavour, like the exquisitely laid out dishes in Babette’s Feast<\/a>; like you’ve never tasted this particular dish before. So you can’t prepare for it, or defend with previously stashed letters to self, diary entries or mental reassurances, because they aren’t relevant to the particular orientation of fears, loss of self-knowledge and disintegration that surmount you.
\nI get upset when people say depression brings creativity. Bipolar depression may bring on rushes of activity: I can’t speak for this. But it’s a 20th\/21st century romance, or consolation, that depressives are at their most creative when beaten down by depression: a coffee-table thought. It’s a sickness<\/em>, and while others may enjoy the fruits of dipping into that world at leisure in an art gallery before chocolate fudge cake in the nearby cafe and a poster for the wall, if the artist was truly depressed, then they should feel nothing but sympathy. Maybe it’s an expression of the empathy that depression can bring – if you’ve seen it in yourself, you know how unrelievable it is in others – but it’s not an LSD trip. I’m sure someone who’s down for a bit gets to consider things in their life that they may not have, and this may lead to fruitful creativity: but depression itself just suffocates and kills. The little I truly understand of it is that, just when you think you’ve reached the lowest level you could be at, a hundred more levels heave into view below, and you realise you could drop one thousand more. I’m quite sure I’ve only experienced hints of the kind of terrible loss of self and pain some feel.
\nI’m not going to go into the details of the fears, as from experience it only turns them up to 11; they’re illusionary triggers that try to divert you from the underlying chemistry of disease. I’ll just say one from today: ear fear<\/em> again. Loud noise in my left ear this morning. Feeling of more deafness – panic. At least three people now have written to me about their ear problems, and some much more frightening than mine: and they have all dealt with them, by the sounds of it, with more dignity and courage than me. I must learn<\/em>.
\nThree days ago I received my tinnitus retraining device (a misnomer – the audiologist wants to deal with my hyperacusis<\/a> first). I have to build up to 8 hours a day. It’s a slightly scary thing to put in your ear. Recently on BBC2 there’s been a program called Tribe<\/a> where a man called Bruce Parry spends time living with, and being initiated into indigenous tribal cultures all over the world (although, being quite posh, he’s yet to try being initiated as a Geordie<\/a>). In one episode, he’s sitting in a clearing with his new Amazonian friends in his leaf underpants, chewing grubs, and knows that they sometimes use the grubs to clear earwax (eww..). So they pop one in and start laughing at him as he squirms (apparently the best joke in the Amazonian rainforest is to put the wrong kind of grub in someone’s ear). Anyway, this tinnitus\/hyperacusis device has a little antenna, and is just like that: putting a wiggly grub in your ear.
\nAnd now it’s later, what I’ve written above seems like a weak attempt to talk myself out of some terrible fear with casual language, and my heart is like a rollercoaster ride<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\nCar coat, she has a quilted jacket with a hood if it rains
\nBig pockets for the pharmaceuticals she takes to fix her brain\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Something is very bad inside and I have to stop typing now. Today I’ve had a lovely friend playing nice silly games with me online which have cheered up and made me feel more like me, and in another place, the insane breakup of a community of CFS\/ME people which I’d just come to feel at home and safe in – and a new dear friend forced to leave – so much for the empathy of illness. \"fingers.jpg\" Too much stuff<\/em>. The supposed detached empirical approach of my last article has become a small mountain to climb, and I expect I won’t be writing Naming II<\/strong> today. I’m trusting that anyone reading this who might meet me online understands that there are levels of presentation you can sustain publically for a little while which belie what lies beneath: but only for a time. But you have to maintain those levels if you possibly can to keep yourself in touch: people can only stand so much misery and illness, just like I can only stand so many David Attenborough programs.
\nI’m just going to have to post this now, and then hide in my tent and wait out the storm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sorry for the break in transmission. My gastric symptoms really took a hold, and after a hyperactive mailing list day on Friday (sorry, robots) came a very big and I suppose, very predictable mood swing yesterday: so low and tearful and afraid I can’t remember when I’ve been like this for a long time. Just … Continue reading Babette’s Beast<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-illness","category-mood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}