Sitting

Have you ever gone to sleep and woken up the next morning and felt like you never slept, but you only remember getting up to pee once during the night?

Has it ever happened to you for five+ years?

It's why I'm sitting on my bed at 6:15 about to put my CPAP mask on. It won't help, though.

Dear Nobody

I am not well.

I am always tired. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. Always tired.

The worst is mentally.

Long ago, I used to be able to read a couple of novels each week. Now I struggle to read one a month, if at all. I can only read three or four comic books in an hour. The less words and pictures there are, the faster I can read it, but I still can't read quickly.

I'm also way, way fatter than I've ever been in my life. I've always been fat (I remember when I was seven or eight being taken for a blood test to check my thyroid. I sat next to my Dad, waiting, and asked him what was going on and he explained to me that we were going to see if my thyroid was working right because it could explain why I was overweight.), but never like this. Never.

I sleep and don't feel better.

Yesterday I woke up. I did my laundry. I went back to bed. I woke up seven hours later. I ate dinner. I went back to bed.

I'm concerned about this.

I've been trying, for nearly two years, to get better.

I got a CPAP machine for sleep apnea. It hasn't worked. I keep using it, though, because when I have forgotten it on trips, my sleep is constantly interrupted. I don't wake any more rested.

Now I'm working on medication adjustment. Hoping that something will help. Hoping that a tweak will give me just a smidgeon of energy back and I'll be better able to move forward.

My doctors' don't seem so concerned about my concern, though.

They are more worried about the fleeting thoughts I have of killing myself. Fleeting because it just crosses my mind briefly a couple of times a day. No dwelling. No planning. Just a swish across my thoughts.

I keep trying to convince them that more energy would help with those thoughts. More energy would allow me to move forward with things. Work on hobbies. Write. Find healthy distractions. Be able to make decisions. Be able to think clearly.

My thinking is fuzzy. Especially after work. I put so much of my brain power into doing my job well that I have very little when the day is done. My focus isn't strong at the beginning of the day. It's pretty much non-existent at the end.

And there's no one who isn't a brain specialist who I feel like I can talk to about this.

I don't have friends. And even if I did, I wouldn't want to burden them.

Which leaves my family.

One of my brothers has cancer in his brain and it regrew earlier this year. He had surgery in May or June. He's been out of state getting radiation treatment since the end of July. He has burns on his face and is losing his hair. When he gets back, he may be back on chemo, again.

My mother is focused on my brother, his wife, and the grandkids. It's her way of coping. But it seems to make it hard for her to be elsewhere. And it makes her feel guilty that she's not doing more for others while she feels guilty for not being able to do more for my brother and his family.

My father doesn't understand because he's never been through something like this. Without first hand knowledge, he has a hard time being able to grasp the situation. In the past, I've been able to find a starting point he knows and then help him use that to lead him down a path that helps him understand. I don't have the brain power to do that right now, though.

My other brother live a long way a way. He's an Md. To be a bit cruel, I don't need anymore clinical bullshit. I don't need to hear statistics and about studies and blah blah blah. He might not do this, but he might, and I get it enough from the people I pay for help. Also, he has a family that he doesn't see enough and shouldn't be burdened with my crap.

So, that leave me. Me sitting in a shirt and underwear watching TV and clicking around the internets and playing mindless computer games. Sitting, trying not to think about being stuck. Trying not to think about faltering and sliding back into the worst. Being petrified of making decisions. Being scared of being who I am. Being scared of being who I may be. Being scared of being.

Theory

I'm in episode 14 of Attack on Titan. My guess is that the titans were created by humanity. Perhaps created to be a shared threat for humanity to unite behind. It may have been a virus released into the population that transformed a number of people and killed even more. The survivors were immune. That would explain how so few humans survived. Books from before the titans still exist, so chances are good that Eren's dad had seen some. (Perhaps through a benovolent secret organization.) What was learned in the book helped to recreate parts of the knowledge and gave Eren a form of the virus that allows him to become a titan and remain human at the same time.

I guess I'll see as I continue to watch.

To Sleep Perchance

When I'm feeling down in the dumps, like the air itself is trying to crush me, I tend to stay up later than I should. That is to say, tonight.

It's an illogical way to put off facing tomorrow for as long as possible. Unfortunately it also makes tomorrow harder because I'm tired.

Unfollowed

Except for my mother, sisters-in-law, and brothers are no longer being followed on Face-A-Gram. I didn't unfriend them. I simply can't see any more of their announcements.

I did this last night.

It's been weird looking at my feed today and seeing the same thing all day long.

I'm still following those few because I'm a good son and I want to see the posted pictures of my nieces and nephew. (Even though I'm uncomfortable with their parents posting pictures of their children because their children have no say in their own privacy.)

People from work keep asking me for friend requests and so do acquaintances I know through my job and people I know and I finally said "screw it" and added them. I just don't want to read their bullshit. I don't care about their kids and grandkids beyond the fact that I care about humankind in general.

There are a few people that I'll miss looking at and I may follow them in the future, but fuck it, for now. We haven't really be friends in a long time. I haven't seen them in five and a half years and I'm exhausted.

Just exhausted.

Two Things Before Bed

1. I keep thinking about a pie made with apple and brie. Crunch top. But does the brie go under the apple or over?
2. The longer I've been on Facebook, the more disturbed I get at parents, grandparents, and other peoples posting pictures of children. There's no real consent. Even if the child wants something posted or was asked, he/she can't really grasp what having that picture posted can mean now and in the future. Not only are kids going to dig up drunken pictures of their parents to try to use in hypocrisy debates, but they're also going to find their childhood, happy times and breakdowns, posted for the world to see. It doesn't seem right to me.

Dear Evan Hansen

Dear Evan Hansen got out about 45 minutes ago. I've been listening to the soundtrack, off and on, for the past year.

The play was excellent. I highly recommend those with the means to see it. However, there are a few elements that I found harder to deal with on the stage than simply listening to the songs.

The play's about a socially awkward and depressed high school senior who tries to do a good thing for a family after their son kills himself and they find a letter addressed to Evan Hansen in the son's pocket. Evan tries to tell them he wrote the letter to himself, but the parent's, in their grief, can't hear what Evan's saying. Evan let's them believe what they want at first, but soon starts actively lying to them because he wants to help and knows that the truth will only hurt the family. And that's what really rubbed me the wrong way. The lying.

I knew from the soundtrack that Evan lied, but it was easier to handle in songs because that's all it was: songs. On stage I saw Evan continuing the lies and adding to them every time he spoke to the family. He dug himself deeper into the lie-pit and the jumped in after. He liked making them feel better and he liked spending time with a "normal" family.

The family not only ate up the lies, but they began actively changing their memories of the dead boy to fit what THEY WANTED him to be. The sister says that her brother pounded on her door saying he wanted to kill her. (This info is not in a song.) Then she sings about how awful he was to her and how she will not sing a requiem for him. She knew he was a monster and didn't want the new information to paint him in a better light. She does read it, though, and begins to forgive the heinous things he did and, maybe, even forget them.

The lie gets spread to the school and then the rest of the world, to the point that our main characters defraud the public out of $50,000 on a Kickstarter campaign. (Yes, the farm gets refurbished and whatnot, but it's still based on a lie and is therefore fraud.)

When the truth comes our the family hate Evan and never want to see him again, but in the end they admit that they are better for Evan's lies. Evan is punished by his girlfriend, the sister, breaking up with him. Even then there's still room for them to be friends, we learn in the end.

I did enjoy the show. I enjoyed it a lot. This just stuck in my craw during the play and after because, ultimately, the play isn't about the lie. It's about isolation and loneliness and family and kids and parents and depression. And all of that is lovely and sad and hopeful.