Quiet

S has been away for the past month. Everything has felt so quiet. Low. Empty.

This Saturday will be five years since mum died. It feels unreal. It seems like only yesterday, but also an eternity.

When I mentioned to Psychologist that it was coming up, she said she’d make sure to get out for a home visit for our next appointment this Thursday. But she's had to cancel the past few and do telehealth instead, so I guess I'm not holding my breath.

It'll be my second one sober, so I know I can do it. That said, last year it was during a period of constant laxative overdoses, so I was too sick to drink even if I wanted to. I’ve been dreading facing it without the regular supports that help keep me together. I did go back to the cemetery again just before S left, because I knew I wouldn't be able to go for the anniversary. S will be back at the end of next week, so I'll try to get there again soon.

I've had someone coming in once a week, mostly to help with things like picking up medications. Since I don't exactly have friends or family around, it does also help to have some social contact. There was the option to have them out multiple times a week like I would with S, but it feels like too much with someone I don't know that well, and I think it'd have been more stressful than helpful.

Supports provide so much structure in my days and weeks, and even when S is only away for a week, my routine and sleep schedule tend to go out the window. Of course, my sleep has been unsteady for a while now. It's the first time she's been away for more than a week or two in the seven years I've been seeing her. It's definitely a well earned break.

I’m unsure whether it’s partly because S is away, or if it’s just bad timing, but my mood has been awful. My lingering discomfort with life feels heavier. Everything has been so damn overwhelming, too much to cope with - hence this has been sitting unfinished in my drafts for weeks.

As for appointments, I’m becoming less sure about New GP. She seems to like to try to solve mental health issues with practical suggestions, even when I tell her I’m already talking to Psychologist and/or Dietitian about it. I have to either really think about what I’m going to say in the “how’ve you been?” small talk at the start of the appointment, or just bite my tongue, because she really latches on to whatever I say. When I mentioned that S was away so my routine/sleep/mood was a bit off, she spent 25 minutes on that, which eventually boiled down to "just follow the same routine you would normally". Revolutionary.

She also seems keen to push appointments further apart, even though I've had fortnightly GP appointments for ~13 years (except for when it was weekly). There are so many things on my 'I should really ask my doctor about that' list that I never seem to get around to. I'm thinking of even printing out a list to take to my next appointment, just to get all my cards on the table. I'm kind of annoyed that she's already wanting to push appointments out, like my health isn't worth her time.

But for now, I’m sticking with her. It feels pointless to try to find someone who matches better. Maybe Old GP was truly just an anomaly. And what if the others are worse, and I ended up having to go back to her? Awkward. 

I'm also now tapering down further on the Seroquel. For 13 years, I've been on 300mg, twice a day. At the end of last year, I started tapering down with Old GP, slowly, slowly. I'll now be going down to 100mg in the next few weeks. I’m not actually sure whether the goal is to reduce it, or stop it completely, but I guess we’ll see how it goes. I was concerned at the start, but I've felt little change. I feel like being on it helped to calm some of my worse BPD and C-PTSD related behaviors, which I really don’t want to return. But so far, so good. 

To end on a brighter note, at the end of May, it was my blog-iversary. 14 years since I started posting here. Wow. I know I've had far less posts in recent years, but it's so strange to think. So much of my life has been documented here. It's both wonderful and terrifying.

Blogging seems to have been slowly dying out, both in favour of short-form content, and away from text-based content in general. Sadly, it's nothing new, it's been happening for a long time now, to the point where it feels somewhat deserted.

But I do love that Blogger is one of the few remaining places where the ED community can exist uncensored. I don't have to sugarcoat things. I can post body checks, or weights, or calories, or whatever messed up things I'm thinking - things that would be otherwise censored on platforms like Instagram or even Reddit. I would be so utterly lost if they were to change the content policy to get rid of ED content, like so many other websites have over the years.

Since I haven’t been doing much worth taking photos of,

for today it’s the family of Emotional Support Demon plushies

And Zazu & Persephone keeping me company in bed, 

who are finally getting along (...most of the time)

xxBella