Stress Inventory:

• Trump Regime, v2 ~~ We’re watching Titanic sink now that Trump is denying aid to California (I live here) and Hegseth was confirmed as SoD.
• Still spooked about my wife moving out. It’s not traditional separation, but we both needed more solitude than we were getting. But it feels like a relationship coming apart, even though we still really care about each other.
• My evening gaming group is destabilizing because one of the players is sick of DRG (TBH we’ve been playing it for years now and our ranks are over 500 each). It’s still a bread-and-butter game for me but I get it.
• My wife is working herself to death, is still recovering from a December bout of COVID-19, and has a large stress inventory herself.
• In the new situation money is tight and I don’t know how I’m going to untighten it in the foreseeable future
• I have a looooong to-do list (chores and stuff) that I’m struggling to even look at.
• My primary care provider messed up my drugs twice and now doesn’t want to do business with me. I was short with them, but not swearing short, or even corrosive-ascerbic-vitriol short.
• YouTube is trying to block RiMusic again, R̴i̴M̴u̴s̴i̴c̴ ̴i̴s̴ ̴w̴o̴r̴k̴i̴n̴g̴ ̴i̴n̴t̴e̴r̴m̴i̴t̴t̴e̴n̴t̴l̴y̴ ̴o̴r̴ ̴n̴o̴t̴ ̴a̴t̴ ̴a̴l̴l̴.̴ RiMusic is working now, though it fails to fully load some songs sometimes.
• Off Lithium due to disabling eyesight problems at 450 mg; more on this below.
• replacement phone is crashing and needs to be replaced.
• I got an e-bike to run and get groceries. Nope. It came in parts. The assembly instructions misses details and the front wheel is supposed to be free-spinning, but it rubs against the brakes.
• My wife thinks the house is too dirty for her to come over. It is, and it’s overwhelming me. I’m trying to fill out IHSS forms and stuff, but it may be a while before that gets going. I’m doing my best to clean house, but I am a Hellenic Legendary Hero at sucking specifically at housework. (My parents specifically screwed me on that one.)
• My psychiatrist moved up my appointment to Monday at 11:30, which is before I’m fully awake. I’m already pissed off about the lithium thing.
• I’m afraid my brain is still too spicy and is going to drive everyone away. Depression greys out the past and future and makes it hard to read. Was I always an obvious basket-case? Will I always be?
• In my late fifties it’s normal to have butt troubles (hemorrhoids, maybe?, but with some head scritches and obtuse comments from my last proctologist). Thanks to the new psychotropic regime, it comes with intermittent constipation.

Continuing with the lithium thing, it causes eyesight problems rarely, but that’s a lottery ticket I got and might have achieved legal blindness. My psychiatrist had me quit cold-turkey (no tapering) which is a really bad idea, since all my prior symptoms came back double strong, including emotion storms (overwhelming fury, crushing sadness, withering shame by the monsoon), having a hair-trigger like a mobster’s sidearm. A word or color could send me into ruin… on the other hand, I can see and read again.

On Thursday my suicidality was 9 out of 10. I wasn’t out looking for a tall building or a freeway underpass, but if an l-pill or a shotgun fell into my lap I’d be a goner. I’m still in that existentially-challenged space where I’m not fully sure why I’m still here. (A well-read philosophy hobbyist since the aughts, I’m not fully sure I am here). With the rise of the MAGA era, and the imminent collapse of the sociopolitical sector of the US, I don’t see how, if we’re actively unpersoning trans folk and migrants (with other minorities soon to follow), how I have any right to exist either. We are all expendable, and I don’t seem to be worth my energy-consumption footprint (even as meager as it is.) These are questions I still have.

I still feel like that mostly-gone Alzheimer’s or dementia patient that no-one really wants to be near, those who care about them for sentimental value are crushed that most of the personality is already gone and lost while everyone else just sees a crumbling, drooling fleshy skeleton waiting to die. In my case, it’s the brink of madness rather than mental deterioration, but if people are going to gaze upon me in existential horror, I’d spare them that scare.

If the Malkavians are looking for another to add to their clan, they better hurry up.

Today is better than yesterday, which was better than Thursday, but even in anticipation of another Thursday, I don’t really want to risk it. Moreover, it’s SPECIFICALLY what I was afraid of when my psych started messing with my med regimen. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I FEARED, YOU BASTARD! He’s going to get a fucking earful on Monday.

This span of a few days may indeed be my darkest hour so far.