Tried a short walk yesterday

I'd thought to get out and get a bit of light exercise yesterday. Patrick and I went to this park called Meadowdale Beach, and I hadn't ever been there before, so I didn't realize the trail was pretty steep (steps involved). Climbing uses my back muscles, so we weren't able to do much without me being in pain, but I did get a few pictures anyway.

I'm such a sad sack lately. I'm frustrated at this pain and not being able to do anything. I'm afraid of this coming week as I have a ton of work to do plus another therapeutic massage (first one was yesterday, fairly excruciating), and I know I'm going to be in a lot of pain and be very stressed. Dreading all that.

Everything makes me tear up and want to cry. I'm very pathetic just now. I'm not taking pain meds currently because I want to save them for this horrible next week, and I can't take Ibuprofen. The last two times I've thrown up for some reason or other (last was Friday night, time before that was Valentine's), my saliva afterwards has had streaks of fresh blood in it. I think perhaps the Ibuprofen is doing something to my stomach, so I'm not taking it anymore. I'm going to bring that up when I see the doctor on Wednesday and see what he says.

I can't even lift the cello without pain, so lessons are currently out of the question. Fortunately my teacher is very understanding. Not sure when I'll be able to go back to it. Probably a few weeks at least.

This morning before Patrick had to go play his opera I made breakfast. Cheese blintzes (sweet crepes with a filling of ricotta, huckleberry honey and vanilla, raspberry sauce drizzled over), cantaloupe and tea. Patrick graciously cut up the cantaloupe before having to shower and dress (opera requires a black suit).

It was mostly okay, except I've been feeling like I've got a tiny bit of vertigo today. It keeps happening. Suddenly my head spins a bit and I get a wave of half nausea, half dizziness. Doesn't matter if I'm sitting down or standing up. I am not sure what that's from. Maybe either the accident giving me a minor concussion or going completely off Lexapro. It isn't severe, thankfully.

Anyway, that's what's going on. Here are the pictures I took. Hope y'all like them. Hopefully clicking on them will give you bigger versions, but I'm not sure...

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Don't want to sleep, but I gotta

As jotted down in my doctor note:

Monday Dec 31 nightmares, don't remember details

Tuesday Jan 1 nightmare with sibling of some sort trying to kill me, changing gender (murderous sibling, not I), bugs outside, weirdly bent white woman with black designs all over her in yard

Wednesday Jan 2 paranoia about Patrick, severe anxiety about work emails, which are never bad. Just opening the email thing and seeing that I have some unread ones from work makes me want to slit my throat or cut my arms because somehow that will make it better.

Friday Jan 4 nightmare with stalking, torture, cycling through again and again, birthday cake with all these birthdays on it named Belinda. I showed them the bag of torture implements with blood and flesh on them and said what each would be used for. A white hot brand i blew on trying to cool it down got to only glowing red before I passed out from fear. A giant sea turtle hugging me, told Mom could not keep going through same actions as same result each time, finally realized dreaming, screamed to wake up, shattered. Next level, men in suits, still not right, still dream, screaming, shattered. Twice more, woke for real, slipped back down. This time I had a bow and arrows. I hunted them. I shot one through the heart and another through her side. I went over and physically rammed another arrow into her throat until she choked to death on her own blood.

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The doctor wanted me to keep a mood journal

So I have. And it's a wee bit disturbing...

Tuesday Dec 11 feeling of vertigo/dissociative experience

Friday Dec 14 feeling that horrible things were going to happen, panicking, then anger

Monday Dec 17 near panic attack at piano

Thursday Dec 20 anger then fingernails/knife on left arm, 1/2 Klonopin

Monday Dec 24 nightmare with There Is A Hell written on wall in blood, fires, dismembered bodies twitching in cages hung from ceiling

Tuesday Dec 25 nightmare with spitting out puddles of blood, being attacked, screaming, dissociative feeling, trying to slap self into waking up after realizing it was a dream. 

Wednesday & Thursday Dec 26-27 Yelling in my brain for hours, fighting with itself about wanting and not wanting to be dead, plus song lyrics and random other things, then about 2:30pm on Thursday it shut up and it's been peaceful all evening, much improved mood.

Somehow it all looks a lot worse written down, which is kind of strange. Maybe because then I can't forget how rapidly all these things happen. Time seems to blur together when I'm in a horrible mood, and all the days melt together into a black slurry.

I felt a lot better after the end of that brain-yelling business yesterday, and I feel positively healthy today. It's like the badness just evaporated for the time being. My arm is healing up, and everything looks much brighter for me. Yay! I wish this awful shit would just go away, but after 32 years of it I am not expecting it to do that anytime soon. Anyway, it's all a lot more manageable with Patrick around. I'm grateful for him.

This weekend we might see about going to get some trekking poles and packs. Patrick has quite a few gig checks coming in, and we want to be able to go hiking even when it's soggy. I want to climb up to Camp Muir by the end of next summer, so we need to go on a bunch of conditioning hikes first in order to get in good enough shape to not murder ourselves going up from Paradise.

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Well, the pills don't work all the time. But I knew that.

Last night SUCKED.

It took me hours to fall asleep, so I was probably up until about 2am or so, and then once I finally did, I had horrible nightmares. They were the old kind, with gallons of blood, being chased and screaming. Two different serial killers stalked me, one of whom was a cannibal, which I guess gets points for variety.

After those, it was just tons of people killing each other and trying to kill me, too. There was a flayed, bloodied up man's upper half sitting in a corner and staring at me with blank white eyes, little Rue from The Hunger Games getting her neck snapped by someone and then sinking lifeless with a horrible contorted and broken spine to the bottom of a pool, people being burned to death with blackened, bubbling skin and so forth.

I woke up a couple times here and there and tried to stay awake long enough that the dreams would fade, but the fatigue was so strong that it kept dragging me back under, and I could see the dream continuing even before I was fully asleep again. This went on all night.

I'd gone in the other bedroom to sleep around 1:45am because Patrick was snoring and I couldn't sleep, and after I woke up from the second round of stalking I went back to our bed in the hope that his presence would stave off more of them, but no, they just continued.

When he left to coach the Seattle Youth Symphony kids, I was so exhausted from my nightmares that I just went back to sleep, trying to get something restful out of it. My limbs were so heavy and my heart was pounding every time I'd wake up. When he got back, the dreams had turned to normal ones, so I'd gotten enough rest that I could wake up fully without feeling sick to my stomach from exhaustion.

I guess I was due for one of these. The pills I take every night have eliminated a lot of them, but not all. Fortunately I had this one on a weekend, so it didn't have a detrimental impact on my work. Ugh. I hope tonight is better.

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