13:37 minutes until the rhubarb cobbler is ready. I spent another hour or so trying to draft a message to send to the people who used to be my closest friends and who I need to tell somehow what’s been happening to me. I’ve been working on seven versions of it for four weeks, since the day I got the diagnosis. (It’s not “getting a diagnosis”, or “getting diagnosed”, of course, it’s “you meet the diagnostic criteria for”, because you don’t have it, you aren’t it, etc., it’s well-intended wording but it also glosses over a lot of the mess.) I drop it again because I manage to write three sentences out of which I hate all three, and I keep starting to cry.
I’ve been watching a tv show since yesterday. I only watch tv on my iPad now, the sound coming out of the tv or speakers is just noise, just too much. It’s a new show, tagged as romantic and drama, I enjoy it a lot, even though so much of it just makes me sad, but then the show ends and I hate the way it ends, and I just cry again. Then I realize that wasn’t the last episode, I continue watching, and then it actually ends, with one of them dead just as they finally start a life together, and now I’m really heartbroken.
My partner and their friends are hanging out today to play some D&D style thing and watch Eurovision Song Contest after. I’ve known for weeks that I won’t be able to go: It’s loud and many people I don’t know and it’s supposed to be a lighthearted thing. But I just can’t think.
The last time, the one time I joined, I just couldn’t understand how the game works, no matter how much I tried, and when someone made a silly joke about something I didn’t understand, I almost started crying. They didn’t know, they didn’t mean it maliciously, but it was just too much. I tried another 15 minutes and left, it was just more frustration than I could handle. I cried on the way home. Of all the qualms I’ve always had with myself and my body, the one thing I used to always be proud of is as my sharp brain, my ability to think on my feet, and my whit. I’ve lost that and it breaks me.
I talked to a friend on the phone today, [something about not trying to be “the good patient” at all times, but also allowing oneself anger and frustration and bartering and cursing the universe. I’m too tired now to write it out, and know I’ll forget if I don’t add it here.]
For years, I’ve had a photo widget on my phone that displays random pictures from my photo albums throughout the day, often memories, photos of me with loved ones, or from my travels. For weeks, I couldn’t bare to look at it. Especially photos of me, even from two years ago, are so hard to look at, knowing what I look like now. I can’t stand the sight of me, pale with blue lips, my hair has gotten thin and my face has lost all shape.
May 17, 00:51am
I have been painting for 5 hours, like in a fever dream. I have spent weeks trying to figure out why this one painting (T. described it as a “Martian landscape”, I like that it evokes that idea) wasn’t working; finally figured out four days ago that it was because I’d gotten the shading wrong and disliked the colors. Last night, I went through two books (one: Photographs of apples; two: An encyclopedia of minerals from the late 1990s that I got for 50 cents at the library sale in my home village) and found some colors I liked. As I started working on it and made the first few brushstrokes tonight, I realized the bigger issue weren’t the colors: I’d gotten the brushstrokes wrong. Loose and layered in the rest of the painting, I’d made them into much more rigid shapes in this part. I’m not sure why.
I would give a lot to go out again:
I miss flirting.
I would love to fall in love again.
I cry:
Yesterday I told my therapist that lately I’ve felt like I just show up at his office every week to complain. He’s a psychoanalyst and did what I’ve only seen him do maybe ten times in the five years I’ve seen him: He disagreed with me.