Hello all
Once again, it's been a roller coaster of a week. The tail end of last week was an absolute disaster but I think it just goes to show how much I've improved in recent months that I was able to pick myself up in a matter of days instead of weeks!
[TW: mental health, drugs]
As I've already mentioned, I frequently have nightmares and flashbacks due to PTSD and other fun things but what I don't think I've told you before is that an unfortunate side effect of my current medication is that it seems to work as a steroid for bad dreams. Since I started this new course of happy pills my nightmares have evolved into such realistic and complex odysseys that I wake up feeling like I couldn't possibly have imagined it up on my own and somehow an outside influence is pouring these stories into my ears while I sleep. Occasionally, it has worked out for the better and I've come up with some fantastic adventures but mostly I wake in the dark in sheer terror. It's a little difficult to decide whether continuing these meds will help or not; on the one hand there's no denying that my mood is more stable but the counter effects of being so shaken by my dreams means that it takes me several hours every day just to reach a point where I can cope.
On top of this, a problem I've had for a few years now but also seems to have been exacerbated by the meds is my difficulty in waking up. It's not dissimilar to sleep paralysis but instead of exclusively affecting my body it affects my ability to stay conscious. I can come round long enough to look at my surroundings but before I know it I'm making myself wake up again. And again. And again. On rare occasions it lasts for a couple of hours and I absolutely bloody hate it. I remember once I was staying at a friends house and someone came to fix the skylight above the bed and they had to awkwardly stand over me because I couldn't wake up. What they must have thought!
Anyway, combine the two and you get a very anxious enby who can't escape from the nightmares they're having until someone (usually mum) intervenes. The reason I've explained all this today is that my nightmares reached peak shitty-ness last week when at about 3am in the middle of the worst nightmare I've had in a long time, I managed to wake myself long enough to call for help. Mum managed to walk/drag me into her room and sit me up long enough for me to wake up properly. That was when I realised I was soaking wet. It's not pretty but I left a pool of sweat on my sheets and, after changing, had to sleep in my mum's room like a toddler.
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After some couch time to indulge my self pity, I managed to peel myself upright and went shopping with mum. It may not seem like much but I like to try and go on the weekly food shop, it's an excuse to get out of the house and I don't have many of those! I mention this one in particular because it was one of those rare occasions where all my problems melt away and I see a glimpse of the person I would be if I wasn't mentally I'll. I like them; they're daft and carefree and they make my mum giggle like a schoolgirl. We danced to the terrible music, I knew people were looking and probably laughing but I didn't care because I was laughing too. I spilled a drink (I shook it before I opened it, thinking it was flat... it wasn't.) And she fled the scene cackling like a witch. Then in the car we had to wait about five minutes before leaving because she couldn't breathe from laughing at her bum chocolate.
I had quite a bit of couch time again this week so I finally caught up with the new season of Archer which I didn't enjoy as much as the previous seasons but I don't know if that's because it wasn't as good or because I was watching it on the back of one of my worse nightmares and feeling very sorry for myself. I think perhaps a mix of the two though, because I also watched the new Black Mirror and oh my gosh it's so gooooooood.
I've been a big fan of the series for a few years now and I was so happy to hear it was coming back. It's a show that walks the fine line between dystopian future and present day drama. It's funny, dark, touching, terrifying, comforting and gorgeous all in one. The CG is just enough to bridge the gap between our technology and theirs, the script is elegant and realistic at the same time. The acting is simply superb, you can tell every single actor is so excited to be a part of the show. There are a few parallels between episodes which are fun to spot but mostly each episode is stand alone which means there's almost a guarantee you will like at least one. Some are darker, some are sweeter, some are funnier; every episode is it's own experience. That's what I love about the show, not everyone lives in the same world and so they shouldn't all be seen in the same genre. There's real hope and poignancy in moments, breaking up the tragedy enough for you to want more, to want that character to get just a little bit further, to keep struggling just a little longer until they make it. In an hour you will see more facets to these people than some shows give you in entire seasons. As much as Black Mirror uses futurism and technological advances in it's plot, it's still first and foremost about people and the choices they make. Well, that and making you terrified of your mobile phone.
On Saturday night I went through to Crook Hall in Durham for a wedding. My Uncle has his own pizza business and was hired to cater the party after the wedding, he needed an extra pair of hands and they came attached to me. I basically spent the night running up and down some stairs in the pouring rain with pizza in my hands. Good cardio! There's a few vids on my instagram of the magic happening, feel free to look through them so I don't have to make every single word a link! I was rewarded for my efforts with a pizza of my very own (brie, courgette and caramelised red onion, yum!) And sitting in a car for half an hour with a flat tire. My poor uncle had to fix it in the middle of the night in the freezing cold after a day of work but the worst part was how tantalisingly, cruelly close we were to a lured Pokestop! I'd already been out in the rain half the night so I didn't fancy trudging down a dark street watching my fingers fall off, even if it would help me catch a Dragonite!
On Sunday mum and I had planned to go to Newcastle but I had a very mild cold and she had a much worse one so we camped out on the couch and watched Bleak House instead. She's been working on her second history book, about a local vicar who seemed to do enough in his lifetime for 4 separate people to live fulfilled lives. On Tuesday, we trekked down to Northallerton (and then up to Durham) to pore over some old records and add to the growing picture she's building of a man she admires.
This is the only time I've helped mum look through records outside of the house and if I were to assume all record staff were the same as the ones I met that day then they are all assholes. We were belittled, ignored, insulted and generally patronised by several men who clearly knew far more than us mere mortals lacking penises, and therefore, several IQ points... we spoke to someone on the phone before traipsing down to Northallerton and we were told that they had 'loads of stuff' which would basically all be laid out for us to peruse at our leisure. When we arrived we found one book with barely a handful of useful words and nothing else. The one computer in the whole office was spoken for and the same man who spoke to us on the phone, and had promised so much, said 'I bet you didn't find anything.' Cheers. Thank you so much for that. Mum was fuming but I talked her into heading to Durham where we had much more luck, though we're treated with utter contempt by the staff who insisted the computers were there 'for research only'. Because we clearly went to a research library to look at porn. Still, I'm glad we made the effort because she seemed a lot happier afterwards. And we got chocolate which solves all problems, as I'm sure you know.
Which brings us nicely up to present day and why this post is a teensy tiny bit late. Though if you're in America I'm bang on time! Today, mum and my joined my Uncle and his wife and son at South Lakes Safari Zoo, it was my cousin's first zoo and I was so excited to see what he'd make of the animals. Things didn't exactly go according to plan; we stopped off at what used to be a really nice motorway café where the most appetising looking food was a sausage rolls that was so greasy it fused completely to my napkin. I honestly think that's the first meal I've ever refused which should give you a fair idea of how icky it looked! Mum managed to choke down her slightly less greasy roll but I could tell she regretted it. Once we got on our way again we got into an incredibly long traffic jam which added more than an hour to our journey time (already two hours!). There was a really bad looking crash, a car ended up on it's side somehow blocking traffic in both directions for miles. Obviously, I'm not complaining and I hope everyone got out okay but it was a long final hour and we were half asleep by the time we finally made it to the zoo.
The purchasing of tickets was a strange state of affairs. Mum could pay £33 for me and her to enter, or £12 for both of us to enter and get to see animal feeds and ride the train. No idea how that works but of course we got the cheaper, but better tickets. Good thing too as my cousin was far more excited about the train than anything else!
We got to walk among the animals, to the point where a rhea all but put his head on my shoulder and I nearly stood on a kangaroo tail! I got to see my Patronus up close and personal, as well as their cousins. My cousin absolutely adored the monkeys too and in the gift shop found the one fluorescent pink lemur and hugged it tight making sure we all joined in with his 'aww!'s. We saw a great deal of cuteness; a teeny tiny rhino, fruit bats (if you don't think bats are cute you are very wrong), tapirs, giraffes, pingus... again, many pics and photos on my Instagram.
And that's it for another week. Apologies again for the lateness but due to traffic (and McDonald's) we didn't get back til 7 and then we just had to watch Bake Off and upload all my photos. Got there in the end. See you next week!
Xx
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