Tag: therapy

Ugggggghhhhhh, redux

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics1 Comment

I don’t think I’m recovered from the election yet, and I think yesterday’s illness may have been more along the lines of a panic attack than an actual illness. I have been edgy and stressed the fuck out all day long, to the point where I haven’t been able to read because I can’t focus on anything enough to do it.

I genuinely don’t know how I’m going to make it through another four years of this. I really don’t.

(Hits “publish,” opens BlueSky, discovers Trump has apparently named a Fox News host as Secretary of Defense.)

On last year and next year

On By Luther M. SilerIn life3 Comments

I went back and looked at the post I wrote at the end of 2022, and while I was willing to admit that 2022 had been a good year, I was clearly feeling pretty gun-shy about the idea. The notion that after the utter carnage that 2016 through 2021 had been, an actual good year had finally happened really seemed to beggar belief. I can’t justify any such hesitation about 2023; last year was a good year by nearly all personal metrics other than my own health, and even that wasn’t all that bad. In a lot of ways, I really don’t have anything to complain about, and I’m tantalizingly close to a major, major milestone in my life, one that ten years ago I didn’t think was ever going to happen: assuming no disasters occur (hah!), I am on track to be completely debt-free other than my house by the end of this school year. That’s entirely due to trends that started in 2022 and accelerated in 2023.

(I just took a few minutes to look, and I was officially diagnosed with sleep apnea in November of 2022, so that’s not 2023’s fault. I can’t even get mad at 2023 about that.)

Here’s the thing, though: 2024 fucking terrifies me. Like, bone-deep. Like, I don’t know how you diagnose someone with anxiety when the world is actually like this terrified. Why? Notice how I said “personal metric” up there? By that I mean, like, my life, my health, my family, my job, my finances. That sort of stuff. That’s all good right now, although I know how fast shit can change. Anything other than that? Fucked. Fucked. This was the hottest year in the history of humanity and nothing’s going to change. I have brought a child into this bullshit and he has to somehow survive for several decades after I’m gone while the world is busy being on fire. Israel is committing genocide in plain fucking sight of the entire world and no one is doing anything about it and there is literally nothing I can do to change anything about it. There’s a fucking presidential election this year. The state legislature is about to go back into session and who the fuck only knows what sort of bullshit they’re going to put on us this year.

(The pronoun bill? Sorta fizzled. Everybody just sort of mutually decided that we weren’t going to pay any attention to it, and nothing happened. I violate the pronoun law a hundred times a day and nothing is going to happen to me.).

I genuinely don’t know how I’m going to survive ten fucking months until the election. And the level of panic that sets in any time I try to seriously contemplate what I should do if things don’t go our way is indescribable. 

So. Yeah. Last year was the last good year. Even if we win 400 electoral votes this fall I still have to make it to November before that happens. I just don’t see anything coming this year that I can look forward to, other than that whole “no debt” thing, which isn’t going to work out for me all that well when I have to sell everything and move to Canada on no notice. Or, y’know, not, since the fascists taking over could pretty much result in anything. Who the fuck knows.

Also, so far it’s been 2024 for two days, and I was woozy and sickish all day yesterday– I have never been hung over even once in my entire life, but based on how people have described it to me, I may as well have been– and last night I managed to throw out my back in my sleep because I’m 47 and that shit can happen now. So, yeah, fuck this year.

Anybody have the number for a good therapist? Maybe that’s where all my money can go.

In which I’m not there yet

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

If you have never seen someone wearing a CPAP mask, be aware that it is impossible to overstate just how completely fucking ridiculous they look. Prince couldn’t look cool in one of these fucking things. Bowie couldn’t look cool in a CPAP mask. It’s just impossible, and it’s driven home by the fact that if you Google the masks you get a bunch of pictures of attractive people and models and they still look completely ridiculous– none of them are dressed for bed, and critically, none of them are giant, hairy fat men, which by my understanding are the main clients for these things, as our bodies are tired of us and thus try to strangle us in our sleep.

Anyway, you might be wondering why I haven’t given an update for the CPAPpery yet, and the reason is that I haven’t got one to give. I’ve got my machine, but the mask they sent me … isn’t working. At any size. It is absolutely impossible (I’ve said that a lot in this post already, but it remains true) to get the mask they sent me, at any size, to seal properly– my unit will work for no more than five to ten minutes before stopping because of a “major airflow leak” and tell me to reattach my hoses, which have never been detached and do not have any holes in them, nor are they attached improperly.

We’re trying a different mask of another style, one that is close to the diagram to the right but I think doesn’t feature the idiotic top-of-the-head air tube attachment, and I fully expect to find out when that gets here that there’s something wrong with my machine. Looking forward to it, even, because when you try three different versions of the same mask with three different people, two of whom do not have beards, and remain entirely unable to achieve a proper seal even once, it’s probably a sensor issue somewhere and not the mask’s fault.

I get the new masks on Thursday next week, supposedly, because they are apparently being sent by camel. I feel like given that the insurance company is already hassling me for “noncompliance with my therapy,” which I currently can’t do because my shit doesn’t work, and my respiratory therapist was supposedly going to take care of this exact problem, they maybe could have shipped the equipment faster. Maybe just, like, a guy, on foot. He could have gotten it here before next Thursday, I’m certain of that.

Anyway, if I ever get to attempt to sleep in one of these things, I’ll tell you all about it. It hasn’t happened yet.