So many dead ends, I’m at the edge of the lake Sometimes I wonder what it’s gonna take

Not all at Inky Towers continues well.
This is, of course, an understatement.  Mrsinky is hella stressed at work and has an injury to boot which is leaving her...well shall we say short tempered.   This has made living with her more than ususally hurtful and stressful.
Foal is picking up on this and reacting by being extra awful.  She really was unbelievable this morning.
Im stuck in the middle.  last night i was sat there trying desperately to hang on.  wanted to go out but had nowhere to go.  wanted to get blind drunk just to make it stop.  In the end went to bed, zopiclone plus triple vodka tonic made the world go away.
but this is total shit.

Waiting on the first step, show me where the key is kept

So here we are once more on the sofa in Costa.  This is a step up on yesterday as I have stayed out of the house but it is not exactly lovely.
I am really very typically depressed today.  dissociated and anhedonic to an extreme.  I know I am reporting this to you reasonably well but life as a scientist allows that.  I once spent 9 hrs observing droplet formation mismatches with a dislocated shoulder.
My life is such a fearful mess I cannot begin to sort it out.  So I am trying to apply for jobs.
I am not well enough to do them to be honest but that seems like the only positive way I can do anything.  I can at least try before giving up.
I still struggle with wanting to live.  I do not see a reason.  there is a lot of effort involved and absolutely no pleasure or motivation.  No why.
So, you know, fuck it.
Same with social interactions.  Sex I understand, and even I get pleasure from that.  But people associate for other reasons, allegedly.  I have spent a long time trying to work that one out.
I am locked into a cycle of doing things because I am doing them.
My GI tract is painful.  I stopped Mirtazapine because the munchies it triggerred made me eat till I hurt.  I may have stopped too late.  real discomfort from stomach.  guarding and tenderness too.  It hasnt worsened though so it probably isnt a perforation.  but really not pleasant.
ah well, what the hell.
Mrsinky said last night she missed the old me.  So do I.  I mean he was fucking miserable but less miserable than this.

And if I say, I really knew you well what would your answer be?

So I spent most of the night grinding over the visit to the shrink.

I am currently waiting on a callback from the team.  My intention is to tell them their services are no longer required as I have lost what little faith in their abilities I ever had.

The problem is that yesterday during conversation the shrink mentioned her diagnosis of longer term issues would likely include narcissistic as a characterisation.  Quite how someone with self esteem as low as mine, with a history of continually putting others first, sacrificing career, standing and health to support others etc. can qualify for that is an interesting leap of mental gymnastics.

During the sessions of contact with the team I have rehearsed the basic problem.  I am asocial, but lack a peer group.  My brain functions in an idiosyncratic way at very high speed.  I read faster than I think, have an IQ in the dubious range where the measurement is so high it is meaningless (IQ only measures IQ though) and if I relax and speak at my ease only 3 people I am aware of stand a hope of keeping up.  The boss who just sacked me will cheerfully refer to me as the brightest person he has ever met (He has worked for decades in Universities classed as top ten in the world) and the guys at Cambridge refused to do pop quizzes with me in the room because my brain was cheating.  My peer group in the intellectual aspect ( emotionally I am a stunted toddler and physically...my 9 year old daughter can whup my ass at 10 pin bowling) is a disparate group of similar hermits scattered by the vagaries of genetics.

Of course the shrink sees this and instead of trusting me, believing what I am saying as simple truth I can back up with evidence and helping me cope with the grinding loneliness assumes that this is an exaggeration, that I am self aggrandising.

This is so much like every other interaction I  have had with psychologists and psychiatrists and so disappointing.  Time after time I reach out honestly and display the problem, to find them treating me through a prism of their own distrust and limitation and trying to label me as something that denies what I am so that I fit into their world.

Enough.  No more.

The truth is that a long term diagnosis would be career useful but I dont have a career.  The shrinks short term diagnosis of adjustment disorder is plausible, but there is no treatment beyond "taking it day by day" which I have been doing for 34 years so fuck that.

It was foolish of me to expect more.

Chasing the dragon

OK so today dawned.
I tried to persuade it not to but it did so anyway.
Although I am nowhere near as afflicted as me good friend Percy sleep is the time when the evil pixie of EDS comes out to play. It's a bit like the E.L. Wisty sketch about old men coming into your room and throwing rubbish on you. In my specific case this rubbish is normally manifested as subluxed shoulder or knees.  I lie on my side, being unable to sleep on my back. This means one shoulder is compressed, and oer time slides sideways out of its socket.  eventually the pain becomes unbearable and I have to move, then whimper, then put it back in, turn over and start again.  Also because I am on my side the top knee is at a funny angle and so...you get the picture.
Last night was bad and I slept little.
However I have to say this morning, tho  rushed, I feltt ok.  The sedation from Mirtazapine was not so strong.  Also my mood was lifted because today was tattoo day...
I am a tattoo virign but frankly think they look awesome on the blokes in the gym.  So I booked with the lovely Terry Parish of Drawing Blood and had him stick an oriental dragon across me.  After consultation I had it draped across my shoulder.  I got him to make the claws look like they were digging in to my shoulder.  Why?  That dragon is how my nightly shoulder pain feels.
Anyway, here it is.  I will need another session to get it shaded in but I personally think it is lovely.  So there.
Terry was astonished at how well I sat.  He kept asking if I was OK.  To be honest I was nearly asleep.  It was so much less pain than I am used to.

Mow mow mow your boat

The groves of academe can be pleasant. This morning l had to give an early lecture on entropy, which is always a fun subject. I mean what could be more fun than the end  of the universe?
But I started off with plugging my movember campaign . Its horrible to think that of all the handsome bright men in the lecture room roughly four will kill themselves . EDS is well known for being linked to depression . Constant pain, disability, poisoned genes etc. will do that to you.
Support groups help of course BUT ...
EDS mainly affects women. The support .groups can feel like hen parties. ..
Men are bad at sharing weakness at the best of times. But for many  showing weakness in front of a woman is impossible.
l am doing movember for the depressed suicidal zebra males out there. l am up to 8 suicide attempts sofar. l don't really want more. Movember is not Just about balls and prostrates it is also about Mental Health. So I am becoming a walrus for madness.
I have had a beard for 3 years. In that time I have lost 70 Kg So l look different. My neice says I look like House. My wife says I look like Dr. Who. l think I look old. Ho Hum.
In other news I have a cold and my Joints are on fire. Left hip is particularly bad as is right wrist. My shoulder dislocated whilst doing sit-ups in last nights physio. And it keeps snowing.