New Mourning

😭

In our last instalment, I was riding high, finally happy, feeling better than ever. This time, I have entered yet another valley, but this time, I’m joined by my new friends, diarrhea, exhaustion, and grief.

I have reached record lows of energy, somewhere between fatigue, from which you can recoup through rest and sleep, and exhaustion, from which recovery is not so easy. To get me through this period, I have been leaning comically hard on Sudoku puzzles. I do have better ways to spend my time, but I’ve had so little energy for the last few months that I don’t care. I finished so many Sudokus that life lessons have started to appear. Thankfully there is hope.

Why Sudoku and not some more effective coping technique like the twice daily walks I used to go on? As far as I can tell, I’ve been living with a deep fear that I’ll miss something important while outside of my home. It’s the nasty version of FOMO. Sudoku is a brainy activity that I can actually engage in while staying inside in case something goes wrong. And as you might have guessed, this anxious behaviour has not been fruitful. No crises have been averted because I was staring at numbers in a grid. Would have benefited far greater if I had gone for 15-minute walks in the past four months instead of finishing 1000 puzzles total in the Good Sudoku app. Yes, that’s the real number. Split about even between Expert and Pro difficulties. I can show receipts, but it already feels too shameful admitting the number. I got a bad case of number shame.

How did I get here? How much time you got?

Diarrhea

Next up, diarrhea. Irritable Bowel Syndrome with Diarrhea (IBS-D), specifically. I didn’t feel so hot coming back from Mexico, and family doc said it could be Traveler’s Diarrhea. Sometimes it resolves itself in a week, so managed symptoms with Imodium and electrolytes. Symptoms persisted, so took antibiotics for a week. No dice. Waited two weeks after the antibiotics to send a stool sample to a lab, and all of the tests came back negative for parasites. Another doctor said that IBS can temporarily appear when travelling, taking six to eight weeks to clear. Added probiotics to the symptom management. Three months later, diarrhea is managed but now I can’t eat certain foods.

Closing out two big projects in February and spending a week in Mexico did a number on me. When people get frustrated, they might say something like “if things don’t change soon, I’m gonna snap!” It’s never specified what will snap, and in my case, it was my gut. In that time, my mind’s been spinning, looking for some single root cause of the gastric distress, and all the answers keep coming back as ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Despite cutting off the sources of stress, the hormones and their effects take their sweet precious time to fade.

The gastric system is resilient. I wouldn’t say I’ve had many tummy issues, but I have had a complicated relationship with food, like eating emotionally, bingeing, stress-eating, snack attacks. Probably not fuelling my system with the nourishment it needs for the work I put it through. Stress compromises the immune system, then sleep suffers, and a vicious cycle of stress and insomnia take you for a ride.

Watched an interesting special on Netflix called Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut. Highly recommended. Not a new fad diet but more of a look into the latest research on the gut, or microbiome, being the second brain. People living in industrialized nations tend to not eat enough dietary fibre and have lower biodiversity in their guts. Gonna have to start packing in a lot more fruits and veggies, between 20 and 30 servings per week. Fermented foods add live bacteria. However, you have to gradually introduce fibre into your food intake if you were previously deficient because otherwise your tummy bloats and you get mega gas. Guess who didn’t follow the recommendation. And recovery sounds like it takes on the order of six months to a year.

Sounds great, but that’s too easy, isn’t it? I’ve also developed a relatively new sensitivity to dairy, despite drinking lattés almost every mornings since 2015. Plus I’m still not clear on what triggers my IBS. Is it a FODMAP sensitivity? I love onions and garlic, so that would be truly tragic. Probably need to cut down on fizzy sugar water, one of my primary emotional crutches. Gyatdam. Red meat seems to be off the table at the moment, and the Netflix special says you have to microdose poorly tolerated food for several months. It’ll probably be 2025 before I can comfortably eat an entire burger or steak. Took months to destroy my microbiome, it’ll take months to restore it. Should be a blast.

Exhaustion

The IBS contributed to my already-sparse energy. Exhaustion is new for me. Exhaustion is I thought it was just an adrenaline crash that would clear after three weeks. Maybe I was just tired from being busy for four months, but this tiredness is hitting different.

Hoo boy, it’s awful, let me tell ya. It’s pretty random, but when it hits, I just want to crumble on the spot. I’ve been losing weight from the diarrhea, but never have I felt so heavy. Almost feel narcoleptic.

Finally got my test results back from the sleep study I did in January. “Possible mild sleep apnea.” Treatment is a mouth guard and nasal strips, so no need for a CPAP machine yet. Already got the mouth guard, so time for another grocery trip for the nasal strips. Any bets on whether that will fix everything?!

Also got a blood test, and turns out my vitamin D and B12 are below the healthy range. Stopped at Costco for supplements, and it’s improving. Never took part in this subculture of vitamin supplements before (suppbculture). Most North Americans have low vitamin D through the winter, and apparently everyone’s been taking these supplements for years. Doctor recommended 1000 IU each daily, for those interested.

If I had to quantify possible causes of my exhaustion:

• 35% recovering from busyness

• 20% loss of nutrients and electrolytes from IBS

• 15% low vitamin D and B12

• 15% CPTSD and depression

• 10% regular adulthood

• 5% ???????

So yeah, exhausted because reasons. What do?

Grief

Not sure if the grief is more a result of the exhaustion or a cause. Probably both. Nevertheless, I am in a new state of mourning and grieving.

Historically, grief has only visited me for brief periods despite being a frequent theme in therapy and psychological reading material. The primary homework from the CPTSD readings is to break the vicious cycle of the self-critic. Right after that, the priority is to grieve.

Recall that the self-critic forms when the traumatized infant needs an explanation for why its caregivers aren’t present. The blame then focuses both internally and externally. My self-critic leans heavily inward, and I’ve been telling it to fuck off about a dozen times a day over recent months. My self-critic also has an external focus, and it’s been much easier to pull that back and just redirect it inwards. Every once in a while, I manage to correctly redirect the anger towards my caregivers.

If I’ve reached the stage of grief, perhaps I’ve managed my critic well enough. But be careful what you wish for. The dam has burst, and well, fuck.

Why grieve? How grieve?

Why? If I don’t do it, then who will? The wounds are already there. Who else is supposed to kiss my emotional boo-boos?

How? Well, apparently you just sit in it. Just…yeah. *colourful swearing and cursing*

Here are some of the griefs that have been completely sucking the life out of me:

Example 1 - Alone time

I’ll be settling down for the evening after a hard day’s work. Then, sometime right before bed, my heart will just start pounding. I’ve spent many nights walking backwards through my day and wondering what exactly triggered this freakout, but after a couple hundred nights with no answers, the average person would stop wondering and allow their heart rate to jump over 100 bpm while playing Sudoku.

The thought recently flashed through my head that maybe the source of all this pain is from my parents leaving me alone to cry when I was upset as a baby. I certainly don’t have any evidence for such a bold claim, but the thought has plagued me ever since. Maybe Lil’ Jon was forced to cry himself to sleep. Sounds like common parenting advice at the time and even today, but from what I’ve read, co-regulating with your baby doesn’t spoil them. I obviously don’t have any explicit memories of this happening, but after rebuilding from the wreckage of countless emotional flashbacks, it’s the only explanation that has made any sense at all so far. Perhaps someday I’ll find a better one. Or better yet, peace.

Example 2 - Waiting for care

Some mornings, I’ll be working from home and finding myself complaining internally when some environmental change hasn’t been taken care of by someone else, even though I could very well do it myself. I’ll be cold, hungry, clammy, but why isn’t someone reading my mind and taking care of my every need? This isn’t a commentary on my marriage, to be sure. I’m a grown-ass man, I can change the thermostat, grab a snack, wash my hands, and I eventually do.

So where is this all complaining-while-doing-nothing suddenly coming from? After a couple weeks of these new complaints, a whisper of an idea formed in my head. “Maybe your inner child just wants a parent to take care of them.” God damn it.

I can’t say that my parents did nothing to raise me, despite what it sounds like. I saw them busting their asses to make sure I ate well, went to school, had clean clothes to wear. And yet, the feeling haunts me. There’s no comfort in the truth from this careless whisper, just grief.

Example 3 - Uselessness

A lot of my adulthood has been a sprint and marathon to evade the label of being useless. In the process, I became a human doing instead of a human being. Apparently, the message I’ve internalized from youth is that “if you aren’t useful, then you are worthless.”

Isn’t that such a cruel doctrine to live under? Brutal! All sorts of people have reassured me that it’s fine to not be useful at all times. If someone collapses in a crowd and requires CPR, there are only 3 or 4 people that are supposed to be useful, and everyone else needs to stay out of the way. Be useful by being useless.

People whose primary caregivers were taskmasters will understand. “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.” Everyone retains their intrinsic self-worth as a person at all times, even when you’re not producing value for yourself or others. It’s normal to be useless and retain your worth. So I need to grieve over the loss of my humanity.

Just a sample of the horror show that plays in my head. Lots of grief to soak in.

Hope

While all of that sounds like a recipe for a great party, it’s also everything I’ve been working towards. The war is over, we won, and now it’s time to tend to the wounded. Despite the traumas Baby J faced, his response is finally strong enough to overcome them.

There’s still plenty of work to do. Can’t kick up my feet just yet, but the scales have finally tipped in my favour. It only gets better from here, but fuck me, it feels like shit. Body feels like it’s constantly on fire. Nerves, chills, shakes. Pain. Don’t think I’ve ever felt physically worse.

I’m slowly getting back to exercise. Hitting the dance floor on the weekends, taking more walks, lifting some small weights at home.

I’ve never eaten healthier, so need to keep it up for at least six months. Check in again in November.

I just passed the halfway point of this tunnel, and the light is already blinding.

Drugs

Thought you’d get away without an update on my drug intake, didn’t you?

Tried locking in my Vyvanse prescription at 40 mg, with 10 in the early morning, 30 in the late morning, but the 30 wasn’t hitting right anymore. 10+40 is the new hotness. Kicking ass and taking names. Then hyper fixating on the origin of those names and falling into a Wikipedia rabbit hole for several hours. Probably need to start skipping my Vyvanse on weekends to catch up on sleep.

As for nicotine, I’m now at four failed attempts to quit. While the old me might have beat myself up, I was reminded that drug addiction is a symptom of some painful cause. If there are emotional bombs going off all around me, is it so bad that I’m leaning on a crutch? Quitting an addiction requires both internal and external work. I’m quite tired of the level of introspection I used to maintain, so the current option is to quiet the world around me until I feel like working on my insides again.

Along that vein, I’m going to start drinking lightly again. Since my body sucks at relaxing, having a few on weekends isn’t a big deal. Read that the Asian Flush is a recognized genetic mutation, where alcohol is metabolized quickly and its toxic byproduct acetaldehyde is metabolized slowly compared to those without the enzyme mutations. What that means in tangible terms is that the hangover from one drink for me is probably equivalent to the hangover from two or three for someone else. So even though I won’t be able to have the same fun as I used to from drinking, I’m at least grateful I can still drink at all. And as an added bonus, I’m statistically less likely to become an alcoholic because of the Flush. One less vice to worry about.

Wrap It Up

Writing this post has been torture. Between the IBS, exhaustion, and grief, I have been only just been able to function by going to work and doing chores. Some things are helping, like exercise, vitamins, sleep. Not better yet. And it looks like I need to keep up whatever I’m doing for another five months at least.

In the mean time, I’ll be settling into my new mourning. See you in five months.