nicosian

Oof yeah the panic attacks kind of picked up, and i’ve had some near calls with a full panic attack. Trying to just hit full head on with managing it so it doesn’t settle into a two week thing.

I think I’ll be ok. I have a fairly busy week once more, but also getting more done.

I didn’t get much sleep, and that after a few days can be an issue. I’ll try to tackle my work for the day and then sleep better tonight.

Friday I see a therapist at least.

Its so strange what can set it off when my brain starts going into panic anxiety mode. I felt fine up till last night and it’s kind of crept up. I’ve got some dental work to probably call in and get done soon too. That’s not helping, but i can manage.

Ok. time to clean desk, list gems and get SOME work done. this week IS a bit hectic. Ok when is it ever not?

London:

The trip over was fine, a larger jet this time, not a “cityhopper” as such, but a full flight. The short hop over the channel is so turbulent it’s a bit nerve wracking for me. I prefer the train, for that reason, for environmental reasons, for the less faff around than the airport.

I mean schiphol security’s generally a breeze, because you don’t have to strip down, and put all your valuables and electronics on full display for anyone to grab. hell. keep your water, too.

Heathrow: STRIP THE FUCK DOWN. Put the ipad and phone in full grabbable reach. Watch as your bin sits un attended as you wait for the scan and search because oh, right, men can’t do patdowns even if you, woman, consent, so you watch every man get breezed through because you’re in a line full of women in full hijab with the stroller and the children and i’m not mad at THAT but if you have a fuckton of middle east bound flights then MAYBE HIRE MORE FUCKING WOMEN ON SECURITY?

sigh.
i was just testy the last day because as much as I love visiting london, I’m dead fucking sick of the british obsession of CONSTANT AND NEVER ENDING PA ANNOUNCEMENTS. Wash your hands, wipe your ass, flush the toilet, call your mother, the escalator is ending, the doors are closing, don’t touch that, don’t put that in your mouth, alarm alert alarm notice and it’s just so much deafening NOISE.

i mean i get that it’s prob for the visually impaired but it’s JUST….there’s too much natter and nag. Pare it down. The constant barrage of audio noise….


COnference: this year I did the dress it up a bit and suddenly more people talked to me.:D Dutch business casual and british are way different.:D

Most of the speakers were fantastic, i took notes, but the AI in mining one was fucking tedious and ran long and the prev president of the gem assoc going off the rails shitting on lab grown gems….funnily enough at the photomicrography workshop the presenter saw my lab grown garnet i cut and was “I got this piece from..” the same people i bought mine from so we had a complete moment there and it was fun.

did a bit of shopping but not much. simply put there were no boys T shirts I couldn’t get in zaandam, no interesting books for S at his reading level ( mostly tacky looking ones by an author i think is problematic and again i can get stuff here? AMAZON) and so it was some cookies and chocolate.

I had a good time, overall but heathrow’s the goddamn hellmouth. next time, London city airport or eurostar. Never again heathrow.

I did snag a 50 euro fine for zombiebrained not tapping in on the train, because schiphol does put the tap post a fair distance away from the platform and if it’s busy it’s very easy to walk by them. Oooopps.

i doubt a loud PA announcement would have helped. :D

Missed a few days. in my defense i was busy. Catching up on cleaning and errands and chores and shit from the week off for covid.

As much as it was asymptomatic, i had the fucking FATIGUE.

But a day after testing negative, i was still recovering but i’ve been on a fucking godddam run every day.

Upside, going on 5 days now of not panic-anxiety. maybe hit a pocket of calm.

Need to go have a shower, and do some kind of work, and off to amsterdam to the writer group tonight.

Swim sesh with S on sunday, run nico run.

So i’d rather treat the anxiety without drugs as SSRIS and me do NOT. Severe side effects.

Lower caffiene, better sleep, more exercise is good.

Journalling daily is, and I’ll look into a bit of therapy to untangle my head.

Today’s been better than not. Ate food. doing a bit of work.




The worst of it kicked up as soon as i got home from mom’s funeral. I’ve had some running anxiety over things like the oncoming climate disaster, and covid, and BIG THINGS I CANNOT CHANGE, and wondering what life my son might have. and DEATH. What happens when i’m gone? I cannot escape that, none of us can, but i think the relative suddenness of my mom’s passing kind of lit that shit all up.

I will be ok tho. I was feeling fantastic at dragoncon on almost no coffee and a solid 8 hrs sleep a night.;D

Honestly? I’m still deeply deeply ANGRY, like roiling fire in my gut angry that this woman tormented me for my life, simply for existing.

I’m ANGRY that no one fucking intervened. I’m ANGRY at the medical care she denied, because a sick kid got her so much sympathy. I’m angry that she just didn’t fucking care about us unless it served her purposes, angry that my sister was adored and i was loathed.

Angry that i had feces shoved in my face, knives thrown at me, held down and punched, kicked, slapped. ANGRY at all the mocking and derision and name calling. i was called a bitch whore slut from the time i was 14.

ANGRY that no one fucking said a fucking word. Y’all just looked away as she kicked the shit out of me day in day out.

ANGRY that she mocked me for financial management when she died so fucking in debt to her eyeballs and also amused, useless sack of skin she was.

I don’t know what to do with the anger. I know in time it’ll fade, but I think of my own life and what kind of person I’ll be remembered as and I’m angry that she conned everyone. I mean, the only people to talk at her funeral were somewhat estranged friends and a co worker, not her FUCKING DAUGHTERS.

we simply didnt matter, i didn’t matter. WHY would someone do this?

She told me too, if i was taken into foster care it’d be way worse.

I want to tap out the anger, and move on, and i never expected this on her death but I AM SO FUCKING ANGRY at a woman who made so much of my life a constant hell.

and I look at my son and all i want to do is hug him and tell him he’s kind and wonderful and smart and i love him for who he is.

how could she not even do that? How fucking broken is that?

She died broke, on the bathroom floor, with her pants around her ankles after taking a shit. It seems a fairly appropriate death.

But FUCK. I knew when i saw her in AZ that something was off. And i mean, she ditched me in a fucking parking lot.

everyone ignored the constant abuse. How did they not notice?

random things trigger the derealization, that panic state out of mind and body blast. i had two the first year we moved here. I probably had more in canada, masked by the depression.

i’m nauseated and struggling today and trying to just roll on an even keel. I need life to just dial it down a notch.

Much of it really kicked off after mom’s death and I’m angry and frustrated that a woman that literally loathed me the moment i was concieved, and I still have any feeling about her???? I’m angry that she never cared or tried, and i tell myself nothing would be different if we had 500 years.

I’m fucking tired. The endless travel, albeit mostly fun, was mentally taxing and it was just a LOT after years of not travel.

I need to process this shit down. It won’t get better till i sort this all out. And I don’t know how to deconstruct 49 yrs of abuse.

Honestly, writing it here as bluntly as I am, kinda helps? but also triggers.

Ok, a short nap, then parenting stuff.

con prep is more or less ready. I splurged on some fecking givenchy lip balm.:D

Hives: manageable.

the anxiety panic thing? was doing fine then i had a complete brain-breaker of a panic attack at dinner. I had some close calls too.

I don’t know the trigger. Tired, distracted, overloaded. I mean i felt pretty ok in brussels, but back to work/parent/life breaks me. And its not going to get “better” because dropping tasks isn’t on the menu but i do need to reconsider my time management i guess ( which is tbf, shit at the moment)

I think I have anxiety over pandemic-con-travel and once that wraps up i’ll feel better.

anyway. gonna flop sleep shortly.

things are sort of settling. I have moments of fleeting panic that make me freeze in the horror of it all, death and climate apocalypse and recessions and pandemic have kind of fried off my brain but….i’m ok. breathe.

I made the mistake of looking at mom’s obit, in a kiwicrate box near the front door full of things, mementos I don’t want ( a cherished teddies figurine?) news clippings, the funeral card, etc. And blam, back in Tucson, where i hugged her for the last time and felt nothing as anger and hurt devoured me, having showed her some amazing art and she refused it all, and “i’ll come back next time” and then “i don’t wanna drive ten more min to your hotel” and left me in a random downtown walgreens lot, and lo, having an international phone number makes getting a cab VERY difficult.

That i just really didn’t matter to her. She despised my existence, and i had that fraction of hope she’d ever come round and i guess the final joke is she was always waiting for the best to come and ignored the best that was there and now with her.

I do take comfort i guess, in that even as she was lauded, few showed up to the visitation and honestly the funeral. She was all talk. She was performative kindness when it would earn her accolades and show the world she was caring and yet she called me a whore on a nearly regular basis.

I mean, she called me “miserable from the day I was born” and i think i was a whore from about 14 on.

So like, not new news. I don’t know why she was so angry with me and i guess i wanted answers and the funeral gave me answers. I was the evidence of her own fucked up life, and she lashed all that anger on me.

But like i said, i’m good. I had a great day with S, we went shopping and for lunch in amsterdam and biking home the bike path is COVERED in poo pellets and piles. WTF. we get closer to home and there’s the city’s sheep flock being herded as they go to organically mow down the weeds in another fenced off spot.

We laughed so hard at the baaaaa’d traffic i almost fell off my bike.

and i feel only love and joy for my kid, and i cannot fathom harboring so much anger toward a child to abuse them for 49 years.

I’m ok. I will be ok.

I’ve been swamped with working, or trying to work, juggling the various meetings and appointments and classes and errands, and then hit with panic attacks. at one point 2-3 a day. I’ve gone now almost two days without, and today’s the first day in weeks it hasn’t felt like i was on the verge of it all day, and maybe now we’re getting somewhere.

I seem to get them in cycles 2-3x a year and this one was vicious and extended, probably due to all the travel, the jet lag, the whole emotional drop kick of my mother passing. Not that I’m traumatized by her passing, but the wreckage she left behind, the wreckage of my life in regards to her. its complicated.

I’ll be ok. I just need to stay on a schedule, work, focus, and get on with things. I need some calm. There’s just never ending EVERYTHING and i’m sort of over it.

So GP said the lung function results were quite good, but thinks they could be better ( honey i had a cold, viral bronchitis AND then covid the last few months do go on) so off to the hospital’s lung function people in june. because i just don’t have any life but doctors appts.

fine whatever. she has no interest in dealing with the perimenopause stuff and the meeting with her was rushed and indifferent so whatever. whatever.

I did research and got on an asthma med I’ve used in past that’s evidently good for chronic idiopathic urticaria, and so far, it might be helping.

THEN, S’s school has had wild random half days off, and easter day off, and soon may vacation days off and it means another chunk taken from my work time.

fine. whatever whatever. not like i was trying to establish a business and work or anything.

THEN R sprains his ankle and that’s left him half couch-ridden so now groceries, and meal prep is fully on my head so there goes another chunk of time.

Every time i sit down to maybe work i’m running running summoned running someone else needs my attention and i’m kind of at a fucking frayed edge and exhausted running mom mom housekeeping meals chores errands appointments school breaks oh what you wanted to do gem cutting in daytime hours fuck you nope.

I’m trying to be patient but i’m now failing. i haven’t had a goddamn minute to myself unless it’s the dead of night.

even when i’m sick i still have to muster up the go, and i’m just so very fucking tired of it.