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I am checking in here. Every time I think I ought to post something that isn't a fairly heavy life update, I get distracted. I feel like a lot happens at once but nothing happens at all.
For the past several weeks, I have been trying to get approved to do online EFL teaching, but I keep not quite reaching the benchmark for a live practice lesson. I haven't even tried this week, though I'm hoping to schedule trying again maybe on Monday. I just hope they don't give up on me and deactivate my account.
With the protracted election suspense going on, it has just been one more weight to carry on top of the other things I carry around with me.
There is the constant guilt and tug of wishing time and this pandemic away while knowing that my mother's time dwindles down with it. Sometimes, it seems like a completely normal day. Other times, she is in so much pain - physical and emotional - that she can't really interact with anyone without crying.
I find myself sleeping a lot or otherwise lying in bed without sleeping. I've been doing that the entire pandemic. It is sort of a substitute for social contact/touch in a weird way, I think. Being able to control my environment and the physical stimulation of being wrapped in a blanket is a bit like a coping mechanism.
I'm weird about touch anyway, and I think the isolation of only ever being around my parents has made it worse. My family and I are capable of affection, but given that it isn't constant and I am unaccustomed to unannounced touch, it makes the whole touch starvation thing a trickier minefield. I don't know if it's PTSD type symptoms or some kind of sensory irregularity that makes me a weirdo about being touched, but it is a problem.
I don't remember if I mentioned it in the last post, but my mother ultimately decided not to seek treatment (chemo or immunotherapy) for her cancer. I was kind of hopeful that she would try the latter initially, and I think she was fairly resolved to, but after some research she learned that the side effects weren't that much easier on a person than chemo and that for some people thy can even be worse.
Given the weakness already associated with her lifelong disability, she determined that it would not really be worth the risk of being bedfast because of how sick she felt due to any kind of treatment. Apparently there can be some kind of circulatory complications too, and she already has atrophied muscles in her legs and feet from aforementioned disability. Basically, she just thought that she would prefer to have as many normal-ish and good days as possible as her life winds down, however quickly or slowly, rather than fighting tooth and nail for life-at-any-cost.
Her/our faith is a comfort in that regard, and I don't think she's being reckless.
I grapple with it, and sometimes I cry about it. The scariest part, for me personally, is imagining the first time I leave to go anywhere after she's going -- like going back to Japan which I hope to one day do. The thought of not being able to call her when I'm homesick is somehow scarier than knowing that one day her suffering will be over.
I feel, sometimes, like looking forward to a time after the pandemic and feeling trapped and being underemployed is also looking forward to a life after my mom is with me, and it's tough to not feel weighed down by guilt and the thought that any relief I get is also going to be another source of grief.
I'm doing my best to be a better friend to my mom now, but I also feel numb sometimes, and I don't always know who or what to be.
The wind-down to the election seems to have added to my general all-the-time stress. I have been having trouble focusing on any particular 'productive distraction.' I have been writing some but only in mad bursts for the most part. I got a piece of video editing software I can actually work with, and I made one thing last week that I'll post some other time here, but after all these years of wishing I could do video editing for fun again, I'm drawing a blank.
The hardest part of that is to be able to flip through episodes of something with pinpoint precision without necessitating a full canon review of dozens and dozens of episodes of something.
I've been listening to a new-to-me podcast called "Alien Conspiracy" and it's somewhere between compelling and making me feel like an idiot for listening to the dude. It's storytime, though. It's a distraction that's lighter and not a big deal to zone out or sleep through.
I want to play more Dragon Age 2 and actually get into the rhythm of it. I enjoy it when I play it, but it also kind of feels somehow more labor-intensive than the first game did. I made an interactive chart on Google's spreadsheet thing using one of their templates to help me keep up with friendship and rivalry points and started over. I do think that helps some, but shortly after I started playing again I just got to where it was a bit too much to focus on.
In other news, my best friend is super into Fate now, which is neat.
It at least makes me feel a bit less like I'm letting her down by not getting through Dragon Age faster. I want to finish it and interact with her about that more, but I think the detour into something I'm more familiar with that she is learning about based on her whimsy has been good for us both. I'm hoping that when I start doing the EFL some days a week over at the parsonage that I will be able to play video games in the hours alone.
One reason I am seeking out the EFL online thing is that it's flexible so I can spend a lot of time at home with my mom, but in order to focus on anything I am very grateful to have the parsonage to go to. The thought of being alone there for three or so days a week makes me anxious, though, and my dad and I will kind of have to alternate and rarely overlap there because my mom doesn't want to spend the night alone.
I really hope that some of my mom's pain can be solved so she can have a season of peace and maybe enough strength to, I dunno, go on a safe short day/weekend trip or something before she gets so sick she can't. A lot of her pain comes from a couple of sources that may be exacerbated by the cancer but which are not caused by it, so that's also frustrating.
It breaks my heart to think that she basically started suffering with this when she started to feel better from a temporary illness back in April (which may or may not have been covid).
I just want my mom to get to do small things that she had given up on having the time to do. I wish we didn't have to worry so much about time.
This goes back and forth from the serious to the mundane, but that's how my brain works and the only way I can survive right now. I am trying to teach myself to live with the uncertainty, but I wish I didn't feel so powerless.
I've got to find a better means of focus, whether it be on fun or work or joy or grief. Right now, sometimes, my brain feels like mashed potatoes.
For the past several weeks, I have been trying to get approved to do online EFL teaching, but I keep not quite reaching the benchmark for a live practice lesson. I haven't even tried this week, though I'm hoping to schedule trying again maybe on Monday. I just hope they don't give up on me and deactivate my account.
With the protracted election suspense going on, it has just been one more weight to carry on top of the other things I carry around with me.
There is the constant guilt and tug of wishing time and this pandemic away while knowing that my mother's time dwindles down with it. Sometimes, it seems like a completely normal day. Other times, she is in so much pain - physical and emotional - that she can't really interact with anyone without crying.
I find myself sleeping a lot or otherwise lying in bed without sleeping. I've been doing that the entire pandemic. It is sort of a substitute for social contact/touch in a weird way, I think. Being able to control my environment and the physical stimulation of being wrapped in a blanket is a bit like a coping mechanism.
I'm weird about touch anyway, and I think the isolation of only ever being around my parents has made it worse. My family and I are capable of affection, but given that it isn't constant and I am unaccustomed to unannounced touch, it makes the whole touch starvation thing a trickier minefield. I don't know if it's PTSD type symptoms or some kind of sensory irregularity that makes me a weirdo about being touched, but it is a problem.
I don't remember if I mentioned it in the last post, but my mother ultimately decided not to seek treatment (chemo or immunotherapy) for her cancer. I was kind of hopeful that she would try the latter initially, and I think she was fairly resolved to, but after some research she learned that the side effects weren't that much easier on a person than chemo and that for some people thy can even be worse.
Given the weakness already associated with her lifelong disability, she determined that it would not really be worth the risk of being bedfast because of how sick she felt due to any kind of treatment. Apparently there can be some kind of circulatory complications too, and she already has atrophied muscles in her legs and feet from aforementioned disability. Basically, she just thought that she would prefer to have as many normal-ish and good days as possible as her life winds down, however quickly or slowly, rather than fighting tooth and nail for life-at-any-cost.
Her/our faith is a comfort in that regard, and I don't think she's being reckless.
I grapple with it, and sometimes I cry about it. The scariest part, for me personally, is imagining the first time I leave to go anywhere after she's going -- like going back to Japan which I hope to one day do. The thought of not being able to call her when I'm homesick is somehow scarier than knowing that one day her suffering will be over.
I feel, sometimes, like looking forward to a time after the pandemic and feeling trapped and being underemployed is also looking forward to a life after my mom is with me, and it's tough to not feel weighed down by guilt and the thought that any relief I get is also going to be another source of grief.
I'm doing my best to be a better friend to my mom now, but I also feel numb sometimes, and I don't always know who or what to be.
The wind-down to the election seems to have added to my general all-the-time stress. I have been having trouble focusing on any particular 'productive distraction.' I have been writing some but only in mad bursts for the most part. I got a piece of video editing software I can actually work with, and I made one thing last week that I'll post some other time here, but after all these years of wishing I could do video editing for fun again, I'm drawing a blank.
The hardest part of that is to be able to flip through episodes of something with pinpoint precision without necessitating a full canon review of dozens and dozens of episodes of something.
I've been listening to a new-to-me podcast called "Alien Conspiracy" and it's somewhere between compelling and making me feel like an idiot for listening to the dude. It's storytime, though. It's a distraction that's lighter and not a big deal to zone out or sleep through.
I want to play more Dragon Age 2 and actually get into the rhythm of it. I enjoy it when I play it, but it also kind of feels somehow more labor-intensive than the first game did. I made an interactive chart on Google's spreadsheet thing using one of their templates to help me keep up with friendship and rivalry points and started over. I do think that helps some, but shortly after I started playing again I just got to where it was a bit too much to focus on.
In other news, my best friend is super into Fate now, which is neat.
It at least makes me feel a bit less like I'm letting her down by not getting through Dragon Age faster. I want to finish it and interact with her about that more, but I think the detour into something I'm more familiar with that she is learning about based on her whimsy has been good for us both. I'm hoping that when I start doing the EFL some days a week over at the parsonage that I will be able to play video games in the hours alone.
One reason I am seeking out the EFL online thing is that it's flexible so I can spend a lot of time at home with my mom, but in order to focus on anything I am very grateful to have the parsonage to go to. The thought of being alone there for three or so days a week makes me anxious, though, and my dad and I will kind of have to alternate and rarely overlap there because my mom doesn't want to spend the night alone.
I really hope that some of my mom's pain can be solved so she can have a season of peace and maybe enough strength to, I dunno, go on a safe short day/weekend trip or something before she gets so sick she can't. A lot of her pain comes from a couple of sources that may be exacerbated by the cancer but which are not caused by it, so that's also frustrating.
It breaks my heart to think that she basically started suffering with this when she started to feel better from a temporary illness back in April (which may or may not have been covid).
I just want my mom to get to do small things that she had given up on having the time to do. I wish we didn't have to worry so much about time.
This goes back and forth from the serious to the mundane, but that's how my brain works and the only way I can survive right now. I am trying to teach myself to live with the uncertainty, but I wish I didn't feel so powerless.
I've got to find a better means of focus, whether it be on fun or work or joy or grief. Right now, sometimes, my brain feels like mashed potatoes.
