567
for the last two and a half weeks i've been living under an increasing cloud of dread precipitated by the very sharp, very real terror of being pregnant. every month after i ovulate i go through a period of expectancy which ranges from absentmindedness (oh, it's that time again) to anxiety of varying levels. for some reason this month my anxiety has been acute.
my period is now three days late. logically i know that the sustained increase in my stress levels is very likely the cause of all my symptoms (excessive tiredness, weepiness, nausea). i excel at the psychosomatic. however, the fact remains that the thought of being pregnant fills me with such horror that i want to reach in and scoop out my insides with my bare hands.
the first and only time i spoke to a doctor about being sterilised, i was twenty-four. she told me then that with my history of mental illness and my relative youth i would be required to have a psychological evaluation before anyone would even consider it. now i am thirty-one and under a psychiatrist's care and i think it's time for me to stand up for myself about this. much as i would love not to have sex ever again, it's not an option in my marriage. but i can't go through this every month. i just can't.
my anxiety has also been heightened by this week's return to both physiotherapy and university, as well as the looming deadline for my lgbtfest fic. uni and writing anxiety are familiar and usually manageable on their own, or even in conjunction with one another. i tend to simply distract myself by doing other unpleasant things. on monday i spent two hours cleaning my bathroom with a toothbrush. the grout in my shower is extremely white. i procrastinate writing fic by thinking up other fic to write, no less. oh yes. i'm sure somewhere deep in my subconscious it makes a sort of sense.
yesterday those anxieties, combined with pregnancy!terror, combined with physiotherapy fears, made me a gibbering mess. i got myself so worked up i had an asthma attack and had to take ventolin. after physio i came home and lay down, only to wake up cold and unable to get warm. i took a hot shower, which warmed me up, but i still couldn't stop shaking - muscle tremors. i felt fluish, nauseous, and if it hadn't been the first class back after the break i would have skipped it. by the time i got home at nine, i was exhausted. i drank a cup of ginger and lemongrass tea for the nausea because i couldn't face actually eating anything and went to bed. at ten-thirty the diarrhoea began. so it was a fun night. my fever spiked at around one and i forced myself to eat a piece of toast and a boiled egg so i could take some paracetamol. the fever broke sometime around five.
now i'm shaky and dehydrated, but hungry, which is a good sign. it's also quite difficult to maintain a respectable level of anxiety when it feels like you're flushing everything you've ever eaten down the toilet at regular intervals. silver lining and all that.
in more happyfun news, i created the gilliananderson community at dreamwidth. i've always said it was a good thing that i wasn't a mod of any fannish community because people would hate me EVEN MOAR than they do now. i guess we'll see if that turns out to be true. assuming anyone actually joins, of course. apart from the fact that the more gillian love the better, the main reason i created the community was because i'm dissatisfied with similar comms at livejournal. the flow of information is very stilted and there seems to be little interchange between various sources. even the main xfiles community is a bit slow on the uptake when it comes to gillian. then again, i have my own biases there, so i might be completely off base.
i've also been having fun posting poems and poem-bits at grammatolatry. i originally created the site to rant about language-related things (hence the title), but that only lasted for two posts and then the impetus passed. after conversations with amyhit, i re-fashioned it and posted a handful of poems that i associated with mulder, scully or both. then it sat, idle, for a month or more, until i got organised and decided to try and back up my 100+ page word document of poems i've copied from various places. and since i'd already established a particular theme, i figured i'd finish that and then move on to more general poems. i'm trying to post one a day. it's making me happy.
and, finally, a little comic relief (pun intended): the ban comic sans movement makes it to the wall street journal. because comic sans is evil. evil, i tell you!
my period is now three days late. logically i know that the sustained increase in my stress levels is very likely the cause of all my symptoms (excessive tiredness, weepiness, nausea). i excel at the psychosomatic. however, the fact remains that the thought of being pregnant fills me with such horror that i want to reach in and scoop out my insides with my bare hands.
the first and only time i spoke to a doctor about being sterilised, i was twenty-four. she told me then that with my history of mental illness and my relative youth i would be required to have a psychological evaluation before anyone would even consider it. now i am thirty-one and under a psychiatrist's care and i think it's time for me to stand up for myself about this. much as i would love not to have sex ever again, it's not an option in my marriage. but i can't go through this every month. i just can't.
my anxiety has also been heightened by this week's return to both physiotherapy and university, as well as the looming deadline for my lgbtfest fic. uni and writing anxiety are familiar and usually manageable on their own, or even in conjunction with one another. i tend to simply distract myself by doing other unpleasant things. on monday i spent two hours cleaning my bathroom with a toothbrush. the grout in my shower is extremely white. i procrastinate writing fic by thinking up other fic to write, no less. oh yes. i'm sure somewhere deep in my subconscious it makes a sort of sense.
yesterday those anxieties, combined with pregnancy!terror, combined with physiotherapy fears, made me a gibbering mess. i got myself so worked up i had an asthma attack and had to take ventolin. after physio i came home and lay down, only to wake up cold and unable to get warm. i took a hot shower, which warmed me up, but i still couldn't stop shaking - muscle tremors. i felt fluish, nauseous, and if it hadn't been the first class back after the break i would have skipped it. by the time i got home at nine, i was exhausted. i drank a cup of ginger and lemongrass tea for the nausea because i couldn't face actually eating anything and went to bed. at ten-thirty the diarrhoea began. so it was a fun night. my fever spiked at around one and i forced myself to eat a piece of toast and a boiled egg so i could take some paracetamol. the fever broke sometime around five.
now i'm shaky and dehydrated, but hungry, which is a good sign. it's also quite difficult to maintain a respectable level of anxiety when it feels like you're flushing everything you've ever eaten down the toilet at regular intervals. silver lining and all that.
in more happyfun news, i created the gilliananderson community at dreamwidth. i've always said it was a good thing that i wasn't a mod of any fannish community because people would hate me EVEN MOAR than they do now. i guess we'll see if that turns out to be true. assuming anyone actually joins, of course. apart from the fact that the more gillian love the better, the main reason i created the community was because i'm dissatisfied with similar comms at livejournal. the flow of information is very stilted and there seems to be little interchange between various sources. even the main xfiles community is a bit slow on the uptake when it comes to gillian. then again, i have my own biases there, so i might be completely off base.
i've also been having fun posting poems and poem-bits at grammatolatry. i originally created the site to rant about language-related things (hence the title), but that only lasted for two posts and then the impetus passed. after conversations with amyhit, i re-fashioned it and posted a handful of poems that i associated with mulder, scully or both. then it sat, idle, for a month or more, until i got organised and decided to try and back up my 100+ page word document of poems i've copied from various places. and since i'd already established a particular theme, i figured i'd finish that and then move on to more general poems. i'm trying to post one a day. it's making me happy.
and, finally, a little comic relief (pun intended): the ban comic sans movement makes it to the wall street journal. because comic sans is evil. evil, i tell you!