Needing Vi More Than Anticipated!

I’m a day late this week but I needed Vi sooner than I thought I would! It’s been a harder week. I lasted 4 days before I had to get Vi to give me some respite again but now our switching is the same as Keri’s experience (ie like blinking without any idea how much time has passed) it’s not really much of a break in the usual sense of the word!

I haven’t done much this week as being around people is exhausting for me at the moment. These weird things I’m seeing, hearing and feeling are really hard to just brush off now. I can’t just ignore any of it and I’m questioning everything. I even had to ask this evening about a weird noise the boiler was making as I had a horrible feeling it was about to explode when actually it was real and the noise has stopped now. It’s ridiculous! I can’t do this! The support workers are being great though. I’m in the middle of trying to sort an email to the manager with compliments about a lot of the staff but it’s taking longer than I thought it would as my focus is all over the place. At least my mischievous grin hasn’t disappeared! That I’ve managed to keep so far! 😁 I’m still trying to stay cheeky when I can but sometimes it’s hard. I think being mute makes things easier to hide although my facial expressions probably show more than I mean to when I can’t hold in my frustration, shock or fear. I’ve dug out some headphones and found I can cope a bit better if I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head back and forth a bit to see if things disappear. It doesn’t always work but I’ve got to try! I’m a stubborn little donkey!

I went out with a support worker to a wildlife park on Friday and it was brilliant! I can deal with the cold. I just hate the rain. I saw lemurs (and almost got peed on by one that was sat above my head that I didn’t notice!), giraffes, cheetahs, a lynx, bears, wolverines, zebras, reindeer, monkeys, goats, pigs, and best of all, wolves! I love wolves! They’re my favourite animals! There was a pack of them and I got some great videos. Actually I got great videos and photos of all the animals! To cap off the trip we got a drink in the cafe for the drive back, hot chocolate for me! It was great to be out in the fresh air, even if I did get bothered by things that didn’t seem to bother other people. Looking back I don’t think those things were real or people would probably have screamed or at least frozen and stared like I did. Because my support worker was looking at all the animals like I was it wasn’t hard to look like I was engrossed with everything but there were times where I felt terrified. At one point I wanted to grab his arm and drag him in the opposite direction to the warped shadows that were screaming at us but he didn’t even seem to look at them, let alone point them out when we walked by. It’s confusing the hell out of me! I hate it! At least the animals made the trip quite enjoyable though. They kept me distracted enough that I wasn’t stuck in my own head for the whole time, especially when we got to the wolf enclosure. I think it must have been feeding time as they were definitely hunting for something in their pack! And nearly being peed on by a cheeky lemur out of nowhere got me laughing quite a lot...

I got Vi out on Friday night as by then I was just too exhausted and getting very frustrated. Although today has felt much the same, it’s just Vi has helped a lot by getting 3 nights of sleep! She didn’t do much by the sounds of it. She spent the weekend purging which I’m not happy with at all as it, once again, makes my effort to help us gain weight get dented a bit. She didn’t go out but at least she tried relaxing. She played on the PlayStation, had cuddles with all the gerbils (the babies are now happy to be held although I’ve made it clear that it’s not to be longer than about 30 seconds as they’re still very skittish), and at least saw the staff. I bought her a couple of skirts, a pair of leggings and a pair of new boots which she’s very happy with! A neighbour also very kindly gave me a body warmer. I don’t think she realises I’m actually a teenage male though. She knows my name is Fox but explaining the teen boy thing is complicated. I left a note under her door saying this though and said Vi might like it, and she does! So that’s that sorted! I’m no good with teen girl fashion but I thought she’d like it. She’s asked me to thank our neighbour which I did on Friday. I think I’d make things a lot more complicated if I slid another note under her door saying “Oh Vi was here for a couple of days and loves the body warmer! She said to say thank you!”. I’m not even sure our neighbour knows about all of us alters or if she’s just picked up on the fact all the staff, and a couple of the other clients I do actually chat to, call me Fox and know I’m a “he”. Vi said she met one of the clients I chat to but is worried it didn’t go well as she thinks she upset her. As far as I can tell Vi was being her usual very sensitive self though. She thinks she upsets everyone whether she actually has or not. If someone is frowning that’s just walked past her, even if Vi doesn’t know them, she’ll think she’s upset them somehow. I’m very happy with the fact Vi got so much sleep! I don’t feel as exhausted, I just feel mentally fatigued. I think it’s just stress more than anything which probably explains my lack of focus. I’m going to need Vi a lot more frequently than I anticipated. I wanted to be back tonight so I could go to therapy tomorrow anyway but it might turn out I have to split my time pretty evenly with Vi after all. I’m very reluctant to do this though, as I said last week.

I came back late this morning as Vi refused point blank to go to our eye appointment. It turns out that we didn’t need an eye appointment anyway and the letter came because of an error. It was the quickest appointment I’d ever had! I was very glad as, while the woman was telling me all of this, I was sat in front of these 2 machines that I felt were about to shoot lasers at me. I have to admit, I didn’t feel very ‘at ease’! It wasn’t a complete waste though as it meant I got a walk, I met a new member of staff who was shadowing our key worker and I got to pick up a new box of contact lenses. Not a worthless effort. It was also the session where our key worker noticed my head shaking thing I try and do to get rid of things that were freaking me out a bit or that I didn’t know were real or not. This led to me obviously explaining what I was doing. Initially she thought I was shaking my head as if to say “women!” at a conversation we were having! I do that quite often... I’ll never pretend to understand the inner working of the female brain and I doubt I’ll ever understand! It’s a long standing thing amongst the staff that I take the mick quite a lot about the fact they’re all female besides one of them! 😉

I don’t have much planned this week besides seeing our care coordinator although honestly I’m not sure how helpful that’s going to be. If I can barely even focus on writing this or watching a movie like usual then I doubt I can spend an hour talking to him about stuff. Plus, that’s another 4 days away. Maybe I can get Vi out the day before just so I can make sure she has a night of sleep. I guess I’ll figure it out when I get there. I’m taking it one day at a time. Planning ahead doesn’t work too well right now. I can’t predict the future. I can’t say that’s in my skill level! I don’t believe in fortune telling stuff. I’m very sceptical of that kind of thing. That doesn’t mean I can’t wish I could do it! 😆

It’s amazing how fast time is going even though half the time I’m doing nothing. I think I’m getting a lot of dissociative episodes. These are different from the freezing episodes. The freezing episodes mean I physically can’t move for hours. The dissociative episodes just mean I go into somewhat of a trance until something makes me snap out of it. I lose track of time and just kind of stare. If I lose focus too much or get too mentally exhausted then these happen a lot. I think it’s my brain saying “I need a quick break please!”. I don’t mind this too much. It’s better than not being capable of moving for hours. It just means that time is quite meaningless right now. The only time I’m very aware of what the time is, is when I finally feel able to go to sleep and when I get up to have a peek out of the blinds I find that it’s getting light outside for the morning. I’m lucky that most of my schedule is in the afternoon as it means I can sleep from about 8/9am - 11am-12pm. That’s 2-4 hours. The only exception is Thursdays when support is at 11am so sleep is pretty limited that morning! As you can probably hear, my nocturnal sleep pattern is exactly the same. I’ve had no success changing it. This isn’t bothering me too much though as I’m just trying to adapt things around it. Plus, now Vi has been here a few times she’s more aware of what goes on while she’s here so I don’t have to be so wary of things going wrong. The worst she can do is faint. Admittedly this isn’t great but in the grand scheme of things this isn’t nearly as bad as what could go wrong is it?

All 3 gerbils are awake! I need cuddles with them right now as it’s 10.30pm. They’ll go to bed in a couple of hours and as long as I don’t have a freezing episode then it means I can get some housework done before dimming the lights and putting on some music in the bedroom. I’m tempted to try meditation again. We have a lot of meditation stuff on our phone. Even if I’m not asleep, if I’m lying down with my eyes closed that’s still technically resting as your body isn’t moving or tense. The only problem is when those stupid voices bug me. They set me off at times when they touch on certain subjects but most of the time it’s more annoying, like a mosquito buzzing around in the dark by your head you’re trying to swat away, except you can’t swat away something that’s disembodied. Plus I can’t retaliate as I can’t talk or shout which is even more frustrating, and they know it!

I’ve still got texts and messages I haven’t replied to which is my fault. I’ve mainly answered texts that involve support sessions as considering I’m mute it’s my main communication! Besides that I don’t really bother at the moment unless it’s family. Maybe I can teach the gerbils how to text? Tom is always pretty keen to run all over my iPad keyboard when I’m using it to type gibberish for me so maybe I could tame him to type actual words. I reckon the word “treat” would go down quite well! 😄

Speaking of Tom, it’s snuggle time. And I can’t concentrate anymore. It’s taken nearly 3 hours to write this much as I’ve had to write on and off. Our little fluffy meatball has been very patient and played with the babies while he’s been waiting for me! He’s still a very good teacher and uncle to them! I still can’t get over how adorable they all are when they’re in a massive pile of fluff fast asleep or grooming each other, or even having a little look around in their “meerkat mode”.

If I don’t post on Sunday then it’s because Vi is here again but I’ll try not to keep delaying it too often. Although these self care things have to be taken into account! It may even be I write it a day early but we’ll see. I have to be wary what days I let Vi out as she refuses to work with the male support worker as she’s terrified. I also have to take into account appointments and such. She may only be a year younger but emotionally she’s a lot younger than that so I need to take that into account too.

I’ll be back in about a week, as usual!

Fox 🦊