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Due to the stress and…
Last week we were able to attend a tai chi class in person for the first time in weeks. We “attended” on Tuesday night online but decided to drop in on the Wednesday morning class which was running due to restrictions being relaxed. It was wonderful to be together even with social distancing, which isn’t a big deal since we usually keep a bit of space to do the tai chi anyway.
Afterwards, the Scientist and I got bit of food and drink and hung out with tai chi friends for several hours. We hadn’t planned to stay quite that long but it was much needed and did a great job at improving mental health. The Scientist even took time from work (which he made up later) to go there. Anyway, it was great and made us hope for a quicker return to our own class which is held in a surf lifesaving club that hasn’t reopened yet.
That evening I noticed my lower lip was sore and I thought maybe I got a bit of sunburn there. I didn’t think much of it at the time but it was still feeling a bit off for several more days. I think it was Sunday I woke up and there were two cold sores on my lower lip exactly where it had felt weird before. I should have known although that wasn’t the most typical symptom I’ve had for them before. It’s been a few years since the last one. And usually they only come as singles but this is a double. I went to the pharmacy and got some medicine to help it heal. It was too late for the one that reduces the period of infection but I was able to get something to help it heal. I attribute them to all the stress of the previous weekend making itself known on my body. But then I was reading sunlight can also trigger so maybe a combination caused it. Anyway, it’s still healing and uncomfortable and another thing I need to avoid touching my eyes for…
Here in Western Australia we’re on day six with no new covid-19 cases and now there are only ten people still recovering in the state. It’s all looking good, especially since we did have restrictions relaxed. I’m hoping the venue for our tai chi will reopen next week. We have been doing our virtual classes on our patio but it’s supposed to be stormy tonight and I don’t think the patio is going to work due to wetness, wind and noise. And I don’t think I’ll be able to get to the class tomorrow where it might be difficult due to more rain tomorrow morning. Or not.
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There were kangaroos
It’s been a long and anxiety-filled nightmare of a day. I know I’m among many around the world feeling the same and I guess there is some comfort in not being the only one. But it really was difficult. I think for the first time all the networks here had rolling coverage throughout the morning and into the afternoon. I don’t normally watch television much during the day but it was hard to break away from. The Scientist sent me off to refill a prescription in late morning and it was a case of taking up way too little time. When I returned I made the decision to get out of the house and away from media as much as possible. My destination was our local Whiteman Park to do a long bit of walking while listening to music on my phone.
This should have been simple enough but I realised just about the time I reached the entrance to the park that I’d left my earphones at home. I often can zone out while walking so the only course of action was to return home and retrieve the earphones. It’s not that it’s far away but it’s tedious to take the time to do that trip again. Just before noon I arrived at the park and found decent parking without having to weave through the many parking lots around the village centre. Once there I applied sunscreen and then set off. I realise it would have been more effective to do the sunscreen at home but better late than not at all.
My walk was on the longest trail, which as a short and long version. I’d done the short version, albeit in a long way (after taking a wrong turn) on Saturday but today I wanted to do a lot of walking. For the most part the walk wasn’t eventful. took along my camera and took lots of photos and listened to music. I tried to listen to a Crowded House album that I find pretty soothing to hear. Sadly I just wasn’t able to zone out even though the music was pleasing when I wasn’t distracted by angry thoughts. Once that finished I moved to an Augie March album that I’ve been listening too regularly on walks. It’s got some amazingly beautiful music but the subject matter can be rather unsettling. It’s an interesting juxtaposition. Strangely I found this music worked a lot better for me and the album runs over an hour so it kept me going for longer.
But despite the improvement the effect of music on my nerves, I was still quite agitated and often found myself in various states of mind that unpleasant. My stomach had been churning all this time and I’d been unable to eat anything all day. Still I didn’t feel hungry and I wasn’t even tired from walking after several kilometres.
A brief relief came when I came across some kangaroos near the Kangaroo Flats station on the park’s railway line. At first I only saw a couple but there were actually at least half a dozen within my sights. I even managed to take several photos and my trouble thought escaped for that minute or two that I was there. It was a rather blessed relief in a sense to feel the weight lifted.
The rest of the walk was fairly uneventful. I finished one trail and then went down another pathway to another part of the park. In the end I walked over nine kilometres and still didn’t feel very weary at the end of it aside from a bit of discomfort on the ball of my foot which was already irritated by too much friction on another walk.
I did eventually get a sort of appetite after forcing myself to eat a few nuts I keep in the car for emergency purpose (hunger sickness). And now it’s late at night again and I don’t even feel all that sleepy even though I got very little sleep last night. Hopefully I will be tired enough to sleep anyway tonight.
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Shift in emotions
Before I related our loss of Rhianna, I mentioned how I had spent a couple days feeling really good and energetic. It’s a shame it was so short-lived but it seems events conspired against me after that.
We woke on Saturday to the news frenzy surrounding the Paris attacks, The event itself is horrific enough, not to mention over attacks in various parts of the world in the days around it. But then there was the aftermath of people lacking compassion for fellow human beings and being selfish. I sadly must say there are members of my family and friends who fall into this category and it left me very much in despair to know they felt like they did. I ended up in a seething rage for a couple of days. Part of me wanted to carry on but it is an exhausting and painful experience so I decided I had to close it down because I couldn’t sustain those feelings for long.
I didn’t have a plan on how to do this so my mission was to find a way to calm that feeling of rage. I did this by listening to music, disengaging from certain social media websites and doing some breathing exercises and relaxation. It was not necessarily in this order. I think the breathing was the first thing I did because I was feeling pretty stressed out by everything. The other things followed in various ways. I told myself I need to allow my eyes to glaze over and feel nothing when I read something that starts me feeling angry again. For the most part, it worked. I have stayed pretty calm over the past few days. I think my biggest mistake was engaging in discussion online with certain family members that stirred me up to raging feelings. I know better than to go there but I did. I just felt I couldn’t sit idly on the sidelines without making a comment regarding the truth in something posted. It was a mistake and hopefully I won’t go there again.
The whole thing has added to my resolve not to discuss politics or certain current events with certain members of my family. Sadly no good will come of it because we are so opposite in the ways we think about our place in the world. I will admit to feeling a bit of anger at times but I have managed to stay calm instead of losing the plot. Anyway, that has left me with a sadness because I realised I have such different values to so many people in my life. I have maintained some distance from family over the past several days but I will engage with people for Thanksgiving in some way. It’s a bit sooner than I’d have liked but I just have to rise above these feelings and make it work. After all, I at least do have the luxury of having these emotions and dealing with them in the best way I can.
I have many friends who think much more like I do and I take comfort that most of them still think the same way they did years ago when I first knew them. They don’t allow fear to rule them like some people in my family do.
Last Monday also was the birthday of my friend who died of cancer 3.5 years ago, which already made me feel a bit sad.
In addition to the emotional stuff, I also had essentially a toothache due to food continuing to get stuck under my one lower molar. It would become inflamed every time I ate and it was impossible to floss out the stuff that was stuck. I went back to the dentist last week and he replaced a filling on an adjacent tooth then did some work on a couple other things to try to solve the problem. He did an x-ray that showed it all looked quite good so was puzzled as to why it was causing me so much problems. Anyway, it seems the work he did has helped because I haven’t had any more issues since then,
For now, I will hope for some return of that lovely feeling of being really alive and happy and energetic at some point. And I will also hope for some inkling of what set that off because I would like it to happen more often.