Everything is too much

I’ve had a personal loss. I made a stupid, stupid mistake and forgot about an open window and my budgie, my best friend, got out. I thought i’d Found her. But the budgie had mites, a type that burrows down into keratin and made the cere brown and look female (but a bit more crusty than the usual female cere) but as i’ve treated The mites, turns out as the cere heals, it’s a male. So it can’t be my budgie. No one has claimed him and it looks like i’m Keeping him. 

But I miss her, and I keep fixating on the idea she’s out there suffering, I have horrific images in my head of her dying in horrible, painful ways. 

We had such a good bond. She preened my beard and I gave her head scratches in return. She was so affectionate. 

I’ve been distancing myself from the feelings, looking after the budgie in my care now gives me some purpose. But behind it all i’m Hurting. And the world feels like it’s on this fast trajectory I can’t keep up with inside my head. 

And I keep feeling like I’m ready to have a nervous breakdown and then feeling pressurised to not allow it, becsuse I don’t want to stress this vulnerable budgie out any more than it already has been through. But as the days and nights go by I feel like i’m losing my grip on any hold I have to not breakdown. 

Its become everything. Everything is too much. It’s no longer just about the budgie situation, it’s unraveled to become about everything. The floods, the virus, the loss, the thoughts in my head, the words I get fixated on inside my head, the images i’m Fixated on inside my head. I can’t relax even for a moment, my brain won’t allow it, yet i’m Getting to a point where I feel like I can no longer run this life. Like i’m Running a marathon and i’m Too tired to finish it. The problem is if you’re running a marathon and you get tired you can stop and you can rest up and recover. But life itself feels like a big marathon to me. I marathon I can no longer run. 

Parents
  • Condolences for your loss, Flint. I don' t  really know what else to say (I've been in similar places before, and I don't even know what I'd want to hear myself). Just to let you know that someone listened, I guess.

    Hang in there mate - if only for the sake of your new feathered friend for the moment. Even Sisyphus' stone rolled back occasionally and gave him a break once in a while!

  • I wrote something once about how I could never see Sisyphus smiling. But Albert Camus was right, life is absurd. 

    Thanks for your condolences and for listening. 

  • You're welcome, and I'm glad to see you keeping in touch this evening.

    When I was checking that I'd remembered Sisyphus' name correctly, I stumbled across a similar tale from Southern India, which coincidentally contains something of a precedent for Camus' observations. In Malayam folklore, there is a character called Naranath Bhranthan. He pushed his rock up a mountain specifically so that he could laugh at it when it rolled back down again. I've often wondered whether it's more than just a coincidence that the outward expressions of grief and mirth can look so uncannily similar. Maybe it's just my alexithymia, but I'm not always sure that I can tell the difference even from the inside sometimes.

    Best wishes.

Reply
  • You're welcome, and I'm glad to see you keeping in touch this evening.

    When I was checking that I'd remembered Sisyphus' name correctly, I stumbled across a similar tale from Southern India, which coincidentally contains something of a precedent for Camus' observations. In Malayam folklore, there is a character called Naranath Bhranthan. He pushed his rock up a mountain specifically so that he could laugh at it when it rolled back down again. I've often wondered whether it's more than just a coincidence that the outward expressions of grief and mirth can look so uncannily similar. Maybe it's just my alexithymia, but I'm not always sure that I can tell the difference even from the inside sometimes.

    Best wishes.

Children
  • Laughter is a medicine for pain so i’d Say they are similar. I’m sometimes my funniest, find strange things funniest when in the darkest of places. It’s  like a relief mechanism to pull you through.I can seem rather insane when stressed, as i’ll Laugh randomly but it’s always a sort of pained “if I don’t laugh right now I might cry and never stop”