Sh*tty Dreams, Sore Tits, Fog and Stupid Phone Games

It's just another day.

This morning I woke up at 3AM. Then again at 4:30. Then at 5. I should have gotten out of bed then. But I didn’t. I haven’t been feeling well the past few weeks. So I went back to sleep. I woke up for the last time at 6:15. Those later sleeps, when you keep going back to sleep, are always the worst. You never feel rested and have the craziest, fucking dreams. Or at least I do.

Prior to my last wake-up, I dreamt that my grandmother died. She helped raise me. We’ve always been close. Until I stopped speaking to my mother. And moved away. I feel guilty for not seeing her more. For not calling. Though we text weekly. She’s 91 now. She just had knee replacement surgery. Last year she had both of her shoulders replaced. I told her she’ll be bionic soon. I once dreamt that she’ll live to be 105. When I told her that, she rolled her eyes and said, “God I hope not.”

I want to call her. But I haven’t called her yet. I’m afraid that she won’t answer. I’ve had dreams before about really important people in my life dying and they’ve died the next day. It’s happened twice. I’m not under any delusion that I’m clairvoyant. I’m not a woo-woo kind of person, I just don’t believe in that stuff. But you have to admit it is kind of weird. And somehow over the years, my mind has convinced itself that if I don’t talk to the person and tell them about the dream, then it will actually happen. So I always have. And those people haven’t died. Which has just reinforced the nonsense that my brain made up. I know it isn’t true. It’s just magical thinking. Just like knocking on wood (which I still do.) I know it’s just coincidence. But there’s part of me that worries that I’m wrong and if I don’t talk to the person and don’t knock on wood, bad things will happen and it will be my fault.

I finally got up after lying in bed and stressing over that dream for an hour. I went to the bathroom and intended to go back to bed because I just didn’t feel like humaning today. And its spring break. And I have no doctors’ appointments this week for the first time since January. And I’m depressed.

But I walked by the front door. And even though the window is covered with that sparkly privacy film that makes rainbows in my living room when the sun shines on it, I could tell, there was fog. I almost cried. I’m not ready for that time of year. It’s only March. This isn’t supposed to happen until May. It was a beautiful day yesterday. All week, in fact. I went to the beach three times. I need more of that. I have a friend who used to live here and lives further inland now. He says he loves it so much more because he doesn’t have to deal with the marine layer. I told him that was crazy talk, it’s still the beach and the beach with fog is still better than anywhere else. But today I think I agree. Fuck the marine layer. I need the sun.

I’m not sure why I’m so depressed. I don’t feel like I have the right to be, let alone to be complaining about it. I have friends who have lost their people this year, and friends who are fighting to stay here. They are the ones who are allowed to be depressed, not me.

I don’t think I’m in an episode. There haven’t been any other signs.

Maybe I’ve been on my phone too much. No, I have been on my phone too much. I set up screen time tracking and fuck, that’s sobering. I put this stupid fruit game on my phone last year before the kidney surgery because I was so anxious. I mean, kidney cancer will do that. I know I get addicted to those stupid games, but I told myself it was just temporary and that I was allowed to do whatever comforted me because I had cancer. But then it continued after surgery when I was having trouble reading because of a minor eye injury during the procedure, and because my brain just couldn’t focus on reading. But, then I was able to read and just didn’t. And then there was January 20^th. And since then, I’ve been going back and forth on my phone between the fruit game and Instagram and news websites, hoping that something has changed. It hasn’t. So I go right back to the fruit game. I cleaned everything up on my phone and got rid of every other form of social media (except Substack, which I do visit every day and that does count as reading, so…) and I told myself I would get rid of the fruit game. But then decided against it because it’s helpful when I have a lot of anxiety. But then I play it whenever I have nothing to do for more than 30 seconds. Whenever I’m uncomfortable. Whenever I can’t deal with everything that’s happening in the world (or rather our country right now). Whenever I feel like nothing is ever going to change. It’s easier than dealing with…anything really.

Maybe I’m depressed because I’m in a flare. Whenever I’m sick, especially in a flare, I start feeling like it’s never going to end, that I’m always going to feel like this, with the pain, so much pain and the fucking exhaustion. I can never get enough sleep. It feels hopeless and like my life is passing me by.

Maybe its daylight saving. Still. Because it always takes me months to adjust to that.

Or maybe it’s hormonal. Most of my AFAB friends are menopausal or premenopausal now and several of my doctors said that I should be as well because of my age. I don’t think I am though. I should know right? But I don’t have a uterus anymore, so it’s kinda hard to tell if my ovaries are still doing their thing. My gyno six years said my ovaries were popping out eggs like I was in my twenties (I was terrified when she said that, and so grateful that I was about to be uterus-lacking and that my partner was vasectomized). All the women in my family had hysterectomy’s young too, but they lost their ovaries. So I really have no way to gauge if the meno fairy has arrived to torment me. I looked backward at my mood tracking app (a bipolar thing) this morning though and there is a trend. The deep blues (with a side of the mean reds) have been happening every month since I started tracking again, right after my partner moved out. That and my sore tits. Every month. Like clockwork. They are really my only hormonal barometer. Kind of like Amanda Seyfried’s character in Mean Girls whose boobs could tell if it was going to rain.

I think I still have a mostly normal cycle. At least for now. That makes it easier to get through the day, knowing there’s an end to the blues. Maybe in a few days? A week at the most.

That and the sun is starting to come out. Thank fuck!

I’m going to delete the stupid fruit game. And I’m going to move on when my phone tells me that my Instagram time is up instead of continually pressing “15 more minutes”. I’m not reading any news today. For real. None. I’m going to call my grandma. Then I’m going to sit in the garden and drink my tea and eat my toast just like she does every morning. And I’ll feel a little better. And then tomorrow I’ll feel even more better (yes, I did mean to say more better). Right? Well, that’s what I’m going to tell myself today. If not, I’ll think about that tomorrow.