The Unbearable Awkwardness Of Being

A particularly pessimistic and irritating Eridian is pontificating to the others, insisting on the highest degree of caution when interacting with the alien in any way, even if that comes at the sacrifice of speed in treating the alien's ailments. Rocky is furious at the implication of "even if that comes at the sacrifice of the alien, period", but silent, unwilling to express his counterargument at full volume and risk waking Grace. Still, he is almost vibrating with anger where he sits on the makeshift 'human-style' bed beside his friend.

"This creature moves about even when supposedly at rest! It's unnatural! Perhaps Rocky-hero only survived the journey here at all because he was safely on the other side of a barrier of xenonite and ammonia, out of this creature's reach. Who knows what violent urges and instincts are contained within that bizarre body?"

The collective attention of the gathered Eridians shifts to focus in on Grace's slumbering form.

As if on cue, Grace rolls onto his side, still snoozing away, and cuddles his whole body in a curve around Rocky's, in a shockingly-close mimicry of a parent [Eridian-cat-equivalent] curling around its [Eridian-kitten-equivalent].

have you been feeling Bad for a while? your energy levels, interest in things, and general functionality slowly and incrementally worsening? your world getting narrower and narrower as the limitations hem you in to a smaller and smaller existence?

very importantly: have you found yourself thinking with serious, grim resignation that the end might be coming for you real soon?

this isn't suicidal ideation. and though it can feel like melodrama and whining or letting the depression go wild in the driver's seat, it's an almost quiet sense of unhappy acceptance. a feeling of "this must be coming", and you'd change it if you could, but you don't think you can any more. that it's truly too late. that feeling of running out of time like you're running out of energy and waking hours and everything else.

listen to that goddamn feeling.

odds are much higher than you realize that it's not histrionics or dramatics or attention-seeking (especially since, most likely, you feel this quietly and privately and swallow it like it's made of knives because you don't want to scare your loved ones or come across as some kind of drama queen.)

the odds are much higher than you think that this feeling is your body hitting defcon 1 and sounding every alarm, flashing light, and shrill, screaming siren it can still pull a working lever for.

it's quite literally your body assessing how much Something Is Wrong has now piled up and telling you "okay literally we are dying, DO SOMETHING."

but we train ourselves out of listening to that calamitous noise because we've convinced ourselves (and been convinced) that our own sense of calamity is actually overblown and overreacting.

if it's been going on for a while, it is very likely a real warning that your body is begging you to listen to.

source: i've literally spent the last several months more and more grimly convinced i was genuinely, quietly, incrementally dying, that my time was running out and i truly didn't know how much longer i'd be around, but it didn't feel like long.

and that's because i've been fucking dying, slowly, incrementally, oh so very quietly.

literally i have been diagnosed with heart failure. i just spent several days in the hospital after months of downplaying in my own brain the seriousness of my condition and how long i'd been feeling like shit. i now get to rearrange my entire life to counterbalance this shit i've been pretending was probably not really as dire as it felt.

but all that life-rearranging means i am now not running out of time, the end is not breathing down my neck, i'm not on my way out the door in spite of digging in my heels and not wanting to go.

i finally listened to all the damn alarms. very importantly and consequentially, i shared the alarms with someone whose judgement i trust and who i knew would be able to assess my condition far more objectively than i would offer myself. and i let their concern override my deeply ingrained knee-jerk reaction of downplaying, dismissing, minimizing, and undercutting my own sense of myself.

because i listened, to myself and to someone i knew was actively invested in me not dying, i'm going to live instead. my quality of life will gradually improve in so many ways, the walls that have been closing me in to the threat of crushing me beginning at last to retreat, to let me breathe, and see more than a narrow line of light ahead.

so if the description of this sense of encroaching doom and grim acceptance of it is ringing bells for you, they just might be alarm bells. pay real attention to them.

if you have been feeling for a long while like you might be slowly dying, it might be that you've been slowly dying. and you don't have to. you don't have to accept that grim fate as inevitable. look up at the flashing red lights. let those screaming sirens chase you out of the burning building.

you tell the doctor what you are experiencing.

in WHAT ways have you been feeling more limited? what ways of Feeling Bad have you had for a while that you've realized have actually been getting quite a bit worse, even if over a length of time that makes it seem gradual? has your energy been trickling out of you like you've sprung a leak? has breathing been getting more difficult? is everything seemingly increasinlgy more effort, all the time? you just keep getting more and more tired? you're not hungry very often anymore?

you don't have to be able to describe what is doing what thing, exactly. you don't have to be able to say "my lungs feel reduced capacity and like not enough oxygen is making it into my blood", you can just describe what the effect on you is, like "lately i end up kind of out of breath just from crossing the room" or "i can't stand up through an entire shower anymore without getting dizzy" or "i've realized i never go anywhere anymore because i have to go down two flights of stairs if i leave the house and just thinking about that is exhausting" or anything at all like that.

you don't have to have perfect, sensation-capturing descriptions or readily available medical terminology at your fingertips. just tell the doctor how you are experiencing whatever is going on. it's still going to give them somewhere to start.

and, extremely importantly, if you're confused and they're uncertain, you tell them with insistent seriousness that you have been feeling an increasing and strong sense that something is so very, very wrong that you're hitting the end of whatever road has been allotted to you. you stress "i don't WANT to die, but i feel like i AM coming to the end and i don't know how to stop it, and now the dying feels inevitable and also soon. please help me figure out WHY."

and i know that exact feeling you've been having because i've been having it too, for a good while now, up until this last tuesday.

and quite frankly, it's downright shocking how much that sense is alleviated by having a bunch of medical professionals peering at your charts and test results and, like, physically manifesting symptoms with growing concern. there's this immediate feeling of the doom being leveraged slowly off you, because suddenly you're not the only one feeling it breathing down your neck, and these other folks' whole job is to get that asshole off your back.

i'm not all better. not even close. i have been diagnosed with heart failure and hypertension and a couple of other things out of all this, but one of the fun quirks of "what the fuck is happening here" is that they pretty quickly figured out i only had about half the normal amount of blood. and we still don't know where that went! there's more procedures tomorrow, in fact, to further investigate that shit.

but because of the investigating, i kind of realized last night i've stopped feeling like i'm actively dying, very much against my will, with no way to stop it.

it's a very shitty helplessness. it's powerful and intimidating as fuck. but that's also why you do gotta tell your doctor about it, because you can't stop it by yourself. but just knowing someone else, someone qualified and invested, is TRYING to help you stop it pushes that heavy-breathing bastard off your shoulders so you have some room to feel like living is ongoing, rather than running out.