bodily strain

I'm kind of falling apart at the moment.
I fully blame my stress levels over the last month. (Searching for new job and new flatmate in feverish desperation, and serious cash-flow problems.)

Besides stress-induced eczema, a hairstyle that looks ridiculous, and cramps in the lower abdomen, this is child's play in comparison to my right ear.

I am stone deaf. People have spoken to me over the last few weeks, and I'm telling you, I've learnt to lip read quite exceptionally.

I don't visit doctors unless my arm is falling off and trailing behind me. But the time has come. People have been complaining that I appear to be talking to myself, when I'm actually addressing them.

“So isn't this falafel fantastic, so great with humus.”
Person: You're mumbling, what?
Peas: Huh?
Person: Were you talking to me?
Peas: Sorry, huh?
Person: CAN YOU HEAR THE WORDS COMING OUT OF MY LIPS?
Peas: Now I can, speak up for God's sake.
Person: GET YOUR EAR PLUNGED, BECAUSE YOU LOOK LIKE A CRAZY PERSON TALKING TO YOURSELF.
Peas: OH-KAY. BUT WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS FALAFEL?

I also have tinitis. The kind of ringing that comes with ear blockage that eventually makes people go insane. Perhaps what drove Beethoven to madness eventually.

So today, I will wait in anticipation to see what comes out of my ear via a long and scary-looking extractor needle thingie.
My left ear's now taking strain too. I'm really not hearing much at all, come to think of it.

I had to watch the Crime & Investigation Channel on full blast last night.
I'm sure the neighbourhood loved hearing about the two guys that shot their parents in cold blood in Beverly Hills back in 1989. I certainly did. It's a good channel that.

And I feel like my gran. Deaf and into documentaries.

stress

Some people cope well with it, but sadly, those people also laugh in the face of pressure, or smoke way too much marijuana so are out of touch with reality, or are more loosely strung than a hemp shirt in Jamaica. I'm not.

Another morning of tossing and turning at 5:00am, wondering what the fuck to do with myself. I could get up and work like I did yesterday, but this is unfeasible.

I know I'm not coping when I awake every morning before dawn to toss and turn and worry and worry and worry and be neurotic and worry some more and the thoughts in my kopfel don't stop going round and round and endless doomsday images of being homeless and jobless, and... are my thighs fat?

I know I ate all the pies, but that won't help me when I'm living under a bush with a trolley and soaking my meths through Albany. Oh God. The pressure.

I fucking hate pragmatism. Especially if it's my own. It's one thing being an insomniac, but it's shittier waking up and not being able to go back to sleep, and schvitzing in your own sweat patches with so many thoughts cruising round your head you really just don't know what The. Fuck. To. Do. With. Yourself.

There's something wrong with me at the moment. Perhaps I have been listening to too much techno music. Yes, that's got to be it.

Running around wired and not being able to do much about nothing. Maybe I have Attention Deficit Disorder? (But do people just get that at my age?) Maybe I'm truly going a bit Twelve Monkeys.

Like, I can't concentrate, focus on anything. I have reason to stress; I may be homeless and jobless by October. Yeah yeah, yeah and worrying doesn't help, but what to do? Nothing poignant or deep is emerging from my noggin either. It's all just millions of 'What if's?' What the hell is going on? I'm panicked.

Somebody just turn me off. Put a switch on me.

I need something. And that just might be Calmettes.

polo, weekend & newfound stresses

Bit of a boozy weekend. And the Pope is Catholic, or so I hear.
Friday was shenanigan central at the popular Sandton drinking hole which has become everyone's Local. C and I drank a few Jaegermeisters and somehow I ended up at Melrose Arch afterwards. A little blotto.

Saturday was spent on the couch with Ant and Baze. Couldn't move except to drag myself the 15 metres to the kitchen to chow on cheese and other foodstuffs immentionable herein. So I lay on the couch for around, oh 24 hours, until I got a visitor who laughed himself silly – howled himself senseless actually – for about 30 minutes solid – at around 2:00am. Amusing.

Sunday I went to the Inanda Polo and drank a teensy little bit of champagne. E is amazing – how does she do it? She always seems to land her backside in Lurpak – like how she managed to find herself with Press Pass halfway through the event. Me and a mate embarrassingly got ourselves turfed – no escorted - from Big T's tent. Not for gross misconduct, but because I was clutching a Savanna Dry. It was cold and overcast, but I had a nice time. Argentina won the polo. Bummer.

I woke up this morning at 5:00am tossing and turning. When I'm worried about shit, I have this inconvenient habit of waking up before dawn and worrying about stuff. My flat, my job. God please may everything work out.

PS: Porter loos. OK, so we all know they're minging and everything. But the conversation I overheard while I hovered whilst spending a penny: “Jackie! Can you hear me?” ('Jackie' responds.) “I have no toilet paper in here.” (Um...can I pass you some Jessica?) “Well...how you gonna do it, since I'm already halfway through my pee and you're halfway through yours?” (I'll come over to your porter loo.) By now I'd already finished up - hovering is a bitch, but completely necessary – so I'm unsure how Jackie managed to pass Jessica the bog roll mid-bladder.