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[Loud Whispers]

I don't think there's any way but to go forward one step at a time JoshuaFH. I don't think it gets easier living when you are hit by feelings of pointlessness and valuelessness so you just keep one foot in front of the other, get fit, get good food, get out and get rested until you can see things more clearly. Count what blessings you have

[Robsoie]

Hey everyone. It's been a while. I hope you guys are doing alright.

I'm just dealing with the same things as always. Feeling lonely, but the world is lonely, and any possibility of human contact is impossible. At least it feels impossible. I'm getting caught in these anxiety spirals where my life feels farcical, and all my thoughts are farcical, and everything I do is farcical; and I just feel fucking stupid and there's no value to anything in my life and I've done this to myself. I just wish I had someone to talk to, maybe to hug as well; I think that would defeat most of my anxiety, but this is the curse that's been cast on me, and it feels I simply must live with it until the day I die.

I'm off to bed, hugging my pillow activates a bit of the parasympathetic(?) nervous system I think. I have work tomorrow and it just never gets easier.

I have lived half of a century so far and similarly to all the people that unfortunately lack in social abilities when growing up, i found it so very easy to fall into your inner darkness and stay there accumulating depressing thoughts without any hope, drowning in loneliness.
What i found helped immensely is ... putting a "foot in front of the other" as Loud Whispers mentionned, and i mean it -litterally- walking.

Every single day without exception, before or/and after work, make sure to get a long walk (try to not walk slowly, as some fast walk will additionally help your body health in case you don't have much physical activities), paying attention to your surrounding and the people walking around to keep your focus out of your personnal prison.
Don't ever try to find excuse (i'm too tired, weather is not good, etc...) for yourself to just go home because you will learn that the true enemy when you're alone is immobility , being "still", as it's when you're inside of your mind that you'll get tempted by taking pity on yourself and get depressed from it.

After a couple of months you'll notice that the walking activity will have done wonders on your state of mind.

Additionally even if it is not easy due to social skill deficiency at first try your best to greet people you're meeting while walking in the streets with a simple heart-felt "hello", you'll find that people usually and in majority (as morons are fortunately not as numerous as you imagine) will greet you similarly once you have broken that "ice".

Always had in mind something from an Alan Moore story from the eighties :

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[dragdeler]

You're going to make him sad that he made you sad and then what in turn you're going to make eachother sadder and sadder and we shall rinse the world clean with a dilluvial flood of tears... Nah man I ain't done with my ark yet.

Ah that's better I was like is he going to leave it just a quote

[Robsoie]

I had accidentally clicked "Post" before getting my reply actually wrote .

[dragdeler]

Pff.. Been in my own rut for two days, even the log I maintain is lacunary and lame. But yeah anyway outside does help, I miss it... I'm noticing allready that if I don't lower my sugar intake to reflect the lack of movement I feel like shit half of the days. I want to get back out again but how wise is that? It's going to be a long fucking winter... Ah I get to shovel the driveway... Tying back into the whole I'd prefer people to outlive me - I'd rather break my own bones on the slope in our driveway than have somebody else in the household taken out. That would be way more problematic. Me being dead weight is not news really, what's a month more right ( ) . Apparantly we're getting another foot of snow for tomorrow... It's ugh idk ok? I should stay inside but the fucking ear just left me again after two days and I don't really know why, I was just maintaining the same routine that got it that far... Sitting here feeling like maybe the gamepad clicks too loud and I should do my best to avoid those tiny noises, yup that's the payoff. Now I'm fucking annoyed about babying it. Bring it fucking snow. At least I get to eat normally with the kind of food we usually have around the house.

[Great Order]

So I brought only my laptop to uni thinking that the fewer distractions I had, the more revision I'd get done. It worked.

The issue is I was meant to be heading home today. I tested covid positive and my mum's acting as my gran's carer so she doesn't want to catch it, so I'm not getting picked up. So now I get to spend however long bored instead of relaxing before term starts. I'm SO. FUCKING. PLEASED.

[Jopax]

For whatever reason Blackwells no longer ships to my country, or rather, they don't even let me try to buy anything to perhaps ship elsewhere. After Bookdepository this was my last option for getting books in without getting absolutely shafted by shit shipping rates or unreliable ebay sellers.

[Grim Portent]

Local anaesthesia seems to no longer work on my jaw, or at least not on the bottom teeth. Four injections wasn't enough to make a filling painless two weeks ago, and five did seemingly nothing for a tooth extraction. So I've had a painful start to my afternoon. Not sure if it was 'local anaesthesia injected into the penis' painful, but it was certainly close.

[Laterigrade]

Always had in mind something from an Alan Moore story from the eighties :

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is beautiful, Robsoie. Thank you for sharing this.

[Great Order]

Spoiler: TMI (click to show/hide)

Got haemorrhoids, it's a whole thing. The issue is they won't go away, and OTC medications hardly work on them. I've been using prescription stuff instead, that being Sheriproct, which has worked super well.

So I went to the doctor on Tuesday, asked for more while I was there, they sent off the prescription, my mum picked it up since she was there.

Problem being I got Anusol instead. Some of the OTC stuff I'd been using before that hardly worked. On top of that, I have 12. That'll last me a week and a half. If I don't use these things once a day shitting becomes an incredibly uncomfortable experience very quickly.

Looks like it's another call to the doctor and getting the prescription sent off to where I'm at university. For fuck's sake. In the meantime, as I learned earlier today, it's back to intensely painful and bloody shits.

[nenjin]

I feel like I give this advice in my life at least two to three times a year now. Probably a sign of the age demographic I'm talking to.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1. Diet. High protein and lots of cheese makes for much firmer shits. Lack of fruit contributes to it.
2. Fiber. Ya need it. If you're not getting it through your diet already you need to supplement. You want to shoot for 15 to 20g of fiber a day. That can be tough from diet depending. You can buy 1000 capsules of Psyllium Husk as a way to bump that number up slightly.
3. Witch Hazel. Typically used as an astringent on the face and body for acne and blemishes, it has the added benefit of helping close up hemorrhoids. Get some cotton pads and a bottle of it, and after a shower and cleaning yourself up, soak a pad with it and stuff up it up there...and leave it up there for a good 30 mins. After a week of that you should have some improvement. Witch Hazel is actually one of the major active ingredients in modern hemorrhoid creams. I do this routine even when I don't have a hemorrhoid, as a preventative measure. Because I feel like when I stop, within a few months, I've got a hemorrhoid again.
4. Rutin. It's a supplement derived from tree bark. I don't necessarily understand it but basically hemorrhoids bleed because of the swelling and the walls of the blood vessels get thin and you get bleeding. Rutin helps to strengthen those blood vessel walls.
5. Take your time. I hate sitting on the toilet just waiting for poops to happen but you kind of have to until you get the consistency to a place where it's easier to pass. If you're having to force it and getting a headrush from it, then your poos are definitely too solid and you need to go very slowly. Seems obvious now but when you're not dealing with a flare up, straining can lead to creating one.
6. Physical activity. We just sit too much and it's a contributing factor to hemorrhoids. You need to sit less, and walk more. Easier said than done I know. Once you're recovered from your hemorrhoid try to think about ways you can sit less.
7. If ya gotta sit, get a tushy pillow.
8. Look up pelvic floor exercises. I'm not even kidding. What muscles you use and how you use them to poop can have an effect on....how you actually poop. Instead of stretching the b hole out by exerting all the effort from the b-hole, you strengthen the muscles around it so the b hole does what it's actually designed to do....be a turd cutter. Strengthening the perineum also helps keep all that pulled together and strong while you're pooping.

I've struggled with hemorrhoids in my life a few times, as recently as 6 months ago, because I ran out of all my supplements and products due to travel and laziness. I'd been free of them for years at that point.

Hope all that helps you like it helped me.

[hector13]

I have a bowl of frosted mini shredded wheat things in the morning which keeps me super regular despite not eating “well” (as in, things that aren’t great for bowel movements)  the rest of the day.

I probably eat more than the serving size, but oh well.

[nenjin]

I tried Bran cereal because it's absolutely loaded with fiber.....would not recommend. I went in with a man size bowl the first time and it was agony. I was crazy bloated, gassy and crampy. I tried just a single serving size and got all the same symptoms, just to a lesser degree. May just come down to gut bacteria and genetics. And granted it was just generic bran cereal from the store. Might have been old, poor quality or whatever. But I would just say consider Bran cereal the "nuclear" option for getting fiber into your diet. There are so many other methods out there.

My big one is protein bars. Quest makes one that has like 15g of fiber in it. That, plus a few Psyllium husks and whatever I get in my diet, made a big difference for me.

[hector13]

Bran is horrible, it just tastes horrible and dries your mouth out so it’s tricky to swallow after a while.

Grape nuts are another thing, I think it’s just bran bits, and does all the things that bran does but worse. I thought it would be palatable in yoghurt but holy shit it’s utterly horrid.

[Great Order]

I feel like I give this advice in my life at least two to three times a year now. Probably a sign of the age demographic I'm talking to.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1. Diet. High protein and lots of cheese makes for much firmer shits. Lack of fruit contributes to it.
2. Fiber. Ya need it. If you're not getting it through your diet already you need to supplement. You want to shoot for 15 to 20g of fiber a day. That can be tough from diet depending. You can buy 1000 capsules of Psyllium Husk as a way to bump that number up slightly.
3. Witch Hazel. Typically used as an astringent on the face and body for acne and blemishes, it has the added benefit of helping close up hemorrhoids. Get some cotton pads and a bottle of it, and after a shower and cleaning yourself up, soak a pad with it and stuff up it up there...and leave it up there for a good 30 mins. After a week of that you should have some improvement. Witch Hazel is actually one of the major active ingredients in modern hemorrhoid creams. I do this routine even when I don't have a hemorrhoid, as a preventative measure. Because I feel like when I stop, within a few months, I've got a hemorrhoid again.
4. Rutin. It's a supplement derived from tree bark. I don't necessarily understand it but basically hemorrhoids bleed because of the swelling and the walls of the blood vessels get thin and you get bleeding. Rutin helps to strengthen those blood vessel walls.
5. Take your time. I hate sitting on the toilet just waiting for poops to happen but you kind of have to until you get the consistency to a place where it's easier to pass. If you're having to force it and getting a headrush from it, then your poos are definitely too solid and you need to go very slowly. Seems obvious now but when you're not dealing with a flare up, straining can lead to creating one.
6. Physical activity. We just sit too much and it's a contributing factor to hemorrhoids. You need to sit less, and walk more. Easier said than done I know. Once you're recovered from your hemorrhoid try to think about ways you can sit less.
7. If ya gotta sit, get a tushy pillow.
8. Look up pelvic floor exercises. I'm not even kidding. What muscles you use and how you use them to poop can have an effect on....how you actually poop. Instead of stretching the b hole out by exerting all the effort from the b-hole, you strengthen the muscles around it so the b hole does what it's actually designed to do....be a turd cutter. Strengthening the perineum also helps keep all that pulled together and strong while you're pooping.

I've struggled with hemorrhoids in my life a few times, as recently as 6 months ago, because I ran out of all my supplements and products due to travel and laziness. I'd been free of them for years at that point.

Hope all that helps you like it helped me.

To be fair, part of the issue today was I'd had a fair bit of coffee. Doesn't usually affect me, but when it does it really does.