I said this to Spot: Today, I want to die, my love. It’s one of those PMDD days. The ones that have started with late stage perimenopause (I made that up, very proud) and are debilitating. They crush my soul. Paired with the weakness of my body from bleeding and joint pains and another 42 symptoms that doctors don’t care about.

What keeps me from going through with it?

To be quite frank, I don’t know. Spot, absolutely. He’s saved my life several times over. But also: I don’t want to die. I just don’t want to live like this. Which is our common denominator, isn’t it? Anyone who’s ever had suicidal thoughts usually just wants the suffering to stop. We can no longer take it. Whatever “it” is for us individually. And when the suffering becomes unbearable and we feel like nobody understands us and nobody supports us (which is a sad reality many of us are actually facing, so please don’t patronise me with “I care” or “I understand” or some shit), we try to end our lives.

I’ve never tried. I was close, but never tried. Mainly because of Spot. He walked in. Impeccable timing. I need to be on watch when he dies.

When everything is taken away from you

Here’s the thing; the thing that is too ableist to say out loud: Becoming more and more (mainly physically) disabled over the past two years has broken some parts of me. Exercise, specifically running, swimming and long walks, was my go to for processing extreme feelings. Like the feral rage I’ve constantly felt at the state of the world since about 2001. Running that off to keep going and using it to create change? Priceless. To me, it’s better than any therapy session I’ve ever had. Can’t say that one out loud either.

Not being able to move – often at all – has killed my spirit. And I want it back. I want it back so, so badly. My intuition tells me not long now. About 18 months. 17. Okay. Wow. The specificity of my inuition never ceases to amaze me. That is when Pluto does its last hurrah near my Sun and Venus and will leave me alone for a few years. Over a decade even. So, I know this is temporary. And that gives me hope. Because I don’t know how I would cope with permanent immobility and if I could.

Getting out of bed is difficult. I can muster up the strength for washing the dishes once every two weeks, if that. My walks with Spot are ridiculously short. I saw someone talking about a short walk with their dog and was flabbergasted to see they were talking about 2.5 miles. Ha! I haven’t done the “big” walk that is about 1.5 miles in months.

I can’t really attend events unless I have several weeks rest before and after. Driving for more than an hour is painful; and I love driving for hours on end. Being anywhere outside the home also usually comes with fears of bleeding through, so I have to have one or two outfit changes with me; my rucksack feels attached to me when I go anywhere these days.

It’s too much

I could go on for hours, but I don’t really want to. My point here is that I find my life insufferably hard at the moment and there are several days each month when I want to end it. Feels shit to talk about all of this when there are genocideS going on and the world just watches, not caring about those people because they aren’t white. Yet here we are. Humans are multifaceted and we don’t fit one box neatly. I can hold both truths. I can think of people like me who are going through much worse at the same time. Not to put things into perspective, but to extend empathy and compassion and to fight even harder for their liberation whenever my energy allows.

Right now, it all feels too much to bear. With a migraine episode on top of it all just to keep me humble. It feels like I can’t go through. And I’m sitting in that and will continue to sit in it for a few more days, I’m sure. Before the dark fog lifts and I have some energy again and the cycle begins again.

Stay magnificent. Stay witchy.