Myrddin’s Madness
What I’m Reading: Merlin: Shaman, Prophet, Magician (John Matthews — Octopus Publishing Group) / The Books of Earthsea (Ursula K. Le Guin — Gollancz)
What I’m Watching: Battlestar Galactica (2004) — Syfy
What I’m Playing: No spoons left to play more than Bingo Bash each morning (GSN Games). Crippling headaches can’t keep me from my daily bingo rewards.
Fun fact! My namesake is that of, well, Charis, from Stephen R. Lawhead’s Taliesin — AKA one of the best books ever written. That concession is exceptionally biased, as when I read it, I connected with Charis of the Pendragon Cycle’s first instalment on a level I’d never before encountered — and perhaps never will again. The mother of Myrddin, AKA a slightly well-known shaman, bard (and, later in the mythos, wizard) named Merlin, to say she’s incredible would again stem from an exceptional bias. Why am I writing all this? Well, I honestly can’t think of a better way to start this post. Nor could I discern an alternate title. A side note: the ‘dd’ in Myrddin, from Gaelic, is pronounced like a hard ‘th’. Like in ‘thistle’.
Anyway, my health has nose-dived. So that’s fun. My physical health is almost entirely comprised of a headache at critical mass, my mental health parading immediately behind it — it’s got green streamers and everything. I knew it was coming, I walked into 2021 with it, but as we progress into this already fiery year, I stand uncomfortably hand-in-hand with year six of my depression and anxiety. I’m tremendously depressed as I write this, my energy is at the antithesis of critical mass (synonyms, y’all), and my head feels as if it’s set to explode at all hours of the day due to this pressure headache o’ mine. The pressure headaches part is now entering year four of residence in my life.
If you’ve never heard of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), it’s the shit that keeps your brain from sagging in your skull. It’s like water for fish, and when there’s not enough of it, there’s that sagging and *shoulder shimmy* lots and lots of pain. 🥳 Indeedy, mine leaks out through tears in the dura of my spine, which is the tubular… stuff that keeps the CSF all happy and vibe-tastical. CSF leak = pressure headache. My dura is shit, primarily because I have a connective tissue disorder (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, or EDS for the curious). The dura is connective tissue, and thus it is faulty material. Another shoulder shimmy for all the medical things (of which the aforementioned faults are only a tiny facet of everything wrong with the system that is me) that don’t know what ‘run smoothly’ means!
A finger pop, next of all, for the procedure I’m having done next Wednesday to correct that unsmoothly dura and relieve myself of my headaches for now.
Next week, meanwhile, I figure why not do some flash reviews of a few of the movies I’ve seen of late? That is going to be fun, let me tells ya. I’ve watched a lot of really fun films (ever heard of one of the world’s happiest films, The Nightingale? Midsommar?), and I’m eager to discuss them.
A short post this week, lovely people, but better than the past two weeks. On a separate note, thank you to everyone who stopped by for my last post! I had so many people checking in to see my favourite reads of last year, and it truly means the world to me. Genuinely, I hand you all the thanks.
And with that, I’m brained out, so I’ll see you next week, lovely people. I hope your new year is starting better than mine.
— Charis.
