CaB Group Hug - it's ok to feel like shit

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

My dog is very old.

It's stupid of me because he's a lively old dog, but over the last few months a couple of age-related/orthopedic things have cropped up on top of his arthritis and, you know, it's on my mind.

[canadagoose]

Thanks Fambo and Zetetic, I appreciate it. Fambo, I don't think Mind cover Scotland, but I'm in touch with Number 6 (local charity) about it and they're helping me out where possible. Problem is, when it's stuck in the system like this, they can't really do very much more than I can. It's a bugger, eh!

Poirots, sorry to hear your dog's getting on a bit. My parents' dog is too, and I know my Mum will be heartbroken when she passes. Hope you can enjoy the time you have now with your wee pal.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

Thanks canadagoose. He's a 13 year old German Shepherd and didn't develop arthritis till last year. I'm very lucky. He still eats/drinks/toilets/wants to walk/wants to play/gets around mostly all right.

The one silver lining of this whole pandemic is that I've been working from home since last March and I can be with him in his golden years.

[flotemysost]

Hugs canadagoose, nothing practical to add but I have mates with fibro (we're the same age) who have similarly had incredibly frustrating, humiliating, dismaying, exhausting experiences in terms of trying to get help and I can't even begin to imagine what that's like to go through.

And I'm sorry to hear about your dog Poirot, it's really heartbreaking to witness health issues get the better of a beloved pet. As you say, at least you're able to spend more time with him and I'm sure he appreciates that as much as you do, if not more.

[bgmnts]

My dog is very old.

It's stupid of me because he's a lively old dog, but over the last few months a couple of age-related/orthopedic things have cropped up on top of his arthritis and, you know, it's on my mind.

Aw man. My little mouse is old and decrepit and his fur is gone in places and he's scratched his face to fuck. Watching our furry friends succumb to the ravages of age sucks big donkey balls.

[canadagoose]

Hugs canadagoose, nothing practical to add but I have mates with fibro (we're the same age) who have similarly had incredibly frustrating, humiliating, dismaying, exhausting experiences in terms of trying to get help and I can't even begin to imagine what that's like to go through.

And I'm sorry to hear about your dog Poirot, it's really heartbreaking to witness health issues get the better of a beloved pet. As you say, at least you're able to spend more time with him and I'm sure he appreciates that as much as you do, if not more.

Thanks flote, it's just a right pain really. I dunno, maybe things can improve. Who knows.

[Dex Sawash]

Not good at this but want you cunts to know I'm having non-specific thoughts about improvments in  your collective well-being. See, I feel better already.

[mothman]

And we are all feeling collectively well-better! No, hang on, that's not right. Weller-being? Being-weller?

[Fr.Bigley]

I'm depressed as shit. Started drinking too much again. I don't like the UK anymore, the grass IS greener elsewhere.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Sorry to hear this. Have you spoken to your GP about your depression and your drinking? A mental health charity like Mind would have useful advice as well on strategies to deal with your depression.

Are you able to get out for a walk each day, even if it just a short one? It might help a bit with the depression.

Sending virtual hugs.

[bgmnts]

Yeah get down to the docs I'd say. You wanna nip that in the bud.

Pob lwc!

[bakabaka]

Wrong message, wrong place. Sometimes it just gets too much.

[Bahamadia]

I live in Melbourne, Victoria and we have spent more than 200 days now in lockdown over the last two years, and this current (sixth) lockdown doesn't look close to ending. I managed well mentally the other five lockdowns, and spent a lot of time checking in with my girlfriend whom I live with. She has had a hard few years with chronic illness and disability, and was already depressed before Covid, and I have been trying to look after her. She is a very social person, while I like people a lot, but can manage on my own, or with only a few people, so the other lockdowns were alright for me but bad for me. I just kept busy with uni, working out at home, gardening in our tiny patch. This lockdown though has broken me... I can barely do anything all day, I just feel so drained and angry. My uni work feels pointless (two courses, a library one for employment, and translating Latin poetry for love) and especially the poetry feels so useless.... I am getting no joy from it at all. I am chronically ill too, on a nasty series of immunosuppressants so am double vaxxed, but painfully aware that getting sick with Covid could kill me, so am basically house-bound while cases are all over my area. Whenever I look out my window and see cunts with masks off, congregating with coffees it makes me explosively angry.
I really don't know what to do

[shagatha crustie]

I'm depressed as shit. Started drinking too much again. I don't like the UK anymore, the grass IS greener elsewhere.

Look after yourself Biggles. Knock the drink on the head if you can.

[Fr.Bigley]

Thanks fellas, booked an appointment with a professional for Saturday, bought all the non booze things I like and am currently gutting my house top to bottom. Cleaning is very therapeutic for me, weird I know!

[mothman]

Good to hear!

[Kankurette]

So it looks like the Everton mental block affects women's games too. Fucking great. Walking through the streets of Liverpool crying because I feel like I've failed a test fucking sucks. I'll have to stick to Wednesday or neutral games. And I love Goodison and was genuinely happy to be back and hear the siren and then my stupid brain kicked in when it was 3-0 to City. I feel so ashamed. It's disloyalty.

Fr. Bigley, good luck. <3

[Glebe]

Sorry to hear it Kankurette... have you gotten on to your GP about therapy or owt? In any case, hugs and best of luck.

And I'm a little late here, but really sorry to hear what you've been going through Goosie. Strength and love, hope things work out okay.

Bahamadia, that sounds very stressful. I've gone through periods of wanting to strangle people during this pandemic, thankfully most are wearing masks now and that here. Hope you're doing better in any case.

Glad to hear things are on the up Bigley, keep it up mate!

Sorry about your poor dog, Poirot. Hope he's as well as possible for as long as possible.

And soz about your little mouse too, bgmnts.

[SpiderChrist]

I have friends going to festivals and gigs and I just don't understand - to the point that I just want to howl. Everyone is behaving like it's all over - people that I thought had the fucking brains to see through the bullshit but OH NO we haven't been to a festival for nearly two years WELL SO FUCKING WHAT YOU SPOILED MIDDLE CLASS BUNCH OF CUNTS. Some of us are wondering how we're going to survive on one fucking wage now there's only one of us working. Some of us are having to care for elderly relatives while the rest of the extended family do fuck all to help. Go fuck a horse you festival-going arsehole.

People who get exercised about football matches spreading Covid but go to gigs. Go to pubs. Go to festivals. As far as I'm concerned they're selfish twats and they can get to fuck. I have an acquaintance who went to a gig and posted on FB "Totally getting Covid. Totally worth it" and I can't begin to describe how fucking upset and angry that made me.


I find a lot of the Maui Waui/Equinox free festival types to be the absolute fucking worst. Banging on about "life is for living" and "my face, my rights" and all that other horseshit. Faux anarchists who listen to one Crass record and then spout "There is no authority but yourself" as if communal responsibility and care for others is something that soft cunts do. These twats have more in common with Alex Johnson than they would ever want to admit. Cunts. I'm supposed to be playing an indoor gig in a small venue at the end of next month, but the crowd who go and see the main band are your typical Horse Drawn/Equinox types and I just wouldn't feel safe around them.

I've got myself into a right fucking state about all this this morning. Every day is like this.

[JaDanketies]

I do worry that - while I'm quite comfortable going out nowadays and mingling with people, and perhaps I am wrong and a cunt - this 20-month lockdown experience where people have been consciously thinking about where other people's germs might be all of the time has inevitably caused some mental health problems to exacerbate, and I worry that some people might start to have obsessive thoughts about bacteria and viruses that will be very hard to shake off.

My dad was always very worried about bacteria on door handles etc, he would've fuckin loved it

[SpiderChrist]

I'm sorry. I'm not having a great day

[metaltax]

I feel your pain SpiderChrist. I'm constantly baffled by the lax attitude of colleagues to wearing masks, going to places unnecessarily where large groups of people, and just generally being aware of the massive fucking pandemic that's still raging. If someone claims that they should be able to go abroad or to a festival because they "deserve it" after 18 months of restrictions in front of me then I might just punch them in the face.

[pancreas]

Here's the counterpoint.

We have the vaccines. They are the best line of defence we've got against it. It won't get any better. Zero covid may have been an option in a more sensibly run and/or draconian society, but that's not what we've got. So we accept Covid in the same conceptual space as we accept the flu. We accept that the ever-mutating new strains will probably, on average, mean that we get on average -n years to our life expectancy. We can probably calculate n, or make a reasonable guess at it. My guess is that n, in the presence of evolving vaccines, is something like 5. Now, society can function perfectly well if n=5. So society shouldn't much care, either way.

Certainly society wouldn't much care if we made n into half as much through the wearing of masks or the cancelling of festivals. We could do this if we wished. It is a matter of taste.

Now, if you decide to go down the individualistic route, you could try to decide whether n=e.g. 5 is a reasonable price to pay for you to be able to see people, do things you like, have an enjoyable life, however you envisage that. Or, alternatively, that you would rather be forever interacting with people behind masks, and not travelling ever, but you get that extra 5 years. Either seems to be a matter of taste. To decide, you engage in a bit of risk management analysis. You may wish to imagine that you have to make a decision (as you do every time you step into a car) about whether the risks are worth it today. Maybe that's exactly what happens every time someone steps outside their house. This individualism is not in itself, of much help, since it's typically just a load of white noise. But if everyone who is prepared could say democratically how much of a hit to their LE they would take to knock the masks on the head, then in principle, we could reach a rational conclusion.

From a more global perspective: the ravages of Capitalism mean that there are plenty of places in the world where the effects of famine and drought will utterly dwarf the effects of Covid. Those situations could be changed, easily, but they aren't changed, because Western society is racist. We choose not to deal with those sources of premature death and all the waste they bring, but instead to worry about whether or not Western society inconveniences itself to degree a or degree b with the result of life expectancy changing by ±n for n being something like 5.

In that kind of light, it doesn't really matter, does it?

[Kankurette]

Not COVID-related BUT mental health-related - I had an awful episode both last night and this morning and another self-harm relapse, and I'm wondering it is worth starting a thread about self-harm because I don't want to turn the football thread into the Kankurette Cut Herself Because Everton Lost Thread, and because there's already a thread about alcoholism. GB is the place to post it but I'm worried people are going to be nasty cunts about it. Or call me a silly little privileged girl.

I have friends going to festivals and gigs and I just don't understand - to the point that I just want to howl. Everyone is behaving like it's all over - people that I thought had the fucking brains to see through the bullshit but OH NO we haven't been to a festival for nearly two years WELL SO FUCKING WHAT YOU SPOILED MIDDLE CLASS BUNCH OF CUNTS. Some of us are wondering how we're going to survive on one fucking wage now there's only one of us working. Some of us are having to care for elderly relatives while the rest of the extended family do fuck all to help. Go fuck a horse you festival-going arsehole.

People who get exercised about football matches spreading Covid but go to gigs. Go to pubs. Go to festivals. As far as I'm concerned they're selfish twats and they can get to fuck. I have an acquaintance who went to a gig and posted on FB "Totally getting Covid. Totally worth it" and I can't begin to describe how fucking upset and angry that made me.


I find a lot of the Maui Waui/Equinox free festival types to be the absolute fucking worst. Banging on about "life is for living" and "my face, my rights" and all that other horseshit. Faux anarchists who listen to one Crass record and then spout "There is no authority but yourself" as if communal responsibility and care for others is something that soft cunts do. These twats have more in common with Alex Johnson than they would ever want to admit. Cunts. I'm supposed to be playing an indoor gig in a small venue at the end of next month, but the crowd who go and see the main band are your typical Horse Drawn/Equinox types and I just wouldn't feel safe around them.

I've got myself into a right fucking state about all this this morning. Every day is like this.

You sound like a mate of mine. He's in a band and they've made the decision not to gig because of COVID. He has terrible anxiety about it and thinks bands doing gigs and festivals are idiots. I admit I've been to a couple of gigs but don't want to go mad on it. After Space, I'm amazed I HAVEN'T caught COVID because the venue was not only rammed, it was tiny. When I got the train back the next day, it was rammed due to Parklife AND Ronalado's return to Man United, and it was like COVID had never happened. I was one of a minority of people with masks on.

I don't want to tell my mate he's being an idiot or anything because I can understand why he and you are both anxious. Bands are still having to cancel because of COVID - the Anchoress has had to pull out of the Manics tour (which sucks, I was hoping to see her do Dylan & Caitlin) because she's vulnerable and has been advised not to play until it's safe.

Also, in defence of football fans, matches are outside. Surely that's safer than being in a pub or club full of people?

[SpiderChrist]

I wasn't having a go at football fans, someone I know was. The same person who decided that a festival was a great idea.

Having said that, I'm not entirely convinced that being on crowded public transport and in large crowds on the way to and from matches is a great idea.

Also: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/20/9000-covid-cases-linked-to-euro-2020-games-in-mass-events-scheme

Anyway, I seem to be completely out of step with the majority of the population (what's new?) so I shall carry on declining invites to pubs and gigs until I feel safe to do otherwise. As an asthmatic I am terrified of catching Covid - waking up last Saturday morning with a persistent cough, headache and sore throat was enough to get the old anxiety going again.

[Glebe]

Hugs and all to you lot.

[Fambo Number Mive]

I'm trying to support one of my family members who has clinical depression and other family members are causing them problems and I keep saying the wrong thing and they get annoyed and I'm so bad at this and I feel really guilty at how bad I am at supporting people, so worn down by it all and services are offering very little support to them and I just feel utter despair at it all. It would be hard enough even without the fucking pandemic and the cunt government and selfish public response to it. Just so angry with myself at how I sometimes say the wrong thing over Zoom and make them feel worse and how I can't come up with any practical advice and I just am so tired of things.

[flotemysost]

Sorry to hear that Fambo, trying to offer advice and comfort to someone remotely (over Zoom, phone calls etc.) can be really tough and I've definitely had minor falling-outs with people I'm close to, on both sides of the situation (being both comforter and comfortee) because of how frustrating and ineffectual it can feel.

Likewise I often feel like I'm saying the wrong thing and coming across as insensitive, or like I just don't get it and I'm saying uselessly nice things for the sake of it, and on the flipside when I've been feeling low myself, often my friends assume it's for a different reason (when a lot of the time it's for no reason at all, which is harder to offer solutions to), and then when I try to explain they've got the wrong end of the stick I feel like they think I'm being ungrateful or difficult and I just feel like a burden. It's hard "being there" for someone at the best of times, but if you physically cannot be in the same place (and don't know how long it might be until you can) it's all the more challenging.

Anyway, the very fact that you're concerned and feeling guilty about this suggests you're not bad at it at all, and I'm sure your efforts are making a difference even if it's not always obvious.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Thank you. I just wish there were more practical things I could do to help given how they are being let down by services. For now all I can do is ring them on a regular basis and not take it personally if they get annoyed with me if I say the wrong thing. They are very worried about Covid so it's difficult to visit them in person as I don't drive or cycle and they don't live within walking distance.

[flotemysost]

That's really tough. And we're all human, it can be difficult not to let that nagging feeling of "Look, I'm really trying here, can't you at least give me a sign you're taking this in?" bubble over when you're doing your best to support someone but don't seem to be making any headway (which is of course not your fault at all). I hope things get better for you both.

Re: live music, it's hard, I can empathise with your anger and frustration SpiderChrist but I'd argue that the majority of people attending these events aren't going in with a "fuck it, who cares if anyone gets ill, my fun is more important" attitude. I have a pal who's an ICU nurse and she's very much been at the coalface of this whole thing so is most definitely not naive or flippant about it, and she's been going to loads of festivals and gigs (she's double jabbed and takes regular tests). As far as I know the majority of events in the UK have required evidence of a negative test or double vaccination - I appreciate this is far from watertight, but it's arguably safer than going round a poorly ventilated shop where hardly any fucker's wearing a mask and you have no idea what anyone's vaccine status is.

This is why it's particularly infuriating that certain twat musicians are harping on about how they'll refuse to play events where audiences have to show a vaccine pass or whatever. It's insulting that they think they're speaking for live music fans, when the majority of us would like to enjoy things as safely as possible, but at the same time recognise that lockdowns, tests and vaccines have been absolutely necessary for public health and we don't see them as an affront to our personal liberties like spoilt fucking toddlers.