Nothing except grump here, move right on

My eye is not good, but you knew that.

I've calculated which work comes first in terms of having to get things finished (for deadlines are not going to change) and the next person who tells me "I know you said you were finishing this in July, but how about we talk about it in September?" may well experience some terseness from me. I will finish a complete first draft of my book this July. I will not need four days away to work on it later in the year (that doesn't mean I don't want time to write fiction later, just not this long-standing project with tight deadlines) and ... three people today have assumed my deadlines are not actually deadlines and none of them are publishers.

Also, people keep asking if I'm better. I still can't see out of my right eye, which is not at all surprising, under the circumstances, so no, I'm not better. I will not know what's happening with the eye until the experts have seen it again and the experts want to wait until August. This means I don't know anything for at least a fortnight.

Please don't ask me if things are better. If you want to help, say "How can I help?" not "Are you better?" If you want to express sympathy, then say "I'm sorry things are not good" not "Are you better?"

I am not yet better. I won't be better magically tomorrow or the day after. I find myself wanting to explain how inaccurate that is as a question whenever anyone asks it. I do not have measles, I have a bung eye. A bung eye that won't be looked at again by experts for weeks, for very good reasons. That may or may not clear up itself in a few months. Not days. Months.

If it helps, imagine that I have a broken leg and that it's in plaster and look at the plaster in your mind's eye and think "She's wearing plaster, that quite possibly means the leg's still broken." This makes me think that if anyone has an eye patch I could borrow, I could wear that when anyone's looking and that will serve the purpose of plaster. It won't stop the people who are simply not paying attention and want me (for they are kind) better at once, but it will reduce the sheer amount of goodwill that communicates pure wishful thinking. The wishful thinking is really annoying. It suggests that I might know things when I don't and can't when dealing with the everyday is hard work. From my end, it makes things worse, no matter how sympathetically you intend it. And for the person who explained to me carefully that this is all psychosomatic, well, please don't. Blood in my eye is blood in my eye, whatever its cause. It may make you happy to do a diagnosis, but it doesn't help me. So many friends mean well and are actually not helping. The friends who are helping are magic, however.

From the tone of this post you may discover that some of my friends are being supportive in their own way and their own way generally means using my bung eye to do things I shouldn't for otherwise they worry for me. Others are being wonderful. Still others are ignoring me entirely, which is their choice, but doesn't mean that they will get the support they will inevitably want when next they get a cold. The friends who are ignoring me entirely, you see, are all the friends who want moral support when they sneeze.

A lot of my friends have more serious things wrong right now. Big stuff. Fatal and potentially fatal stuff. Emotional stuff that is life-changing and serious. This means I'm spending chunks of my day there for other people, because life is like that. July is still July and it's a hard month here.

This is why I'm so fragile right now. It's not just my eye (which is not fatal, just temporarily debilitating). It's also why I refuse to suffer idiots gladly. Those friends who don't stop and listen are simply not being good friends.

If I'm not stopping and listening to you, please tell me, for it may be that I missed reading something crucial. I do have limited capacity to read right now, and I'm in danger of missing things that count. This worries me. I hope I haven't missed anyone. I worry that I do and that people are hurting. So far this fortnight, it's 3 friends have had real things wrong every 2 days (and if we've been talking or I've sent hugs then you know you're one of them). It's very bad. And there are too many idiots around who ask me cheerfully "Are you better? How are you doing?" when they could check in here and know.

I think I shall leave non-urgent emails and just post updates here. Less burden on the eye and on the heart. Which reminds me, I have four urgent emails (work related) that need dealing with. July is a busy month and a drear month and this year, also a bad month. I will get through, thanks to my wonderfully supportive friends and I shall grump thanks to the abundance of idiots that surround me. Thank goodness for social media, which I can read with one eye and be a part of communities without the exhaustion.

This month is simply full of ...stuff. I suspect that what I need is friends to pick me up and drop me home and feed me dinner in between, for a couple of nights a week. Not going to happen. What's happening is that I'm borrowing many DVDs and so I'm not alone. That's the big thing when one is incessantly worried, I've discovered, not being alone. Not being grumpy is, alas, unachievable, and I'm sorry to inflict it on all of you.


And I have PMT, which is insult to injury.