birds on the wing

So, I am not well.

I've had some really intense days, between work being extremely busy and other responsibilities, and today, a Saturday, was supposed to be my day off. Properly off, off. Sleep in late, zero plans except to wash my hair and tidy up around the apartment. Watch TV, maybe write a little, cuddle in bed. Rest.

Instead I was woken up at 8:26am by a missile siren.

Those sirens haven't stopped so far, it's currently about 7pm. At some point I stopped counting how many there were. On average there have been about one every 20-30 minutes for me, since the first one. Which means in the morning there were about 1.5 hours of quiet, and then there were hours in the afternoon with a siren every 10 minutes.

I say siren, but of course what I mean is I hear massive explosions happening in the air above my building. I can't go downstairs, nevermind for a walk, because of how frequent it's been, and how genuinely scary.

For the past ~six months I've been walking past destroyed city blocks several times a week, on my way to catch a tram to work. Entire streets with houses wiped out completely, apartment complexes reduced to rubble. And then a radius of many more streets with "only" shattered windows, knocked out doors, cracked walls from the shockwaves. Building after building after building. Turn after turn after turn. Until I get to the tram station, and then ride for 30 minutes to the skyscraper where I work, that stands next to the ruins of another skyscraper, that was destroyed by a missile.

I'm not good in the mornings, I don't eat dinner most days, my meals are breakfast and lunch. So I wake up hungry and need to eat something as soon as possible to start functioning.

Because today was planned as slow and lazy, I didn't think I'd need to function quickly at all. I thought I'd lazy about in bed, and then slowly assemble food depending on my level of energy.

Instead I had to hop out of bed and run to a bomb shelter. The bomb shelter that's in my house, that will not actually protect me in any way in case of a direct hit (see destroyed buildings above) but will help in case of a shockwave.

I was so exhausted afterwards I collapsed in bed. And then another siren. After that one I knew I had no choice, I HAD to eat or I was going to start collapsing. But I wasn't capable of cooking. Of course, there's no food delivery, because bombs falling from the sky.

I managed to at least change out of my PJs and make tea, and then the third siren happened.

The tea - green, fresh leaves, the very finest kind I have, from a small company that imports directly from farmers in China, because I knew this was the small effort that would make all the difference today, rather than some emergency teabag - did help me focus a bit, at least. Feel a bit more human.

After the fourth siren I knew cooking was out of the question, and rifled through the mishloakh manot I got from work yesterday (how fortunate we had our work event before the holiday itself) for any sort of candy with substance. There was a chocolate wafer snack, so that's what I ate, and then tried to move on with my day.

Which is to say with trying to do something other than just cuddle in bed and run to the shelter every time there was a siren (as there were a lot).

I felt... bad. Generally nauseous, unfocused, slightly out of breath. Exhausted, even when I was watching stuff on TV from the couch.

I tried to cling to some kind of productivity. I emptied and refilled the dishwasher. I put on laundry. I thanked all the gods above and below that I happened to already have food in the fridge for lunch, even though just heating it up turned out to be a challenge. It took 3 tries, with different sirens.

I only ate lunch when I started to feel like I was about to faint. Before that it was hard to make myself heat up food, or think about eating. Everything is just so scattered in my head.

It's time for dinner now, since I didn't really have breakfast.

Even though I know I should just try to go to sleep. I'm sure there will be endless sirens in the night. If an hour goes by without one, I'll be surprised.

I'm feeling faint and weak again but there's no energy to cook and no food delivery, of course. It took 2 sirens for me to boil a few eggs. Once they cool down I'll do that. I need to think about tomorrow's breakfast as well.

Tomorrow is work. The schools and so on are closed, but I work in tech and the company is global and our survival - my paycheck, my ability to stay afloat - depends on everyone believing our productivity is unaffected by these events.

So, work from home as usual. Half my local coworkers were 100% working from home anyway because Ramadan, so in a way it's all business as usual.

I know I need to take care of myself. Food. Cooking. Seeing people, even though travel anywhere including to a neighboring building is impossible right now. Creating a more or less correct estimation of how functional I can be at work so I can make decisions based on that.

Not doing well, and didn't actually want to write this post. Instead, want to write about the things that make me happy. Media, mostly, but also fic.

But I can't because just writing this, which has seemingly spilled out of me unbidden, has been to much effort and energy, and I need to go rest now.