Weird about water

An excellent online acquaintance messaged me about some health stuff the other day, and the strange tension of living with unprecedented and difficult issues whilst also dealing with the everyday mundane. “Birds chirping in the yard, you still gotta put the bins out,” they said.

Doesn’t that just sum up what it’s like to live in the world right now? The Mad King with the Power to End All Life has issued one of his terrifyingly vague Truths, and tomorrow, we get to find out if the world ends, or if it’s just the more usual kind of murder with bombs. In the meantime, I have the kids at home on holiday, keen to play all hours of the day, client work to sort out, and I really wish I could get on top of this strange issue I have with water.

I am hydrophobic.

I don’t know why, but unless I’ve been exercising heavily I don’t really get thirsty. I can quite easily go an entire day where my entire liquid intake is the two coffees I let myself drink. Obviously, this is not good for me, and while I don’t get thirsty properly I do suffer the predictable effects of not drinking. I get grumpy and cloudy-headed and headachey, and occasionally some kind of physiological switch will flip and I’ll wake up at 2 AM with a suddenly raging thirst.

And what’s weirder is that I don’t want to drink water. I don’t know why! Objectively, I like water! It keeps me alive! But I’ll look at a full drink bottle or glass and a perverse bit of brain will go “yeah, nah,” and just kind of steer me away from it. I just checked and there is indeed a nearly full drink bottle on my desk. It’s been there all day. It’s a rare day where I actually manage to finish anything close to the recommended amount of water.

Perhaps I have a case of Mild Rabies. Or maybe it’s an autism/ADHD thing. Apparently folks who land somewhere on the autism-ADHD continuum can struggle with interoception, the ability to feel and understand the body’s signals; and lack of thirst (or excessive thirst) are common enough among autists that there are a bunch of people posting on Reddit about it. My brothers both get it too. It’s odd. And I’d like to get on top of it.

So that’s the plan for tomorrow. Remember to put out the bins. Try not to get lost in the endless terrible news. Keep the cat’s litter clean. Try to work towards a world where evil narcissists aren’t handed the power to destroy all human life. Drink enough water.