when I get especially stressed or sick I tend to forget dates and times and miss appointments. It's one of my indicators for how well/badly I'm doing.

As I find more people sharing openly online about mental health and stress, I've come to realize how valuable it is to have these indices. It's taken me a ridiculous portion of my life to understand that many of my "worst failings" are simply signs that life has asked more than I personally can deliver (no matter what someone else may be able to do). It's so tempting to go down the rabbit hole of "meaning", to assign moral values to symptoms, but at the end of the day, just understanding that they are symptoms has done me more good than probably any other insight.

I hope your stressful pain is soon gone.