experience

I'm still going through windows and waves, and the waves still feel unbearable, and like they will never end when I'm going through them. But they do end, and I feel better. Then there's the fear of when I'm going to be dragged back down again. 

Things are changing. I think that this process only goes one way. The waves will diminish and end. The windows will become more pronounced, until my whole life is a window. 

My fear tells me that that is not true. Why would it be true? Why would things get better? 

When we experience acute mental pain, we think things are out of control. Things have gone wrong. 

But I believe pain is redemptive, meaningful, purposeful. Something is happening. We don't perceive it, until one day we wake up and, as bad as things still are, we have this grain of well-being. 

I always want to desperately hold onto it, but that impulse just leads back into the vicious cycle - holding onto your relief, wanting to be in control, fearing the pain. That fear brings on the pain. 

Eventually you realize that you don't have to hold onto the relief. It's solid. The pain is teaching you where true relief lies. You're learning to find relief in strength and goodness and connection rather than withdrawal and isolation and indolence and rumination. 

in security

It's exciting to realize that all my fear about breaking is unnecessary. If anything is breaking, it's my house of fear and pain that I've painstakingly constructed and which I see as my refuge, when it's actually a prison.

As my world is demolished and there is nowhere for me to escape to - there's nothing for me to hold onto - I feel deeply unsettled. I ruminate about the possibility that things could get worse. I'm just barely holding it together. I'm not bravely confronting my fears. I confront them when I have to.

I'm forced to do these things that take immense courage. Not all the time, but occasionally. It wouldn't make sense to anyone else why these things are so challenging. It's crossing a threshold - being faced with what seems impossible, but you have to just do it. 

Someone once observed about me that I'm not the kind of person that goes into a situation without me having an escape route. But these kinds of situations I'm talking about, there is no escape. Escape is not an option. You can't hold yourself in reserve and operate from a position of security. You have to get on a bus, and then get on a train and then go somewhere and do things for an extended period of time, and even though you're scared where you are, making that trip and doing those things is even more terrifying. And that's just one time. You have to do the same thing tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. 

There's no escape. But it needs to be like that. That is a good thing, because escape is a delusion. Escape is what I've been calling the house of fear and pain. It's such an irony. Sometimes we think that a solution is to get away from life - to go to some kind of clinic or retreat. I was watching a video where Michael Priebe talked about this kind of thing - how he had the idea of checking in somewhere and getting professional help when he was going through the challenge of withdrawal, but he ultimately decided against it, because, as he said, what is necessary is for healing to be incorporated into your life, not to retreat from your life. 

And I would go even further and say that not only is 'checking in somewhere' not going to be helpful, it's going to make things harder. It's not the haven from your fears that you imagine. I guess it depends though. Sometimes professional help can be useful and beneficial, but ultimately, the way forward is to live your life, so if you're seeking professional help as a way of taking time out or retreating from life, that is not going to work. 

My advice would be to trust God to provide a nurturing environment for you. He knows better than you do what that involves. As it says in Proverbs 14: 12, 'There is a way which seems right to a person, But its end is the way of death.' But trusting God in this way is not  a passive thing. For our part, what we need to do is to actively engage in recovery and life. 

परिवर्तनहरू

I was looking at the art I made almost exactly a year ago. It was really a token effort - not something I really put my heart into. I just did it to try to get myself to create something. But for months now I've been making art every day. And whether or not it's good art, I'm being creative. It's not a token effort. 

I'm not finishing this year strong. I feel weak, afraid, overwhelmed, compromised. 

But something is happening. I scroll through my social media, and every day I'm pumping out blog posts and Medium articles and art, and I think, this is not the work of who I was before this year. 

So, it's encouraging. Often this year, and even very recently, I have felt defeated, like surely I'm broken now and there's no hope. The struggle seems to go on and on and on, and it seems like the result cannot be good. The result is weakness and breaking down and impairment. 

But then I look at what's actually coming out of this experience, and it's not an expression of weakness or breakdown or impairment. I may be weak and breaking down and impaired at the moment, but at the same time, I see myself changing in positive ways. 

living thing

I have faith that my new life is very real and I have faith that it - my real self - will triumph over the storm of rumination, anxiety, depression, and withdrawal.

Some days I'm still defeated. I'm overwhelmed by the net of problems. It is more powerful than my new life. 

But I know that things are changing. Every day, as I achieve my daily goals, my new life grows. Even on days like today, when it's hard to achieve my goals and I don't do very well, this new life is still growing. It's a life, and the rumination and fear and anxiety and depression is not a life. 

I've already seen it grow so much. On days like today, I feel like I'm back at square one or even worse, because I'm stuck with the same problem that I've been struggling with for nearly my whole life. The rumination kind of is like a life or a plant because it's what I have been nurturing and maintaining and protecting my whole life. It's just that now I see it for what it is. I've been cultivating the wrong thing. 

So now I think of it as a storm and I think of my new life, as defined by my daily goals, as a life. It still seems fragile and the storm is oppressive, but it's growing, and even when the storm is at its worst, the life breaks through. And the life is the thing that will last. It will have the last word. 

interference patterns

Something happens to things that are very good when they're squeezed into this mortal realm. They don't really fit. Something about this world can't accommodate what is very fine. It just can't exist for some reason. It gets distorted. 

It still exists, it just becomes something bad. 

What we imagine is really good is not good, and the only way to do anything really well - like, to really achieve excellence - is to act in a way that seems absolutely unnatural. 

രണ്ട്

The created me is more real to me than the real me still

things related to other people's expectations loom large 

and my daily goals - which are the substance of my life - 

so tentative

fall

It's encouraging to remember that I'm making permanent progress. It's not a linear process, but it is going one way. 

It seems like I'm always going to be pulled back to my old self - to the ways I've always known. So, when I fall down, I see it as a recursion back to that, but it's not. 

I'm only falling down because I'm doing more now. Each fall is not really a fall. It's progress. I'm smashing through walls. I'm not falling back into my old life, I'm pushing into my new life. 

оқиға

Whenever we explain anything or tell a story about anything, there has to be an element of fiction. We have to ignore a lot of nuances and exceptions, and we have to be selective about what we choose to focus on. We focus on the elements that fit our narrative. 

There's always an element of subjectivity, even in the telling of true stories, and there's always an element of objectivity even in the most fictive stories. 

horror story

Horror films try to take on an air of authenticity by making the claim that they're based on true events. But then you watch the film and there are elements that are obviously fantastical - jump scares and a lot of familiar tropes that we're used to seeing in horror films, like bodies contorted in strange positions and things that are normally associated with innocence being associated with evil. 

I watched a film called The Crucifixion which was based on true events. It was based on an exorcism that a priest in Romania did to a 23 year old nun in 2005, which involved chaining her to a cross for 3 days, and she later died. The priest was sentenced initially to 14 years in prison and then that was reduced on appeal to 7 years. Four nuns who assisted with the exorcism also served prison sentences. 

The film was fairly entertaining, but I think what would have really elevated it and made it great would be if they didn't have all the elements of obvious fantasy, or at least if they minimized those elements and foregrounded the actual truth of what happened. 

That's why I really loved The VVitch. Robert Eggers did extensive research about the Salem witch trials and other historic interactions between the puritans and witchcraft, and the film is grounded in that reality. It gives you a sense of the actual dynamic of those original events and how they actually happened. There are some fantastical elements but they're used sparingly and the overall impression is of historical authenticity. It engages your mind as well as your emotions.

That's what I thought The Crucifixion might do and that's why I wanted to watch it. How could this happen in 2005? What actually happened? But the film only used that event as a starting premise to tell a pretty typical horror story. 

the unthinkable

I think hope can kind of squeeze out fear. It can totally get rid of it. 

In her book Power Over Panic: Overcoming panic and anxiety (2010) Bronwyn Fox writes, 'When our sense of self is centred within us, we are able to draw upon all of our inner resources and go beyond our fears.' She writes about the created self, which has grown to accommodate our fears, thus perpetuating them for our whole lives, and our real self, which has healthy self-esteem and is strong and confident and free. 

My belief in my real self has grown. I've had short periods where I wasn't anxious, where it wasn't an issue, but a lot of the time I am still at the mercy of anxiety and depression, or that's how it feels. 

But the positive changes that have been happening give me hope. An example of positive change is my exercise and exposure sessions. About 6 months ago I got serious about my daily goals, including exercise and exposure to situations that make me anxious. At first, even just going out for a walk was challenging in terms of my anxiety. But I just kept doing it. Then, the big challenge - because most days I walked to the local shops - was going in and buying one or two things. So, the walk there was challenging, going in was super challenging, and the walk home was challenging. 

Then recently, within the last few weeks, I started to actually like the walking, but going into the shop and buying something was still challenging. More recently, even that has gotten a lot easier. I can go to the chemist, get my medication, chat with the staff there, AND go to the supermarket and do some shopping, and buy a few things. That doesn't sound like a lot, but that was unthinkable not that long ago. 

When I first started exercising every day, only walking seemed possible, and I wasn't even really walking that much. But at least it was something. I was exercising. But then I wanted to make a really crazy goal. The idea of running seemed pretty crazy, so I asked for some good running shoes for my birthday and I've been running every day since. It's been a few weeks now. I look forward to running, and I also like going to the shop now. I'm still buying too much chocolate but I've also started buying more healthy foods, like fruits and vegetables. 

I've been looking up recipes on youtube. I want to get back into cooking, but at the same time I've realized that it doesn't need to be that complicated. I went into Coles the other day with a recipe in mind, but then, when I was there, I thought, why don't I just buy different fruits and vegetables that I like, and eat them? I don't have to assemble them into some fancy dish, I can just eat them. So that's what I've been doing. I still want to cook though. 

Bible translations

I recently bought a Revised Standard Version Bible. I was really keen to get it, and it's hard to get now. They don't print it any more. But I found a Catholic edition, so it has the apocrypha in it as well. 

I have fond memories of the RSV. It's the first Bible I properly read, and then later I read the King James Version. Reading it now, it's not like I remember it though. I remember it being quite difficult, with archaic language. Then later, when I read the KJV a lot, I came to feel like the RSV was the ideal balance between the beauty of the language found in the KJV and the accessibility of translations like the Good News Bible. I wasn't a fan of the Good News Bible, as I felt like it lost a lot of the richness. 

Lately I've been reading the Good News Bible again, but also reading what is one of the most literal/ word for word versions - The New American Standard Bible, so they balance each other out quite well.

But yeah - the RSV wasn't how I remembered it. I think it's because I read it when I was quite young. Reading it now, the language doesn't seem archaic or difficult at all. It seems on the same level as a lot of other translations - like the New International Version, for example. 

I really like the NASB. You can definitely see the difference between its word for word/ formal equivalence translation and the thought for thought/ dynamic equivalence translation of other versions. There's a minimalism about it. Where other translations add in some language to really make the point clear, the NASB just gives you the words. It makes some concessions for readability, but you really get a nice sense that it's very understated. It doesn't labor the point. 

I like the NET Bible (New English Translation) but its strength is its weakness in some cases. It's very modern. More than any other Bible I've read, it speaks to me in language that I really get, as a modern person. But sometimes it goes too far - it uses terms and concepts from our world that don't really fit in the original context of the Bible, and then it's a bit jarring. 

So, I had the idea that the RSV was my favorite, because of the way it balances richness and accessibility, but now, after returning to it lately, I haven't really been aware of that. Now I just like the idea of reading a lot of different translations. 

પાથ જે હતો

when I'm stretched to breaking point

and then afterwards I feel spent and traumatized

i'm no longer drawn to what 

was

the unsettled feeling doesn't have me reaching for what 

was

for some well worn path

marked with a sign that says, 'Go this way to avoid fear and pain'

i'm going the other way

i don't trust that sign and I don't believe in that path

I avoid my fears, I empower them 

I face them they dissolve

there's a new path

I'm on that path

not the path that

was

never goin back

Rumination is self-perpetuating. You think, I'm stuck, I can't do anything and then you believe that thought, and you don't do anything, which just reinforces the thought even more, which makes you more stuck, which reinforces the thought, and so on. 

Lately I have been surprised in two ways. I've been surprised that this challenging process is still so hard, and, at the same time, I've been pleasantly surprised by how much easier things are actually getting. Like, I go out and I'm expecting that I'm going to really struggle, but I just don't. 

Somehow the two realities are coexisting in my life at the same time. Things are still really hard and things are getting easier. It's encouraging though. Like I could, and I do, freak out thinking, I'm still struggling, is this going to go on forever? but when I think about it, I realize that that's the nature of the recovery process and any other growth and development process - it's dialectical.

Progress is driven by the tension between two opposing influences, and for progress to be real, the two opposing influences have to be strong. 

Another way I think of this is that the only reason I have done the things I have done is because of the challenge. It's only because the challenge was hard that I now have a quiet time/ time with God every morning, I run and walk every day, I do exposure exercises every day (putting myself in anxiety inducing situations), I do art every day, I write nearly every day - on Medium and on this blog, every day I spend some time working through a course I bought about benzo withdrawal and healing, nearly every day I do some reading about psychology, anxiety, depression, positive thinking, etc, every day I eat about 3 meals and I'm eating more healthily, nearly every day I do some other reading - like a novel or non-fiction book, and there are other things that I try to do as well, not all of them every day - like being more social, working, pursuing different interests. 

If life had been cruisy, there's no way I would be doing these things. And the challenge needs to continue as well. It needs to be inescapable, even as I'm growing and getting stronger. Because otherwise I wouldn't maintain the changes. So I need the challenge to continue. I need it to be uncomfortable, because I'm not coming back to my old self. 

δημιουργώ

I think I'd like to write some kind of hybrid book because I find it virtually impossible to write in any given genre. 

I've developed a lot of good ideas this year that I would like to write about. Interestingly, when I went to start writing, even though it's not fiction that I want to write, what came most naturally and enabled me to start actually writing, was to write it as a story, with dialogue and creativity. 

There are definite ideas I have that would make a really good book. It's a book I would read. But it's not a book I want to write. I just don't want to. I don't want to be subservient to the kind of rules and rigor required to write a typical non-fiction book. 

სუფთა ჰაერი

this house is coming down

when I can open a window

i'm desperate to hold onto it

but it doesn't work like that

fresh air comes in

and the world is full of fresh air

these walls that seem so imposing still

do not exist

in my new life

ތަކުރާރު ކުރުމެވެ

I think that, to consistently do any kind of creative work, you have to come up with a signature style - some pattern or technique that you repeat. 

I've never been good at art but I've always wanted to make art. When I was in...I think year 3 or year 4...a teacher showed us this technique for making images where you start off with some shapes and you just keep drawing parallel lines around the shapes until you fill the whole page. I thought it was perfect because it's so mechanical - you don't need any skill or talent to do it - but you can produce something that looks interesting. So, for years afterward I was doing variations of that technique. 

I think it's similar with writing. That's why, when I start a new blog, it's really hard at first, because I don't know what writing that blog is like. After a while, I have a sense of, this is what it means to write this blog. 

stepping out

In post-colonial theory, scholars talk about the tension colonies feel because authority, power and meaning are located elsewhere, within the imperial power not within the colony. Colonies are defined by something that isn't them. They are 'othered' in their own land. This becomes a creative tension which allows the colony to make creations that are truly its own. An example of how they do this is by subverting the 'ruling' language and creating a creole language - a language that is a hybrid of their own native language and the imperial language. So, it's an expression of who they are that includes the empire but puts the native speaker or writer in a position of authority, because they are the author. 

My struggle against rumination, anxiety and depression has a post-colonial aspect to it. I have this oppressive authority that defines me and dominates my life, doesn't allow me to speak, tells me I have nothing of worth to express. As I achieve my daily goals, I undermine that authority and I become my true self. 

I still inhabit this world of pain and rumination. I still mourn the loss of my life because I still think this negation is my life. I still think my life consists of the pain I'm going through because, in a way, it does. It's more imposing a lot of the time than my goals are, and it's hard for me to do my daily goals. Sometimes I even give up and I feel defeated and broken. 

But I have faith and hope. I believe in my new life. I believe it's real and powerful in a way that my rumination and mental health issues are not. They're so imposing because I have spent a lifetime building them, nurturing them, feeding them. But the truth is that they are not real. I don't have to be dictated to by their rules. 

The pain seems permanent. The struggle seems permanent. Achieving my daily goals is still kind of like jumping into a cold swimming pool a lot of the time. I prefer to ruminate and do nothing and to be distressed, because that's what I know. I keep holding on to it. I keep putting myself back in that house of fear and pain. But I'm learning. I'm learning that there's a world outside that house and it's the real world and real life, and it's permanent. 

běžet

It's easy to get weighed down, I find. I keep returning to rumination and the feeling of being unsettled and to catastrophizing. I fear that it will never change, but that's my fear and my fear is a liar. 

Hope tastes really weird, and thoughts of impending doom are so delicious. 

Every day I work on my goals. Things are changing. A couple of months ago, even just going out for a walk was hard and I felt vulnerable. Lately I enjoy it. I feel like it's doing me good. But I also run every day now, as a separate thing. 

शांत समय के बा

Most of my life I have been trying to be a Christian, and I have often felt like I failed or like I don't measure up. It has often scared me that I don't understand what I am supposed to. I haven't grown as I should have. I'm not confident about things that you're supposed to be confident about. 

But there's a confidence about some things that has only grown with time, through all the dramatic changes and stages I've been through. 

I'm confident that the way forward lies through my relationship with God, and I spend time with God by reading the Bible, writing my insights, and praying. 

I don't value this enough. I envy the material success of other people, but when I think about it - when I reflect - I realize that nothing compares with having a relationship with God. 

ճգնաժամ

I've always hated it when people suggest that a solution to my mental health struggles is to think about how other people have it much worse. It has always seemed like what they're suggesting is that my problem isn't real, while some people do have real problems. If I'm suffering, how is thinking about how other people are suffering more, a solution?

But lately my view about this has changed. I do think about how other people have bigger problems than I do, and about how things could be worse for me. I think the reason I'm able to think like this now though, is because the challenge of tapering off Valium has changed the way I see anxiety, depression and rumination. 

They are not conditions that I'm stuck with and stuck in and can't do anything about. I see them as drivers of change. The changes I'm making, and my new life, are permanent, but those conditions aren't. 

break

If I didn't self-censor myself so strictly, I could write a couple of books every year. 

It's a characteristic of rumination and depression. I'll have an idea for something to write about, but then, on further thought, there are always reasons why I shouldn't write about it or don't want to write about it. 

Hours can pass like that. 

One of the positive changes that I've made happen this year is that I push myself to make art every day and to write every day or almost every day. I'm not as prolific with writing as I am with art, but I'm getting there. 

There's something about making a conscious decision to create like that that gives you the energy and motivation you need to do it. 

I wasn't able to do that in the past. I was still too captivated by rumination. For example, after falling out of the habit of creating art last year, I wanted to get back into it, so I made an effort to at least create something, but what I made was lame and I knew that it was lame. It only had part of my attention. 

What's happened this year is that I've broken my rumination. Because of the challenges I've been through and I'm still going through, I had to treat my daily goals as a matter of life and death. I read self help books and watch positive videos. I write and read affirmations every day, more on the hard days. In about 8 months I've written more than 400 pages of affirmations. 

I exercise every day. I started with walking, but recently I started running and now I run every day. I have a proper quiet time - reading the Bible, writing my insights and praying - every day, which is something else I had let slip in recent years. I'm eating more and healthier....and I do a lot of other things. 

liminal space

The space between being asleep and being awake is a different reality and it doesn't work the way our waking experience works. 

Sometimes I find that it's a restful space. If I can just stay there a bit longer I can get some more sleep. Sometimes that's possible but other times my fully conscious mind steps in with worry and rumination and it's like I'm under attack. I always hope that doesn't happen too early. It's a bummer when it happens at 3 am, because then it becomes a vicious cycle of tiredness and anxiety feeding each other. 

Sometimes it's the opposite. In my semi-awake state, I'm already experiencing stress and fear. What I've learnt though, interestingly, is that getting up and fully waking up actually helps in this case. I feel calm and able to be productive once I get up and get going. 

The mistake that I've often made in the past is to react to that initial turmoil, thinking something like, oh no, here we go, this is never-ending. It starts as soon as I wake and lasts the whole day, and I'm so tired, I just wish I could sleep. That kind of reactive thinking perpetuates the stress because I'm feeding it with fear. 

How I've learnt to react is to welcome it - to understand that every single unpleasant symptom or state of mind is my physiology's way of healing itself. That fraught state of mind that continues into my waking consciousness is my mind doing something. It's processing, and it's healing itself. 

renovation

My fears are saying to me, what if I have to face this or that situation? How will I cope? And how am I going to handle the situations I know I'm going to have to face? 

But then there is hope. Sometimes in the past it was as if my mind was unable to hold anything good - anything comforting or hopeful. That's one of the problems that depression, rumination and anxiety bring. One's mind is so amenable to fear and sadness. We've made a nice cozy home for those things. But hope, fulfilment, joy....there's nowhere for them to even stay. We can't hold such things. Hopelessness and despair own the place. 

Just like illness feels bad but it's actually your body's way of healing, when God is renovating your mind so that it can hold hope and joy and love and peace, it doesn't feel good. But hope tells you something good is happening. 

book recommendations

The three books that I usually list as my favorite books are all books that I discovered early in my English and History degree: Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein and Middlemarch. So that view is colored by the enthusiasm I felt about learning and discovering literature. Those favorites are special not just because I really appreciate them but because of the context in which I found them. 

A list of the books that I rate highly is going to have a lot more books on it. There are books that I think are probably as good as those three but they just don't bask in the glow of my discovery of the field of English literature and literary criticism. 

So, in no particular order, here are some of the books I would recommend (besides my three favorites already mentioned):

1. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky 

2. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

3. A House for Mr Biswas by V S Naipaul

4. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontё

5. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

6. Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

7. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley 

8. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

9. The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner

10. Such is Life by Joseph Furphy 

tension

My art is a series of intentional accidents. I'm never fully in control. I get a sense of what happens when I do certain things, so when I'm creating an artwork, I try the things I know and maybe try something different. Over time my repertoire of things to try grows. 

I never like using simple, straight-forward colors - like plain blue, red, green, etc. I like using the in-between colors on the color wheel. But I experiment. There are colors that I think are pretty boring, to look at them on the color wheel, but then, when you apply them, they look completely different because of the other colors around them, or under them or mixed with them. 

I absolutely love art that is obviously art - like you can see the media - but it also represents something real. Like the art of Izumi Kogahara, for example, or the impressionists, like Monet and Pissaro. 

There's a tension between roughness and precision, and tension produces beauty. 

recovery

Recovery has a double-edged quality to it. As you get stronger, the thing you're fighting against also gets weaker. You keep pushing and pushing, on and on, and as you do, you become aware that you're also being pulled through to the other side. 

momentous

I remember in year 7 religious education class, we had a textbook and I only remember one thing about that book. It was a picture of Abraham that looked like it had been drawn using colored pencils and it had a subtitle or a brief description that said that God told Abraham to leave his people and go to the land that he would show him. 

I think the statement in large letters was even briefer than that. It said something like, 'God told Abraham to go'. I don't know exactly why but this really caught my imagination, which is why I still remember it. 

In his essay, 'Spiritual Laws', Emerson wrote:

A few anecdotes, a few traits of character, manners, face, a few incidents, have an emphasis in your memory out of all proportion to their apparent significance, if you measure them by the ordinary standards. They relate to your gift. Let them have their weight, and do not reject them, and cast about for illustration and facts more usual in literature.

It's like each of us has our own language and life is always saying something to us that only we can understand. There are moments that I will never forget that I'm sure the other people involved have forgotten, and there are probably moments I've forgotten...it was just another moment...that other people will never forget. Sometimes I think it's a shared thing though. I don't really know for sure but some of these moments that involved another person, I think maybe it was a special moment for them too.

The interesting thing is that these moments are not big things. They can be. They can be related to a big change in our life, but a lot of them are of such little significance in the bigger scheme of things. But, as Emerson writes, they have huge significance to us. 

I think it's very fitting that the best moments are unassuming like that. When do you have your most meaningful conversations with a good friend? It's late at night when you're doing the dishes. 

step by step

I'm starting to feel more of a sense of security than I did. Partly because, so many times, the fears about how things are going to go that my rumination brings up just don't eventuate. 

Earlier this year, I looked ahead to the future and it was overwhelming. I didn't know how I could do what I needed to do. But now there's a sense that I can pretty much handle what I need to. Yes, it's challenging at the moment, but I can do this. 

That makes a huge difference. As I said, it's partly because my fears don't get realized, but it's also because things work out well. So many things have worked out better than I expected. 

All along it's been the same struggle, but my vision of that struggle has become clearer. At one level the struggle is about tapering off Valium, but what it's really about is rumination vs action. It's about me overcoming rumination, anxiety and depression. Defeating fear. 

I have to be grateful for the challenges I've been through and I'm still going through because it's only because of them that I have this new life. 

I was thinking about this yesterday. Yesterday was one of the harder days. I'm still so bound to rumination. All the fear and anxiety and depression is real and it's hard. At the same time, I have my daily goals and I know that's the way forward. But it seems like the rumination is winning. Sometimes I'm so far from even being able to do a few of my goals and the ones I do, I don't do well. It's like a token effort. 

But every day I try. It's true that sometimes I get worn down. Day after day, night after night, week after week, month after month of this struggle and at times it feels like it's never-ending or even getting worse, sometimes reduces me to a state where I think and feel that I can't go on. 

But giving up is not something you can proactively do. It's like rumination. There's no substance to it. I'm like, OK, let it be known that I'm giving up. So, I'm in that state of giving up, which does bring a kind of temporary relief - a kind of resolution. You've responded to the situation. But now what?

So, very soon after, I find myself working on my daily goals again. 

Getting back to my point...yesterday the rumination was winning and it seemed virtually impossible to do my daily goals, but even in the midst of that dynamic I had the thought that, this must be where I need to be right now. Wherever the 'front' is in the battle between rumination and my goals - however that struggle manifests - that's where I will be. 

If, at that point where I am at, it seems like rumination is winning, that's still where I'm going to be. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I realized that it's not such a bad thing that I'm still learning. This new life is new and strange to me, but it's the real me. 

The old me is not the real me, even though it's still such a part of me. It's still calling the shots in a lot of ways. But I'm learning, and the new me is permanent. 

windows and waves

I've never experienced such a roller coaster as I have this year. One of the lessons I'm learning is that I am not defined by the ups or the downs. 

Sometimes, in the midst of the waves, I think I'm broken or I'm getting close to breaking - actually, I am breaking - but what's really happening at those times is I am growing. And then after that - often very soon after that - things get a lot better. The harder the wave the more potent the window. 

The ups and the downs both seem permanent. When you're hardly coping, you can't imagine being whole and strong and confident ever again. The opposite is true to some extent. When I'm up, no other state really makes sense. I can't understand the pain and distress I was in. But I know from experience that I'll be back there again. 

Recently I was surprised when a wave that I thought would go on for hours just eased and I felt better and started doing things. It's usually not that easy. I have to keep pushing and keep pushing, often to no avail. It's getting easier to actually open a window though. Writing affirmations, pushing myself to do whatever the next goal is on my list....sometimes just enduring through the wave, and it eases. 

It starts off with just a flicker...a slight change, an easing of the pain, and then I push through to the window. It's kind of like catching a wave actually. 

centered

The apostle Paul wrote that 'when I am weak, then I am strong.' (2 Corinthians 12:10) He understood that trusting in our own strength and intelligence makes us spiritually weak and stupid. 

Weakness leads us to be dependent on God, if we choose to be, and there is no greater strength than the strength that comes from God. 

It's easy to talk about that in theory, but when you're actually beset by weakness, that's a different matter. It's hard to believe that God is with you. 

Weakness has changed my whole outlook. I have to stop thinking about all the situations I'm not actually in, and stop dwelling on the reality that I can't handle simple everyday things. It forced me to slow down. It forced me to look at what's actually happening instead of listening to the stories in my head. 

It's leading me to really dig deep in my relationship with God. I want to be transformed by the renewing of my mind, as it says in Romans 12:2. When I read the Bible and write my insights and pray, I want to really spend time with God. I want that, and not rumination, to be at the center of my life. 

a new light

I learnt something important about my rumination today. 

What I noticed earlier today is something that I've experienced many times. When I give my attention to something and try to engage, I feel uncomfortable. I feel like something is wrong. What I realized when I thought about it later is that that feeling is my rumination tugging on me. As I try to give my full attention to a task, my rumination tells me something is wrong - that I need to continually monitor it rather than giving my attention to other things. 

My attention is always on this unsolvable problem that isn't even clearly defined. I don't even know what the problem is, just that my mind is so occupied with it. 

Usually when I have that feeling of wanting to give my attention to a task and feeling unable to because my mind is so engrossed in rumination, I react by being critical of myself and feeling defeated. I think, I can't even do this task. I can't do anything. I'm stuck with this problem. I feel trapped and hopeless. 

But when I thought about it today, I saw it in a different, positive light. It's not an indicator of being stuck in an endless loop of suffering. It's an indicator of a struggle that I am making progress with - the process of breaking down my rumination and building my new life. As I keep pushing myself to do my daily goals and pushing against the rumination, I am making progress. 

I often feel lately like there is no path forward. There is no relief in sight. But then I realize that my daily goals are the path forward. 

Just seeing the struggle for what it is is something new for me. In the past, I wouldn't be aware of it as a struggle. The fact that I'm aware of when I'm ruminating and I have a sense of an alternative to that, shows I've made progress. 

Eventually my daily goals will be my life. For now, I still keep wanting to go back to rumination, and falling back into it. 

the process

Romans 5:3 - 4 talks about how we rejoice in our suffering because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character and character produces hope. 

It's easy to wish this process was done and I was healed and recovered, but I don't know what that looks like. I've always struggled with anxiety, depression and rumination. My whole life I've battled them, and now I'm in the process of overcoming them. So, I'm going somewhere I've never been. I'm not going back to the way I was. That's exactly what I'm not doing. 

So, I have a different view about the end of this process. I'm not hanging on, waiting for it to end. I've stopped hoping for that. I've become resigned to life being challenging for the foreseeable future. As time goes by, it gets harder but it gets better too.  

I'm learning to fight and to live in that state of struggle, and that's why I don't really think as much about the end. The end seems a long way off. I'm looking forward to it, but the way I'm going to get there is by working through this process, which takes time. 

Every day I keep working on putting down and letting go of the rumination and picking up my daily goals. 

reporting back

It's interesting to me how the approach I'm taking to recovery and growth was informed by a few key conversations I had with a range of different people. Probably those people didn't realize the huge impact they were having on my life. Actually, neither did I, but it was like each of them gave me another piece to fit into the puzzle. There's a definite methodology to my approach and the basic principles came from three key conversations I had. 

These are the truths I drew from the three conversations:

First conversation:

I nurture and protect my anxiety and depression and rumination. I cultivate them. I withdraw. I need to get out and be active, do stuff, occupy myself. I need to cultivate my life. 

Second conversation: 

Intense depression and anxiety are a normal and natural result when you've been abusing alcohol and you stop and when you've come to rely on benzos and you start tapering. It's the real you actually feeling things. Through drinking, you've not only negated your anti-depressant medication, you've driven yourself deep into depression, as well as dehydration and malnourishment affecting your physical health. 

So, all the fear and anxiety and depression - the absolute mental turmoil - is actually a positive thing. It's a brand new me emerging as I go from being dependent on alcohol to not drinking at all and being dependent on Valium to tapering and eventually stopping that as well. 

Third conversation:

This conversation linked the first two and made me realize that I had to change. I had to push and do my daily goals. That was how I would make the change from rumination and withdrawal to engagement and occupation. And this change is not just desirable, it's a matter of survival. 

I've also taken a lot of really good ideas from a couple of YouTube channels - Powers Benzo Coaching and The Lovely Grind. I can't recommend David Powers's and Michael Priebe's YouTube channels highly enough. They're both absolutely brilliant and doing crucial work. I've watched a lot of their videos over and over and over, trying to get their practical message of hope to penetrate my troubled mind, much in the same way that reading and writing affirmations does, by reminding me of the truth. 

As I work my way through this process, I'm starting to feel like I have something to say. I want to have those conversations with people and share those messages like the ones that helped me so much. 

fighting for life

When you go through challenging times, it's easy to think your life is on hold. Once you get through this then you will resume life. 

That's how I usually think about crises I go through, but the current challenges I'm going through are making me think differently, because they're not in any hurry to leave me. 

I'm seeing positive changes but, at the same time, the challenges are still hard. But then when I think about it, it's the challenges that are driving me to make the positive changes. 

I get up in the morning and I'm like, do I still have to fight? Does it still have to be this difficult?

But the really great thing is that it really isn't as difficult as it was. My new life is really taking shape. But I know how important it is that I don't get to relax - I don't get to go, phew, I'm glad that's over, because that's my old self talking. 

I'm learning that my new life is not going to just occur magically. It's mine and it's growing but that growth involves fighting. 

It makes me think of that scene in the movie Braveheart. One of his companions says something to William Wallace like, maybe one day, after all this fighting, we'll get to live out our dreams. And Wallace replies, isn't that what we've been doing? 

investment

I'm so obsessed by situations I'm not in and situations I'm not in yet but might be. I'm learning to reframe those things though. Instead of thinking, what if I had to do this? How would I cope?, I'm looking forward to being able to do these things that seem challenging to me at the moment. 

Instead of dreading them, I'm framing them as my goals, and thinking how good it will be when I can do them because that's how it should be. That's how I want it to be, and that's how it can be. Recovery takes time but it also happens surprisingly quickly, and I know from experience that it doesn't take long for me to be able to do things that were previously unimaginable, or things that didn't seem possible when things were challenging. 

There's also a strange reality that I've been experiencing more and more lately whereby the new me is a different person from the old me. Change is not linear, it's dialectical. It's driven by the tension between two opposing states or influences. Thesis + antithesis = synthesis. In the playing out of the struggle, at any particular time, either side will be dominant. 

Sometimes I'm still the old me, but increasingly I'm the new me. And when I'm the old me, I worry about how I'm going to handle different things, but then, when I think about it I realize that I don't need to worry because the old me is not going to have to handle things, the new me is. I'm making it sound easy but it's not. The old me is still me and it's being put under intense pressure. This process often involves the old me turning up to do what only the new me can do. I still have to face my fears.

But the new me is growing. Every day I become more invested in my daily goals - they're becoming fuller and they are filling my life and negating the rumination. For example - my quiet times - my times with God, reading the Bible, writing my insights and praying. I'm doing those things more fully each day. I'm writing more. I'm creating more art. I'm exercising more. I'm eating better. I'm doing more of my goals. I still don't get all of my daily goals done but I'm doing more of them and doing them more fully. 

I'm inspired thinking about all of the things I want to do. 

I think each of my daily goals is powerful, and I have longer term goals as well, but my daily goals have a special power. They are my new life. 

Just thinking about one in particular - my quiet times....that is so powerful. To be able to spend time with God each day. What can compare with that? It's better than any counselling or any resource you can draw on or any experience you can have or any other relationship. But it hasn't been powerful in my life because I neglected my quiet times. I haven't invested in them. I fell out of the habit of spending quality time with God as a priority every day. And also, rumination squeezed it out of my life like it squeezed everything else of value. It got to the point where rumination made it so that I couldn't even have good quiet times if I wanted to. I had no sense of what that meant any more. 

That's how I have changed. You can take this to the bank. Every day I achieve my daily goals. And I feel something building. It's been so, so, so hard. It's been ridiculously hard. How is it so hard to just read the Bible, write my thoughts, and pray? How is it so hard to make art? How is it so hard to write a blog post or write a post on Medium? How is it so hard to go to the shops? How is it so hard to do anything except be in a kind of vegetative state? 

It's stopped being as hard now, and I notice that every day, I'm more invested in all my goals. With my quiet times it's been hard to even think and write anything when I read the Bible. I can barely manage to squeeze out a sentence. Some days not even that. But it's getting better. I'm able to focus more on what I'm reading and write more about it, and I want to keep growing in that way - really seeking God and spending quality time with him. And my other goals as well - I find myself getting carried away, transported, away from the rumination and other problems. 

art and writing

I've been watching a few videos lately about abstract art and what it is - what makes a good piece of abstract art. It's really fascinating because I can relate what's being said to my own art. I pretty much always do abstract art these days. 

The thing is....that idea people have about contemporary art and abstract art - that it's just weird and not very good...I can relate to that. I've been to some modern art exhibitions and, just like with absurdist drama, I feel a sense of despair, because I feel like nothing is being offered to me. I literally don't get it. I don't know what I'm looking at. Which is fair enough. I'm not a great appreciator of art, at least of viewing art in exhibitions. I don't feel strongly about it. I don't get that excited feeling you get when you're going to a concert.

There is some art that I really like though. My favorite kind of art is impressionism. I love the tension between the work as a painting - how you can see the brush strokes and it's very obviously a painting - and what the work is representing - how you can see the most intricate details even within the roughness of the paint - and I love the idea that that is somehow a more faithful representation of the scene than a highly realistic painting or a photograph would be. 

In my own art, for a long time I was trying to achieve something like that, but I've moved more towards dropping any attempt to convey anything real. There is an element of realism because I like to incorporate lines that are inspired by letters or are actual words and writing. I've always been fascinated by the idea of somehow combining language and visual art. One of the reasons for that is that, when I learnt about creative writing and how to do creative writing, I was struck by the similarity of what we were taught about writing to what I experienced in making art. 

It was refreshing. I'd always felt like I couldn't do creative writing but here was a teacher who was also a writer, telling us how to write and it was just like the way that I do art, which is that I don't start off with a good idea. I just play around and experiment and see what develops. She said you can do that with writing, which is something I had never heard before. She taught us some games you can play with words where something creative and interesting just emerges. Then, when you see something interesting, you can do more with it. 

I did find that, while writing in that way does lead to something worthwhile, for me it didn't lead to a novel or short story or some kind of 'proper' literature. It was something more experimental - like the modernist literature of Virginia Woolf or James Joyce. 

There's still the idea among some people who appreciate abstract art and make videos about what makes good abstract art, that the artist needs to be trying to convey a very definite point. I think in a way that's true but in a way it's not. Again, it's like literature. The creator is setting up a forum within which the responder can construct their own meaning. That's why good literature speaks to us so personally - because we as the reader have constructed the meaning in our own way. Likewise with art. I don't know what point I'm trying to make in my art...I'm just trying to create certain effects and make something engaging, but I don't have an exact idea about what I'm trying to convey, although, as the work takes shape I get a better idea of what I'm trying to achieve and the impressions I want to convey. 

When I first started wanting to really improve my art, I watched a lot of YouTube videos, and I aspired to make art like I saw in those videos. Of course, my art is nothing like the art I was seeing, never has been, but I thought I could develop and become a 'better' artist. 

Then I wanted to get into digital art, so I bought an art tablet and got some software. The problem is, I still wasn't very 'good' at art, even with traditional art supplies, and using an art tablet and doing digital art is harder. I was trying to do art like all the YouTube tutorials say it should be done and I couldn't do it. I just gave up and put away my art tablet. 

But then one day I thought, I want to do art. I want to use my tablet. I want to use the software. I want to draw and paint with traditional art supplies. I just started doing it because I wanted to do it. I just forgot about the tutorials and the preconceived ideas about how to do art well and how to develop as an artist. I just created and had fun. And interestingly, as I did my own thing in that way and worked on achieving different effects, my technical skills developed. I actually went back to some of the tutorials to see how to do certain things that I wanted to do. But mostly it was just from doing it that my skills developed. 

I can't do art like anyone else, but I don't want to anyway. Same with writing. I can't do what anyone else does, but I can do what I do.