in grave

2022 was unlike any other year of my life, and I will never forget it. I will always remember what happened that year. 

The process continued into 2023, but at the same time, I also had a strong sense of newness and hope on the first day of this year. Part of what I was feeling towards the end of 2022, was, can this challenge that I'm going through really still be going? Am I not going to get over this? 

I really haven't been sure and I'm still not sure. But I see challenges in a very different light now to how I used to. I think of them as having a purpose. 

I couldn't envision any end to my suffering in the past. I had no sense of an alternative. I only have one life and I'm only one person and that person has mental health issues that cause him distress. That's reality. There's no end to it. It's part of who I am. 

But in 2022 I learned that I can start a new life, and then I came to understand that that new life is defined by my daily goals. My daily goals aren't new. Some of them are new, but the principle of having daily goals is something I've believed in for decades. I just wasn't as serious about them as I am now. 

I have a growing sense of hope and purpose now. It's good that it's still challenging because that drives me into my new life. 

I've always had the aspiration that I'm going to fight my demons - my anxiety, depression, rumination and so on - and I'm going to beat them hard until I've drained every bit of meaning and purpose from them, and made myself strong at their expense, and then they will be dead and no more, and I will be alive, absolutely free of them.