rest

One day I will still have this itch and a migraine and trouble sleeping and I will die. It will be another day. 

k

Grimes was exercising poetic license when she said that she was so heavy she fell through the earth. 

curricula

Teaching maths is very different from teaching history. With maths the teacher can know everything, or everything that the student needs to learn, but with history that isn't the case. 

vocab

Who would have imagined that the first time I would hear someone use the word 'fecund' in real life would be in a show about female wrestlers. 

winds of change

Depression reverses your perceptions. You take refuge in pain and the movement towards good health is deeply unsettling. 

It's very reassuring to make that realization - that the stress, turmoil and mental pain that you are experiencing is not breaking you down, it's the beginning of something good, even though it doesn't feel like it. 

real lies

I can never change without trauma. It's so uncomfortable. Pushed out from the warm, hospitable haven of the house that my fear has built, into the storm outside, only to realize, fleetingly at first, but with growing certainty, that this is life and it's good. It's not the end....well, it's the end of the old me who doesn't know any better. 

synesthesia

It's a sign of healing when I can, at least for moments at a time, just let go of my inner drama that is so oppressive and absorbs all my attention at the expense of anything else - anything positive and worthwhile. 

damage

Depression is not like, here's that pain again - the same pain that I've experienced many times before. It seems fresh every time, as is the case with any kind of pain, but also, you think about all the years that this has been going on, and about the future and how it's going to be part of your life all the time, every minute of every day, for the foreseeable future, and you think that it's really breaking you down. 

One helpful thing I've learnt though is that that sense I have that I'm breaking down and sustaining damage from all these years of mental pain, is not true. It's a story. An illusion. How do I know? Because my brain was made to do what it does. If we think of depression, anxiety, fear, worry, and the like, as involving different liquids flowing through pipes, and your fear and sadness and hurt are liquids that are unpleasant, painful and unwanted....the thing is: that's all they really are. That's all that can possibly be in your brain - stuff that belongs there. And the good news is that that cannot do permanent damage.

I guess different drugs and chemicals can do damage, or some external stimulus, like a head injury, or when your brain is deprived of oxygen, but your thoughts and the stories you tell yourself, can't hurt you, even though it feels like they can. 

original

No one else can write this. 

new

Before I went into detox I started to like Eminem's music, and I wondered, with everything changing, whether I would still like Eminem, and I don't all that much. 

the mystery of healing

The main lesson I learnt from my experience in a psyche ward is that withdrawing from life is never the answer, and instead you need to face life. It can be terrifying to do that, but when you accommodate your anxiety and give in to it, that is really a nightmare. 

circles

It's easy to think that I'm just stuck with depression. As I slide down into the hole, there's nothing that I can do. There's a logic to that, and I believe it when I'm in that mental space, but it isn't true. 

That's one of the lessons I learnt years ago and have to keep relearning. Our habitual thoughts are not just a bit distorted or misleading; they are absolute lies. 

It seems true because of self-fulfilled prophecy and vicious cycles. It works like this - I think, I can't do stuff because of my mental health. So, I don't do stuff, and that proves that I can't and keeps me depressed. 

narratives

Something that really helps me is reflecting on what I actually have to do and the situations I'm actually in. I ruminate and catastrophize a lot so I get stuck in a loop of feeling completely trapped. I'm weighed down by all these thoughts about my life, and it's like a panic attack. 

Lately I've been able to break that loop by thinking about what I actually have to do and how it's not actually that hard. Yes, there is fear. The fear is real, but my fear is a thing on its own, divorced from reality. So, when I can affirm that the things that I have to do are not actually that hard, it's reassuring. 

permanence

I hold onto my pain really tightly - holding it to myself. My attention is riveted by it and I daren't look away. 

I'm learning to let go though, somehow. 

The great thing about this process of positive change is that it's all one way. Like with my taper for example, I keep reducing and reducing, and each reduction is permanent. I'm never going to increase my dose ever again. Even aside from the formal reductions I'm making in how much valium I'm getting and taking, there's a process underway whereby I'm becoming less reliant on it. The reductions are in increments, but the process is always going, and I'm always pushing myself. 

An analogy that I heard about recovery and withdrawal and sobriety and all that kind of stuff is that it's like chopping down a tree. It may be hard work, but once you get to the turning point and the tree falls, that's it. You don't need to work on it anymore. 

blessing

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children....No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12: 7,11)

I think about this passage a lot and it encourages me. My reaction when I suffer is to think that something has gone wrong and to hate it. I also make the mistake of thinking it's permanent - that I'm going to be in pain indefinitely. But the Bible teaches us that our suffering is meaningful and also temporary. It hurts and it's overwhelming in the present, but later it becomes a gift. 

struggles

Sometimes I feel trapped in a really painful state of brokenness. It's like I'm breaking down and there's a real fearful resignation about it. 

There are a lot of vicious cycles - insomnia, anxiety, worry, depression, not eating. Recovery is impossible, or so it seems. 

But I'm learning to say, no, it doesn't have to be like that - to say it's going to be OK, and that I don't have to believe that story. I'm not broken. I'm not stuck. 

I felt really helpless and weak lately, and trapped. I prayed that God would help me and give me strength, revive me. 

This struggle also relates to the big picture in my life. The change from withdrawal and rumination to action and engagement. When I'm really being crushed by depression, that corresponds to inactivity. I can't do literally anything and I'm just stuck in pain. 

That's my old life. As real as it seems, it's passing. Sometimes it seems like the opposite. Depression and maladjustments seem permanent, but they aren't. 

So yeah, for now and for today, I have this hope, that there is something better, that the pain is not my truth. Here I'm using hope in the Biblical sense. It's not something that may or may not happen. It's true. 

prescription

One of the big challenges of tapering off valium, and what a lot of doctors don't understand is that it's really a long haul. We live in such an instant age and everything needs to be done quickly, but things take time. 

instructions on the pack

Life is like workplace training. You do the training and then when you go (back) to work, the work is different from the training. In the same way, I've always found that life is not how it's 'supposed to be'. 

understanding

In some ways I can understand why some people argue that critical theory or literary theory is fundamentally opposed to Christianity, but as a student of English literature and a Christian, I strongly disagree. Most academics are not primarily concerned with agitating for social change. Their interest is in studying texts and literature and formulating theories about how texts work, and all of those theories also apply to the Bible, so they can enrich our understanding of it. It's not subversive. I think it can be, but that's a different issue. It's not fundamentally subversive. 

I'm not an academic by profession but if I was, I can imagine going to a church and hearing that my profession is fundamentally opposed to Christianity and hearing that I would not go back to that church because what they are teaching is untrue. 

what is deconstruction?

Deconstruction in literary theory is about looking for what the text doesn't explicitly say, to reveal inherent tensions and challenge traditional interpretations. 

expertize

I've never done this before, but I know how to do it. I know the mechanics of it. 

what I know now

I always used to think and say that, if I had my time over, I wouldn't do anything different. But now I think I would do so many different things differently. 

That idea that I wouldn't do anything differently comes from a sense that I am what I am and all the choices I made and things I experienced made me who I am. 

There couldn't be different possibilities because of who I am - so I thought - but as I am now, I'm aware of the error of a lot of the stories I believed in. 

The only good use of this knowledge is in the present. 

beginning

I've been fighting this battle of tapering off valium for more than 3 years now, and I'm getting near the end - getting to the point where I don't need this stuff. It's a great feeling. 

uv

when I was all messed up and I had opera in my head, your love was a lightbulb hanging over my bed

oh

actually I think it was 'logic'. I was using logic and reason interchangeably. I said that science developed according to logic, and she took issue with that, probably because she is a classical scholar so she understands the origins of logic and how it preceded modern science. 

huh

I said that the development of science was driven by the use of reason, but an academic with a background in classics corrected me and said that the scientific method was more important, and that the use of reason was peripheral. To me that still doesn't seem right. Wasn't the enlightenment and the scientific revolution all about reason, and the scientific method a kind of reasoning?

newness

There's a sense in which my struggle never gets old. It's possible to be fighting something your whole life and it never gets easier. The vicious dog retains the sharpness of its bite. 

My daily goals don't change either - like, it's about doing the same things every day. But with them, there's a good sharpness - a sense of partaking in my new life. 

boring story

Let's go. We're going to someone's house to reach out to them. 

I don't want to go because I don't know how to reach out to someone. Just be yourself. 

The person was a poet and they shared all these papers with poems on them. It wasn't what I expected. This is something interesting that I could talk about or just think about without talking. 

I was more interested in their story and their creativity than I was in telling them our story. 

enstruction

I remember when I first learnt how to properly structure an essay. I'd always had the idea that writing well was a kind of direct expression. It's a matter of translating the ideas in your head into writing, and they're in the correct format already in your head. But when I learnt about structure and started to write well-structured essays, I realized that my ideas don't come already structured. It is a kind of translation but it's not easy or perfunctory. It really involves a reworking.

solid

It's encouraging to me that this process of tapering off valium only goes one way. Yes, it's taking time, and yes, it's hard, but the result is real and permanent. 

winning

It's easy to forget what things were like not that long ago....how it was always difficult and I was never comfortable. 

Going out for a walk was difficult. Then I remember the change that happened in stages. I started getting pleasure from going out for a walk. 

I always needed to take some Valium with me, just in case, especially if I was going to the shops, but even if I was going for a run or for a walk. Early on I actually needed to take some Valium before I left home to go to the shop or wherever. 

Then one day I got to the point where I just didn't need it. I could go out or go to the shops and take no valium with me. 

A couple of years ago I would never take less than 2 x 2 mg tablets, but these days I very rarely take a whole 2 mg tablet at once. I break them into halves and quarters, and I'm just about at the point now where I can take .5 x 2 mg at night and another .5 some days. Next step will be .25 x 2 mg at a time, and then I'll skip sometimes, and skip more and more until, just like with needing to take some Valium with me when I go out, I won't need it at all - it will be immaterial. 

stranger

The last few years have been a crucible for me, so it's strangely weird when I happen to find out that for some people that I used to know, their life just went on as normal and things are pretty much the way they were in many ways, only further developed. 

I guess it makes sense, but it seems strange somehow. 

I don't even live in that world anymore and I have no association with those people - with anyone I knew from 2009 to 2019 - although I do think about them. They are alive to me in that sense, and I pray for them. 

Same with everyone I knew from Sydney Church of Christ.

telos

I've never thought of my mental health issues as something that struck out of the blue. I've always seen a kind of logic to it. My disorder flows directly from my thinking. 

the way

Things aren't what they seem. I always thought that adversity was breaking me, and I thought that if I could just get away from the challenges - if I could defuse them somehow - that that would be better, but that way is not better. 

ground

I get the idea that I can't do my daily goals, and then I don't and that becomes my reality. I'm stuck. 

Lately, I have built a new sense of security by appreciating what I actually have to do rather than all the challenges that I imagine I might have to face. 

a void

I stopped writing on Medium. I prefer to just write this blog for the moment, as here I'm free to write in whatever form I wish. 

unpoisoned

It can seem like a good thing to find someone that understands, but it's an illusion. Things just happened to align for a moment. 

manifest

When anything truly good and fine is forced into this world, it is distorted into something bad. 

recubed

Walking past the crematorium at night, I reflected that God could rewire my brain, but then I wouldn't be me. 

too good

It's good having a twist at the end but this was too much of a twist. It explained the whole story and made everything right, and that weakened the story, I think. 

🏮🌉🏮

Now I'm not perennially headed out into the storm;    

life

My emergence into wild freedom unavoidably involves the tearing down of the house of fear and pain I've built that keeps me comfortable and 'safe'. The world I've known has to come to an end. There has to be no way for the old me to survive. 

mage

I had hoped that, as I healed, things would steadily get easier, but that wasn't the case. Sometimes I see my disorder as a kind of adversary that always catches up with me. 

I'll hit upon something that really works - some idea that brings me relief - but it's always temporary. Sooner or later, the trick doesn't work anymore. 

rules

What I did was really a reaction to my own inner drama, but you saw it as a reaction to you. 

creation

A lot of my anxiety is anticipatory anxiety. It's not related to the situation I'm in. The situation is not threatening at all, but I'm anxious that I'm going to be anxious, and that creates anxiety. 

life

It's good that the pressure hasn't relented. It's pushing me into my new life. 

types of goals

I like having some goals that are pretty much impossible, and other goals that represent changes I want to make, and are very achievable. 

progress

Some challenges are like chopping down a tree or knocking down a wall. It's hard work to overcome the challenge, but you get to a point where the challenge just isn't there any more. It's not an ongoing struggle. 

struggle

rumination builds obstacles and action smashes through them

tents

The aesthetic that inspires me most artistically is punk. I'm fascinated by the tension between order and disorder.