nt f real

The growing realization that I'm outside and it's OK. 

The first time you see it, you feel like you have to hold onto it, but you can't.

So, you're back inside again and stuck here without hope

but it's not real

the place without hope is not real 

burn

Nothing compares with action - with just doing stuff. 

It's one of the major themes of my new life, actually.

Somehow the old has to be destroyed, to allow for the new.

cede

at least there are things changing in a positive direction in my life, permanently and irrevocably

doxic

Being exposed to safety and freedom is deeply unsettling

breathing space

Withdrawing from valium is very different from withdrawing from alcohol. I think this is something unique about benzos, and it makes coming off them extremely hard....unlike other drugs where, after a difficult initial period, withdrawal symptoms peak and then steadily subside, with benzos, things get worse and worse and worse with time. 

So, it's like you're always headed into rougher weather. 

escapade

It's like when I went into the psyche ward. The answer that emerged was that I needed to face my life. I needed to push back into my normal life, as impossible as that seemed, and then just keep going. 

alternative reality

It's such a sweet feeling, this growing sense that I don't need this stuff any more. I still do have some need for it, but I'm not reliant on it like I was. 

It's a very definite thing - a real change. I remember how I used to feel the need to take some valium with me whenever I went out, even going out for a run. And then there came a time when I just didn't need to do that.

It used to be hard to even go out at all. When I walked to the shops, I would be stressed all the way there about going in, and it took courage to go in. Buying more than one thing was challenging. I thought I was going to faint or lose control or something. 

It's interesting....for me, this tapering process has involved facing and overcoming the depression and anxiety that I used the medication to deal with. 

up

I still posit myself as someone who is trapped when vicious cycles kick in. But more and more I'm able to envisage something better to come and I'm able to imagine a better life for myself even now. 

things that matter

Objects in mirror may be closer than they seem. 

grates

I never really like the most critically acclaimed works. Like, Seven Nation Army is nowhere near Jack White's best song. I don't think it's even that good. Same for Bleak House. It's not the best of Dickens. And Brothers Karamazov. Maybe I just don't get Karamazov, but The Idiot and The Possessed were fire and, in my view, far better than Karamazov. 

sophistry

The truth wasn't fancy enough. She felt like she had to have a more sophisticated mythology. That made her feel special, when actually she was just deluded. 

a

Detox really 'took' with me. 

making it real is just part of the story

One of the things that made The Wire such a great and ground-breaking show was its realism. It's very hard to achieve that, because unvarnished reality doesn't make for good TV, and bottom-line, it's not real. It's fiction. 

note to self

add books from to do to amazon

ab

I'm reading Finding Me by Michelle Knight - her story of being held captive and tortured by Ariel Castro for 11 years. It's chilling how it unfolded - how she was actually acquainted with him and that gave him his opportunity, and then, in a moment, her life became a horror story. 

lie

For we can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth. (2 Corinthians 13:8)

We can't change the truth. The truth doesn't need our defence. It bothers us too much when we think people are lying, as if they're getting away with something. They aren't. 

equal and opposite

Our sense of ourselves is something we create. We think we are basing it on how people treat us but the way people treat us is more a reflection of the signals we send out than what people actually think of us. We can't see ourselves, physically or spiritually. 

near

My standard dose now is half a 2 mg tablet, and the remarkable thing is that that dose has absolutely no discernible effect. 

travelling in factions

A lot of times, the idea of a book is more interesting than reading the book, and you can think of the ideas of a lot of books at the same time or in a moment, while to read a whole book, you have to devote yourself to that one story or topic for hours. 

fin

One of the challenging things about tapering off a benzo is that the hard part is ahead of you, and the hard part will go for months and years. But now I am through the hard part. 

drafting

yes! I'm so happy - I just heard Hilary Mantel, who is a great writer, say something that I have thought about a lot, but I haven't heard any writer ever say....that since she started writing on a screen, she isn't conscious of the difference between drafts.

Finally somebody said it. Because of word processing, the way we write now is different from earlier periods in history because you can edit as you go. It makes a huge difference. 

I'm not completely against drafting, but I think its role in the writing process is different from what it used to be.

ps

Robert Eggers is making Nosferatu for Christmas

turning the tide

The Gettysburg Address was short and, in some ways, not that impressive, but it is immortal. 

Joseph Welch triggered the ending of McCarthyism, with two sentences: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

things that matter

There seems to be a common belief around now that being a Christian is about being morally upright and making a stand about the status of other people before God, but Jesus told us to look at our own sin first....concern ourselves with that...and the parable of the tax collector and the pharisee teaches us that it's not the person who takes pride in their right standing with God, who is made right with God. Instead, it's the one who recognizes their filthiness in the sight of God, who gets forgiven. 

What matters in that parable, is that they recognize and repent of their own sin. 

gasolean

Real events always seem artificial 

trend

I was watching a Korean show (through the dark) about detectives hunting serial killers, and one detective was trying to get a group together to do profiling and interview known serial killers, and he was trying to enlist another detective who he thought would be really good at that. I thought, this is like the Korean version of Mindhunter. It's kind of the same. 

Next thing, the first detective gives the other one a copy of the book, Mindhunter, saying that's what he is trying to do, except in Korea. 

What I really like about it is that it's not just a copy of Mindhunter. It's uniquely Korean and it's set in the 90's and based on true stories about how the Korean police started adopting similar methods to those used in the US, except about 20 years later. 

The time difference is interesting. The phenomenon of serial killers emerged in America in the 70's and then in Korea in the 90's. 

I never hit the griddy

for years now, because of my taper, I always have numbers running through my head

delclaration

i  can always write

altho i'm lost vand broekn 

i can wroite 

It's such a freedome

because i'm wrong but 

i can always write 

the point

As a believer, I'm quite interested in arguments for atheism, but I've found that, when I read books that make those arguments, they're not even-handed or reasonable. They're vitriolic and nasty. It's all about scoring points in a conceptual debate. They go on the attack from the start. 

I'm not convinced by an argument that suggests that I'm an idiot for believing what I believe. 

autumn

There are some books that you can just open at random and read part and there's a sense of completeness to what you read. 

archexes

In the first year, I didn't date my entries because I didn't know the process would last several years, like it has. 

evocative

So, what was the logic of beginning with the firewood?

It's kind of central to everything

it didn't mean to them what it means to us

psa

if you accidentally close a tab or multiple tabs - even all your tabs, if you will - press ctrl-shift-t

checklist

psyche ward ☑

detox ☑

arts degree ☑

addiction and withdrawal ☑

cult ☑

breaking

I always wondered how I would negotiate the last part of my taper, because the tablets come in 2 mg lots, but then it occurred to me to break the tablets into quarters. 

I used to never take less than 2 x 2 mg at a time, because there would be no point, but my standard dose that I take now is .5 x 2 mg = 1 mg, and sometimes .25. Soon, my standard dose will be .25, and very soon after that: zero. 

motif

Let's begin again with the firewood-

permanent

the great unknown that 

to my dismay

I am pushed into 

torn away from all security 

is reality 

taste

things become interesting as you give them attention

sure

To this day I've always worried about could happen or what's going to happen, and it always seems bad, but now some things reassure me. Like with my taper...I know for sure that I'm making progress on it. With all the things that could go wrong and strike me down, it's a fact that I'm moving in the direction of needing Valium less and ultimately not needing it at all. That's something that's happening. 

unforeseen

Ambarvale used to be the best place to skateboard because there were a lot of new, smooth roads and a lot of hills but sometimes there are hidden hazards. Sometimes hills can be too steep and when there's a ninety degree turn at the bottom of a hill, the forward momentum can be too great to make the turn and you end up sliding across the road. 

writing to read

I'm doing something special. I'm reading the last book that Harold Bloom wrote - Take Arms Against a Sea of Trouble: The power of the reader's mind over a universe of death (2020) - and, as is often the case, Bloom quotes at length from various poems in his text. I can't readily understand poetry. I have to read it closely and go through it line by line, thinking about it and writing my insights. It takes more time and thought. 

Ordinarily, when I'm reading Bloom, I understand the prose, but I don't really get the poetry parts, which is not very satisfactory. It's like when I read Villette and there are huge chunks of the text in French, so I don't really understand what I'm reading. I have some comprehension of French, but I'm not fluent. 

I decided to read this book differently.  When I get to the poetry, I'm going to slow right down and really engage with it. I don't know how far I'll get but I'm excited to see. 

different worlds

there's a huge difference between 1988 and 1991

b4

I would tell myself that everything you think is bad is good and everything you think is good is bad, but I don't know if that would help

nuéz

I'm realizing that I don't have to be stuck in the same vicious cycles. Things can be different. 

analysis

tfw when you see a psychiatrist and they charge you $300 for the first appointment and they turn up late and they put your money in their pocket and they spend the whole time listening to your story and drawing you out and not responding to what you say. at the end, because you want to get something from the appointment, you ask them what they think, and they tell you what they think your "problem" is, and they're wrong

idle lips

tfw when someone who is a Christian thinks they understand alcoholism better than you and explains to you what the 'real' problem is, even though you are an alcoholic and a Christian and you don't agree with their explanation 

my place

tfw someone from another country thinks they have a better idea than you about what it's like to live in your country, and they insist you're wrong about it - that it's not like you say it is

mscommmunicate

tfw someone mishears what you say and then insists they are right and you are wrong about what you said

easy

I was reading about the preaching of John the Baptist in Luke 3, and I noticed an interesting imbalance. The things that John tells people they should do seem out of proportion to the threat. He says that they need to produce fruit in keeping with repentance otherwise they will be thrown into the fire, which is pretty full on. 

But then the actual fruits that John specifies when people ask him, aren't that difficult. For example, soldiers are not to take money from anyone by force or false accusations and to be satisfied with their wages. 

I think this is often the way it is with God. He doesn't expect super-human fanaticism. As Jesus said, his yoke is easy and his burden is light. I think what makes it seem difficult is that it goes against our inclinations and requires us to change, and that's always hard. Even positive change is painful and difficult. 

inventure

escaping into the drama to feel safe

i evade security

just wanting what is mine

i once wrote that beauty is the complication of a rule and everyone asked me which rule?