from desert hills to coast

I'm trapped in this house of fear and pain whose walls and foundations were built stronger than stone - built to last forever - by the endless grind of unanswerable questions, but it's not real. 

shadow

I catastrophize. I think about how bad things are, and I think about how bad things are going to be, and it keeps me locked in a kind of loop. But now I have the ability to say, it's not actually going to be that bad. 

The real power of our scary stories lies in the way that they are untethered to reality, but that's also their weakness. It's just my imagination. It's just my brilliance. 

expression

My depression and anxiety are pretty bad now. It seems like everything is ending and I'm falling into a hole that I can't get out of. But then I do feel hope as well. That's why I can write this. If I was completely defeated, I couldn't. 

seer

Often, what feels like it's hurting is actually helping. 

bitten

In Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia, Julia Kristeva writes:

For those who are racked by melancholia, writing about it would have meaning only if writing sprang out of that very melancholia. 

That's the dilemma. The most real and imposing imperative - the only thing that is meaningful - is this condition that is grounded in a lack of meaning. 

path not taken

Sometimes the thought of having a drink crosses my mind, but it's something I will never do, ever again, because I recognize that, for me, that's literally a death sentence. For me, it's the beginning of the path to suffering, misery, and ultimately, death, and it's never going to be worth it. 

It's never going to be a good idea to have a drink. It's never OK for me. I'm lucky that I made that mistake before. After not drinking for a couple of years - and feeling heaps better because of it - one night I gave into someone who was trying to get me to have a drink. I thought, I've gone all this time without drinking. I can have a drink tonight, and then just not drink again after that. But it doesn't work like that with me. After crossing that line, there's no going back - you're on that path again. 

I'm also lucky that it got so bad when it did. I was tapering off valium (which is a whole other story) and I was pushed a bit faster than was comfortable. That's fine, I thought, I was used to drinking. I can just drink to help me cope with the challenge of taking less valium. And damn - it took a hold so fast. Soon, I needed alcohol to do anything. I was drinking at least 2 bottles of red wine a day. 

It was a surprise. My drinking had been a problem, but it was never out of control. Now it was. But thank God I was able to get into a detox facility and it was awesome. The staff there were incredible, and the treatment was great. I stopped drinking. It took some time to get in there. I was drinking heavily for about 6 months. 

During that whole time, I wasn't eating very much, and I was only drinking red wine. I thought - it's a drink. It will hydrate me. But no, as I learnt later, it actually does the opposite. It dehydrates you. When I went into detox, I was so dehydrated that they couldn't put in an IV and they couldn't draw blood to do a blood test, because my blood was so thick. 

So, I'm lucky that it got so bad, because it means that I will never go back to that. And I'm lucky that I once before I made the mistake of thinking I could have a drink and that would be OK. Having learnt both of those lessons ensures that I will not start down that path again. 

don't make it weird

I watched Inside Man on Netflix, and I quite enjoyed it, but I kept thinking that, if the characters - especially the main character - the vicar - had just been decent, thoughtful, ordinary people, none of the bad stuff would have happened. It was all so unnecessary. 

frontier

I saw someone today - a young person that I don't know - and they looked angry or a bit distraught. It made me think....there's a story there, and I have no idea what that story is, and not only that, every single person I pass on the street or see, represents a whole other reality. There are all these universes moving around and intersecting. 

unnoticeable

I'm reading Crime and Punishment. It's quite different from how I remember it. I started reading it a long time ago and I didn't get very far, and when I was reading it today, the scene that I remembered was only part of it. I noticed very different things. I think I noticed a lot more. 

kopakopak

I was surprised when I started reading Europe Central by William T Vollmann, to find that it's quite funny in parts. It's very dry humor and it merges into his creativity, which makes sense because humor and creativity are both about seeing things differently. 

I constructed it with humor and passion

Fairly often, I tell myself the story that I'm at the end of my tether, and I'm getting to a point where I won't be able to cope. How am I going to cope with any more of 'this'? and 'this' is a very rich fiction.  But the powerful thing now is that I know that it's just a story.

tru

I'm watching Devil in Ohio. This is the sort of horror that I really like....understated....a perfect mix of the normal and the paranormal....not all jump-scares and gothic tricks, but something real. 

d

I think that I choose to pick up and hold weights that I don't need to, and recovering is about learning not to do that. 

diode

I've been living my new life for 2 years and 4 months.

close reading

All of what I call my favorite books came out of the time when I was studying English at uni - so I was predisposed to picking favorite books - but, when I think about it, some of the books I read at other times in my life were just as good. 

△🔺ᅀ⏶🔼🛆

Also, I don't want to be bitter or angry. A lot of good has come from the difficulty I faced. I only changed because I had to, and the change has been real and permanent and positive. I definitely wouldn't have changed without the really difficult circumstances. I was given a new life. 

strength, patience, wisdom

There's not really much I can do about what I was writing about earlier - the possible long-term effects of anti-depressant use. What I can do though is to do what I know is good for my mental, physical and spiritual health - to actively engage in my recovery - which I'm doing. When I'm completely come off valium, I'd also like to have a go at tapering off my anti-depressants, and see if I can be completely medication free, at least for a while. 

after effects

I'm still tapering off valium. I think that being on it for years has left permanent damage. What also concerns me is that the same doctors who thought it was fine for me to use valium indefinitely, also thought it was fine for me to be on one and then two anti-depressants, and to increase the doses of both. That may be fine...I really don't know...but their obliviousness to the real effects of valium on me, makes me wonder. I'm not against antidepressants. I think they can be really helpful. But I wonder about the long term effects the ones I'm on have had, and whether they have anything to do with the challenges I face. 

ਆ🌀ଛ

I bought two good books — Europe Central by William T Vollmann and The Recognitions by William Gaddis — and I remembered a time when we used to have to buy records and CDs. Today I found one of those reversible mood octopus plushies at work for a couple of dollars.

ask

Giving students the opportunity to answer questions asked in good faith by the teacher, can be much more empowering and more educational than the teacher adeptly answering students' questions. 

infacted

The best teaching might sometimes involve me being ineffective or failing in some way - that might be what helps some students to learn. 

stories

A lot of what I've been told by doctors and nurses about valium is totally wrong. 

chronic

Top Boy is the British The Wire

drama

One problem with netflix is that there is too much choice. It makes me uncommitted. I'm always assessing what I'm watching and thinking about everything else I could be watching, and switching. 

So, I decided not to do that. Whatever is next on the list I've made, I'm going to watch the whole thing, and then the next, and the next, and so on. The next thing on my list was Narcos, which has 3 seasons. I wasn't that excited about it, but I wanted to stick to my resolve, so I started watching it, and I'm loving it. 

auder

Just as sunsets look similar to sunrises, the beginning of my new life is indistinguishable from the ending of my old life, which seems to be happening all the time. I guess we always are living at the end of our lives, not in the sense that we’re about to die but in the sense that we live in the present moment which comes after all the moments that preceded it. It’s so easy to think of our life as a path that goes through the past and then through the present and into the future, but it isn’t exactly like that — that’s just a construction.

deferant

I really enjoyed Neuromancer by William Gibson, and it made me think about how different it is from another science fiction classic - Frankenstein. They're pretty much different creatures. 

㎡៚ա👖⛎₩狒қ🏅

It would be good if I could draw or paint or make good digital art, but at least I can do it in my own way. 

cat atrophy

Everything seems either too hard or too easy, but the truth is that we don't have to deal with all the nightmare scenarios we imagine; we just have to deal with the situation we are in.