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. 

🍡🌀≛🎼

Yes, it's that stark. 

unthought

It's been around 2 and a half years since I stopped drinking. Sometimes the thought crosses my mind, that, in a way, having a drink would 'help' me, but I also know for sure that it would kill me, so I don't even consider it. 

anchor

When I'm really struggling mentally - with anxiety and depression - it's as if the ground is constantly falling away from beneath me. I don't feel safe anywhere, ever. 

That's where my relationship with God and my daily goals really helps, because they give me something solid to hold onto. 

negotiation

I always operate under a presumption that things are going to go wrong. I suppose because I need to anticipate and act accordingly. But actually, it's not an accurate or helpful way of approaching things. In important ways, things go well - things turn out right - and life is very livable, more so than our fears would have us believe. 

priority

There's nothing more important or meaningful than spending time with God each day. 

look back

For some reason, when I look back at the most difficult times in my life, I can't feel the difficulty. Instead, there are good feelings. 

I think that's because the truth is that you always get something good from suffering. 

trying to do stuff

It's such a strange struggle - this struggle to do stuff, to move from rumination and withdrawal to engagement and action - because in theory it's not hard for me to do it. It's not hard. I know what to do, and I can just do it. But it is hard for me. 

I think it's hard. I think I need to do all this extra thinking. But I'm changing.