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?

92

tensions around firewood 

conjured a demon

i remember the smell of the smoke 

always worried about my eyes

life and death

being born is like dying

because you don't know about life

it seems like the end

same with beginning a new life

the old self, which is all you've known, has to die

and it doesn't feel like a good thing

Bible

an authentic seed

these timeless words i highlight and 

they're deeper than reality 

way

I always find that what seems like an escape turns out to be a worse trap than the one I'm escaping from, and what seems unpleasant and stressful turns out to be beneficial. 

It makes me realize that I don't know what is best, and God does know what is best, and he uses challenges to shape me into the person he wants me to be. 

old book

I've got one of those old, hardback, Everyman's library editions of Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was printed in 1927, so it's around a hundred years old. 

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.