The Warden Sleeps

 You wake up on the first day of the rest of your life. The depression is not gone. The stakes and struts on which it grew are all still here. So too are the habits and memories forged in its malign influence, and you've been through this before.

It sleeps. And though you can't tell when,
it always wakes. It will again.

For now, the world is little different, but you are. You can breathe a little easier. The house is the same, but for little day to day changes. The tasks you could put yourself to still intimidating. You do not stride boldly out. To move too boldly may bring it crashing down again.

You don't know what will wake the warden,
what to flee or move toward.

But for now, there is respite from its despising gaze upon all you think to say, upon the outcome of things not done. For now, there is some flavour to savour in even the interplay of bitter and sweet in a cup of sweetened instant coffee. It feels like you could have fun again.

Gaze upon the bones: your weight; the tasks left undone for weeks; the gentle and polite concern of coworkers; things it would have been nice to do... Under your feet, the ground trembles with thunder, a distant growl and long sigh, the half-disturbed snoring of latent depression. To look too long, too worried, too threatens.

Perhaps any of these could be worked on slowly enough to weaken its hold the next time it wakes without hastening the rise. Too much happy idleness just relaxing in the thin ray of light while it lasts will give it more to mock.

But perhaps that isn't quite true. What stinks in idleness is when it ceases to be relaxing and turns into a numb shell pressing the button over again despite increasingly diminishing returns in joy or soothing. That and a sense of abdication of duty to the screamers, whatever one's own good intentions. The knowledge that some suffer and you are not helping them will always rise to the surface sooner or later. Would that there was time for it to regain some of its weight... No, that isn't what's been lost. 

It is not light what bites less into you.
Your callous scarring will not let it through.

And what is there really to do about that?
Well, perhaps if you can loosen the grip of the warden, just a little by little, and refuse its shaming at how much of your strength this takes, perhaps someday the skin of your conscience will feel again, less under the thick of this numb weariness, as base childlike sense-pleasure can now. Maybe there is some nobleness in that somewhere.

Grim November

It has been some time, and so I will explain.

Things began to be sour, I think, in August. Habits which were endurable in the short term so long as they were being worked on and would improve over time seemed to worsen, signs of improving grew sparse or there seemed to be subconscious resentment at the pressure.

Too much responsibility was placed on me.

There was cause, of course; there were extenuating circumstances. My Stars left their job, trusting to another to support us, and then he lost his job too. And there was much discouragement and despondency. None of us were in fit shape to carry the limp weight of the others while we were robbed of strength. And so I did my best at times, but neither was I - and I lashed out and growled and broke down often under the strain, so little rewarded, so little relieved.

I believe I am still blamed for my failure to hold up the heads of my companions during that time, as well as my own, but I plead that it was not within my power, and ought not have been expected of me. I had not enough participation. I had not enough support. I had not enough compensation to see me through it, not enough nor gentle enough reminders; reminders which are invitations, rather than chastisements.

Of course, it is an advanced difficulty to succeed, with me, to my standard, in giving invitation and not chastisement.

But this is how it went on. I carried far too much, seeking not to let others down, but I must in the end. My patience, my spirit, was overloaded for quite some time, and my vulnerabilities pricked when I was gathering enough air and lift to begin to get somewhere, such that that liveliness would easily and swiftly drain away, and I would lie again lifeless in a wasteland of bitterness.

I do not say that I held no responsibility nor blame for these cycles - O, I was part of them. My failure to speak my boundaries while I could still do so without cursing made things worse. I was at times negligent. I was at times evasive.

And so it went, and until I had a room of privacy to myself for a while (the gift of interim hosts in the city of Kitchener, and O my great gratitude to them for the privilege), for six months I had no place I could retreat to which was mine to be alone in, mine to rest in, and not need to share it, neither night nor day. Looking back it shocks me that I lived so long in these conditions, and I did not seem to realize that that was a problem.

Of course, I was caught up in wanting to be there, be present for Stars if they needed physical assistance to get up, and perhaps then, I ignored my own need for privacy, for a crook I could lay in on my own and be undisturbed. There are reasons for this, of course, reasons. But O it was surely a part of my growing twisted and impatient and bitter.

And so it went until a particularly bright-careless and manipulative episode, of some of my love's worst habits. And then I told them I would not marry them. Not now, not like this. And so I would need to return North and leave the country, for I had no other legal basis to stay. And it was sad and sour but felt necessary.

We moved several times, because as everything descended into a slough of despond, we would not organize cohesively enough to close a rental agreement and did not have a place to go by the ending of the old lease. And so there was a hotel one night, and an Airbnb for a half-week, and then another Airbnb for the rest of the month, with our things in a storage locker a long drive outside town, near to where we had hoped to rent a place, but it was a scam. A scam we would ordinarily have spotted, but we were desperate for a place by that time, of course.

Much of our things have been left behind. My friends I leave with less, materially, than they had before, and some bitter memories of my impatience and desperation and the guilt of having drawn it. But still though, my friends I leave in a pleasant place, a roomy apartment somewhat bare but well outfitted with such things as the kitchen that came with it. I leave them in a place with an extendable lease and the flexibility to adjust time there, so that they may be sure of their next leap's landing before arranging to leave. I leave them nearer to some people who have been friends of ours, that we wished to be close to... And still do now, but less so. Less, for there has been loss and grief and disappointment.

I leave my friends and I hope very dearly that I leave them better for having spent time with me rather than worse, for all that they have less materially now and our lessons from each other have been grim. November was a very slow, very sad and waiting and grieving month for me this year.

I hope to pick up my project again. I have not done so quite yet. I have a bit more of ensuring my next living-space to do first. I was in no condition then, really no condition for it.

And that is how it went.

Idle Months

It has been idle months since I last wrote here. I have been restlessly resting, waiting. The time has finally come. Tomorrow I leave this house. The next day, I leave this country, and perhaps I will never return.

I have been often dejected. This trip to Ireland has felt like a great big mess. I studied well what was little challenge to me - I allowed myself to be reclusive and stick to the company of a couple closest friends for the most part. I have often felt depressed, and struggled to remember what good I am. I have often felt like a failure. I set a time, though, and decided I would let myself be still until it was time to move again. I have at times utterly hated the stillness... but sometimes I have been able to sit still with some serenity and an ephemeral scrap of patience.

I have set myself to rest so that once it was time to move, I would be ready and eager to, and would appreciate the energy and newness. I worry a little and wonder more whether this bid to control the ebbs and flows of my energy and my stillness will actually work. I have never been good at planning and deliberately choosing these things. But then... once upon a time, in the life I grew out of, I think not being good at it was a necessary excuse for resisting the clamour of oppression which would have insisted I do things their way, not a way I could choose for myself.

Those days... are over. I do not need to be helpless in order to excuse disobedience from an unjust authority the same way I needed to once with mother. I believe I have been learning to let it go.

In that, at least, in those ways, self-searching still, digging deeper in trauma and questions of identity and complexity; in those very particular ways I have not been idle, the time has not been wasted. And indeed my closest, dearest friends have been a great resource to me, in listening and tolerating and sometimes understanding.

And so, the silence is broken, for now.

Ireland is over.

Let the next segment now begin.

It Festers

I come here with a bent mind, frustrated at a... friend? acquaintance? friend?... who asked me how I was doing as the last class began to settle down into their seats, and would not take my grimace and uncomfortable silence as an answer and did not hear my whisper, reached to touch my hand.

Such small actions, one might think they should not bend me.

I have become trapped in the mirror, and appropriately the things I see and hear around me all reflect the dark. The voices that close the podcast I listen to sound lower, slower, tired... in a way they did not once before. I feel less entertained by it, and wonder whether I would see it becoming lesser if I was not, within myself, shriveling. Everything I see and hear now becomes suspect.

Last week, I made mistakes. I acted in ways that, in retrospect, in dread, I knew must mark me as an outsider, and every time I spoke of it, in voice or text or explicit thought, I cried. I cried in front of my peers who came to chastise me. I sat in frozen stillness for long moments in front of my peer who sought to comfort me; or perhaps, comfort themself with the hopeful confirmation that I was fine... which I refused to give them. I cried in front of my friends of this last half-year, whose notice and acknowledgement and forgiveness for the act I sought.

I stayed up late on Sunday night, spending a few cherished hours with those I cannot see or hear any other time than the middle of the night, and missed my first class again on Monday morning. But not Tuesday this time. I arrived to class twelve minutes after the hour but in time to hear much of the lecture. About insecurity and social media. Of course. With little jokes about how obviously as a younger generation we were all addicted to Facebook even if we knew it was exploitative. As if saying that kind of thing were funny rather than insulting. I can't say it helped.

Such small gestures, one might think they should not bend me.

But everything now is in subtlety. The greatest impacts can be wrought with the flourish of a pen and the pressing of a button, which are actions even smaller, in the simple physical performance which is so little of the context that fully makes them up.

Why should I be ashamed? Why am I ashamed? Why?

The post on my blog two posts back is displaying improperly. Three paragraphs are shown in the smallest available font size, and although I can edit the text of the post, I cannot change them to normal size such that they display properly on the webpage. I am left feeling frustrated and powerless. Such... small... things. Such small things that yet I do not have the reach to correct. Like all the things I may feel are wrong with the systems here.

I wonder whether my friend?acquaintance?friend? will forgive me, and cannot really claim to stir myself to enough feeling to hope. I wonder whether she will care to learn enough about me to begin to understand what I need, why it is painful for me when someone pushes for me to speak in a room crowded with people, such as students in a classroom. What to do about it. But as a point aside from all of this... when I looked at her eyes looking at me, trying to reach out to me, there was a warmth there that I would like to see again...

People keep telling me I know I can always talk to them if I need someone to talk to.
I wish they would stop telling me that. It isn't true.

Last week I dragged myself into school on Thursday mostly so that I could attend counselling, but I was told I had no appointment. I had begun to depend on my counsellor. I had begun to trust him enough that last time, I opened up my chest and let him see me raw and crying. I suppose we mentioned it each time until last time, and he had written me in for another appointment, same time next week. But not last time. When I trust, I assume, and do not think to say it, and then it is not done.

I wished that I had an appointment this week, but I do not want to speak to the staff at student services to ask for one.

I wish people would stop telling me I know I can rely on them. I don't. People keep showing me that I can't; not in the ways that I rely on people.

I think it's time to start calling this depression.

I am trapped in the mirror now, and nothing I see on the other side, nothing I hear, can be trusted not to be twisted by the reflection of my own darkness.

Hello, old darkness. It's been a while.

Needing To Be Useful

This tale of my past is derived mostly from a long conversation I had with my friends yesterday. I recreate it here, slightly edited for better reading and accuracy. May it help anyone who wishes to know me, to understand some of my perspective. May it help anyone who is currently suffering similarly, to know that they are not alone.


I was an outsider, in my mind, for most of my life through elementary and high school. I did not expect anyone to want to be around me, even when I was at home. I grew to escape my fear of social rejection by getting caught on blades in my mind. I was considering dying for a long swath of it, because I thought it would remove me as a burden of unwelcome obligation on my parents, and on society at large. So I tried to imagine nonexistence... which is impossible. And I tried to imagine hell... which is vague enough that it can be endlessly iterated on as progressively worse forms of torture.

I do not recommend this strategy to anyone.

My parents did not deny me by rigidly insisting that I should be Christian, or Muslim, or a doctor, or any such thing; they were simply busy with their own affairs and generally seemed to want little more of me than to not to get in the way, and to not spend more hours than they felt was permissable in front of a television or computer screen. I felt that they neither noticed nor cared that I was suffering.

Although, when I came back from my year of travel to Australia at the age of nineteen, my father confessed to me that he had been concerned sometimes that he would lose me to my shadows.
I was kind of exasperated that he hadn't said that at the time, and I believe I told him so.

For the most part, I consider my parents to be a feature of my past. To a large degree, I consider them to have failed me, and myself not to owe them much of anything. Family is those who understand and support me, wherever I find them.

However, I am still open to visiting my father again to say hi and try to catch up before I leave the country. I like him, in some ways. He is very expressive, and good at explaining and describing things. ...Sometimes people have said I talk like him.

Anyway, I couldn't bring myself to die. Both the consequences and the means were too terrifying to accept. I saw the potential, but it made me horribly squeamish. I squirmed whenever I looked at a sharp knife, or even when someone close to me was holding something as innocuous (but potentially lethal) as a sewing needle. Sometimes, I still do.

And also, I have to admit, I was not actually convinced that it would be doing the world a favour if I died, since I recognized that a lot of heroes in stories came from outsider status, and hoped that I could be like them, although not with much confidence attached to the hope. Perhaps it seemed to me at the time that this could have been desperate denial of an unpleasant truth. I think while I was so young, it did not occur to me to believe in cynical denial of a hopeful truth. At least not in myself.

I became deeply obsessed with proving my own worth, establishing my own right-to-exist. A cognitive habit which is so ingrained, its shape is still reflected in many of the ways I think that were built and updated around it, even if the existential urgency that originally drove that obsession is weakening now as I heal my mental habits.

I tried to do what heroes in stories would do; hold to good, in whatever form I could see it, and to helping other people. I felt hopeful... desperately, pathetically hopeful... whenever I could do so much for my classmates as throw someone's ball back to them to save them the effort of walking to get it, even though I knew my status as a scapegoat would mean they would never invite me to play.

And I spent a lot of time walking on my own. I would walk the big track-and-field running track during recess, thinking to myself. Knowledge and wisdom derived from contemplation were useful, in theory, so if I could develop more of that... it must add to my value, my right-to-exist.

And I had a period of life when I communed with spirits. Although who can say, now, whether there was any reality in that outside my own perspective? I think even my former self at that time was in the habit of wondering whether there was any reality in it outside of her own perspective, and might have readily admitted this if anyone had ever asked her what she thought about it. Almost certainly, though, she would have been overwhelmed by that same desperate hope, because someone was actually expressing an interest in her perspective... paired with fatalistic near-certainty that the one who was asking would use anything she said as something to yell and catcall back at her later.

There was one time, she was walking the track as usual, having turned her heel and walked out on a social situation that was growing unworkable, but was followed by a whole tribe of children. My memory has likely inflated the numbers, but it seemed to me like most of my grade was following me at a short distance, booing and screaming.
And I kept walking. What else was there to do?
Someone had run up to me... it must have been winter, because they got their boot caught in the snow. When I didn't stop to help, but kept walking, I was declaimed as selfish and having "lured" them out here into the cold to die, or something like that. That may have been what set all the booing and screaming off, now that I think about it... but it is all very fuzzy.

And I came to hope, throughout this time, and through hope I came to believe, that in taking this kind of abuse on myself, someone else, somewhere, was spared it. The attention of the bullies was distracted from someone else who might otherwise have been a target, and may have had less resilience to bear it.

That, at least, would be something useful. So I thought I could live with it.

My social life drastically improved at sixteen years of age. My mother plotted with a family we knew to hold me a really nice sixteenth birthday party, away from all the kids at school I felt obligated to treat as friends whenever they would let me, even though they were not.

My mother, in a surprising display of respect and consideration, drove me far from our little village to a larger town, and drove me around the town to look for a present I would actually want, because she didn't want to waste money on something I didn't, an attitude with which I agreed wholeheartedly, and still do.
Gemstones of my birth-month? No, I wasn't really interested in gems. They were so girly and ostentatious. A bicycle? A good idea, but I already had one, my father's girlfriend had got it for me.

I didn't find anything else I particularly cared for at any of the other shops we went to either, and my mother was growing frustrated with the failure to find an appropriate gift, so I recommended we go to the used book store. There might be a book there by Terry Pratchett or Spider Robinson that I hadn't read yet, and although it would be a small thing, I knew I liked those.

In the used bookstore, I found two large, hardcover books that quickly drew my fascinated attention. They were two of the three core rulebooks for Dungeons & Dragons, edition 3.5. And I knew I had found The Thing. They were expensive enough that my mother was very reluctant to buy them for me, especially given that there was one missing, and I would need to have all three. But maybe she just didn't understand why a set of three hardcover books should be worth so much.

Here, I feel I need to back up and explain the context of my desire. I had been trying to invent Dungeons & Dragons from scratch since I was six or something. I had made a habit, from a very early age, of drawing mazes, and putting dots in them with different colours of markers, to represent monsters and treasures, and trying to get my half-brother to play the adventure with me.

I knew to call the person who built the maze and filled it with monsters the "dungeon master", so I guess I must have picked a lot of that idea up from things I'd heard some older kids saying. Almost certainly Levi and Nathan, the two boys closest to our age (although still older) of a farming family we knew, and which my father would often visit, bringing my half-brother and me along. We would spend time with Levi and Nathan whenever our family was visiting theirs, often running off to play in the woods near their farm. We especially liked the game of trying to dam up tiny streams, and keep building and repairing the dam as the water that was pooled behind it grew wider and higher.

But anyway. Although I suspect I must have seen or heard the older boys playing or talking about it, I don't think I had ever actually realized that Dungeons & Dragons... really existed? I thought they were just talking about video games, maybe, or trying to recreate video games without a computer. I did not realize at the time that the video games had actually been recreations of D&D.

So finding these rulebooks, to me in my teenagerdom, was a little like discovering the tomb of King Tut. I managed to convince my mother that yes, these books were something I really wanted, and it would make me very happy to have them, as long as she could get me the third one too. She bought them, and I started reading voraciously as soon as I got back in the car. She actually had to prompt me to look up after we had pulled in and parked in the driveway of the other family's house, so that I would notice that they had put up a big paper banner across the front of the house, that said HAPPY SWEET SIXTEEN EMILY. It was, I have to admit, a really nice gesture.

My mother and the mother of this family were friends, and I got along pretty well with her two children. There was a boy named Victor who tended to be very loud, so much so that between us we named a measure of volume someone was shouting at, "the Victor scale". There was also a girl, whose name was not connected to such a mnemonic, and so I do not remember it. Possibly it was Tammy. I remember her being small, slender and creative in ways that reminded me of a pixie.

We spent a weekend there. We had KFC on my birthday (a rare luxury), and I spent most of that weekend reading and plotting, and convinced Victor and Tammy to play the game with me, even though we didn't have the Player's Handbook, which is the most important one. But we would need dice. They brought me to a hobby store in town that sold the right kind. My mother didn't want to spend any more money on me, but I couldn't play the game without any dice, so I presented the greatest compromise I felt I could. I would get just one die, and I would choose it out of the factory seconds box, which was cheapest.

I looked through the box for a 20-sided die that I liked. I think it was a black one with red numbers. We would have to make do, but we could, because you could simulate rolling any other die with fewer sides by rolling a d20, you just had to divide the numbers up evenly, and roll again if you got one of the leftovers. I drew a conversion table for this purpose. In retrospect, my sixteen year old self, in her excitement about this, registers to me as incredibly cute.

Later that summer, after a copy of the Player's Handbook had been provided to me and I had thoroughly studied all three core rulebooks, I started to prepare a real game, for more than just a weekend out of town. I pulled out a book and craft set I'd been given previously about proper forms of writing with quill-pens and practiced the art just so that I could write prop documents, and place-names on my maps, with the proper medieval flair.

I painted an overworld map on a big piece of newsprint that I had deliberately stained with coffee to look old, and tore all the edges so they'd be ragged. And I planned an adventure and where it would begin, with an opening scene like a cinematic from a video game, and a great big complicated wonderful dungeon to be the first adventure. I invited the other kids my age at the youth group I usually spent time at to come and make characters so they could play with me, and nagged at the ones who expressed an interest until I succeeded in dragging them away from playing Halo on the x-box to come and do it.

And I ran my game.
It became an established feature of the Thursday youth group, every week.
Sometimes, the players would even invite me over to their houses so I could run the game on the weekends.
And my heart was full of joy and validation, because for what seemed like the first time in my life, there was a reason people wanted to have me around.
Even if it wasn't because of who I was... just that I brought the game.
My morale and creativity improved tremendously. I would draw battle scenes and characters and maps in the margins of worksheets at school. I embraced that role as hard as I could over the next couple of years.

I told this story to a couple of my friends over voice chat on Discord not all that long ago, and I think I could hear one of them choke up a little when I got to the end, because in the end, it comes around again to how all this happiness was due to the relief of a loneliness and sense of worthlessness so unendurably desperate that even though I still didn't think my players necessarily liked me, it changed my whole life.

And it is sad. I get it. I agree, and in fact I'm really glad I have friends who can understand how sad it was. But when I look back, I can't help but remember the happiness too, and smile a bit.

The heart celebrates, when it finds a situation which is even marginally less bad.

Rationality: Mitigate the Loss; Fight for the Living

This post is an addendum to Rationality: A Different Prisoner's Dilemma. It is another scenario with which to demonstrate the point.

Imagine that you are a person in a horrible and traumatic situation. The love of your life, the parent of your children, has been burned to death, deliberately. Capital punishment, imposed by a culture that believes some sins are so horrible that they demand this gruesome torture to balance the scales. The whole future you dreamed of having together has gone up in flames, and you are sick with grief and loss and pain.

Some people would be tempted to fling themselves into the flames as well. You probably do think of it, at least once, as you stand there, watching the pyre blaze. Some people will even think that this is the morally right thing to do, and will judge you for not committing suicide. They will think that you didn't really love the one you have lost, if you are able to stay standing and move on without them.

If it is your aim to reduce suffering and death in the world, however, then this impulse and any social pressure behind it is your enemy. If you leap onto the pyre to be burned as well, or hang yourself from a beam at home, or stop taking meals and waste away into nothingness, regardless of the method of your self-destruction, what will it achieve?

Your friends will be hurt. Your community will be hurt. Anyone who depended on your skills and experience and work ethic will be hurt. You will be destroyed, and your children will now have lost both of their parents. It will not bring your lover back.

Furthermore, you will have validated the idea that your suicide was moral. You will have set an example of surrendering to grief instead of coping with it. Others may be tempted, they might believe it was right, to follow you just as you followed your beloved spouse, directly into the grave. Is that something you could possibly want for your children?

You wail. You gnash your teeth and flail your arms and cry late into the night and hold your vigil. Death and suffering have struck you especially close to your heart, and you feel the loss, and you need to express it, but you must not let it consume you as well. If you let that happen, death wins. It claims two casualties for the price of one, and there is one less person working to prevent future suffering.

If you understand this, and you gird up your heart and throw yourself into your duties and refuse to distance yourself from your children... and cry and grieve, yes, in quiet moments, alone under the moon... the people around you may be shocked. They may persecute you, calling you cold or unnatural. They will say that you do not understand what it is to love.

They will be wrong.

It may seem to you, for a time, that life is not worth living to you anymore. But you will keep going because your spouse is not the only person you love, and is not the only person who needs you. Even if you believe it is a fact as normal and obvious as the sun rising tomorrow that you will be together again in heaven after you die... You should not then believe that the right thing to do is to hasten that reunion. There are still things left to do here first, and the right thing is to get them done.

The story I have just told is a story about the Sunk Cost Fallacy, applied to human life.

If you were to turn a blind eye to the needs of the world as it continues to turn, if you forget your duties in the pain of being robbed of something that was precious to you. If you couldn't let go of someone or something you loved, even though there was no way to get it back. That's the sunk cost fallacy leading you to neglect the people who still need you, and ignore the importance of things you still have the chance to save.

If, reading this, you can understand how much it hurts to let the dream that you could have been together with your loved ones forever fall away from you as something that can never happen; if you can understand how it could be tempting to follow that dream and step into the fire... but you can also understand why you have a duty to let go, for now, and focus on what can still be done... then take a moment to notice how it feels. The feeling of facing a lose/lose scenario, and having to make the best of a genuinely terrible situation.

Watch out for the moments in your own life when your heart sinks and you see something falling apart and you really, really, really don't want it to. Remember your duties to the people that still rely on you. Remember that even if you can't feel happy about it, there are other things you need to get done, and try not to let your despair cloud your vision while looking to see how much you can salvage out of the situation. That's the key to overcoming the sunk cost fallacy.

Rationality: A Different Prisoner's Dilemma

There is a certain kind of person who notices that the world is full of suffering, and after they have noticed this, they feel obligated to remind themselves regularly, even to great personal detriment and into depression. These people cannot bring themselves to turn away from suffering even to maintain their own health... not until they are so overwhelmed by compassion for other peoples' pain that they are at risk of breaking down with stress and illness. Why? ... Likely guilt, because they would perceive it as selfish to deliberately ignore someone else's suffering in order to feel better themselves, even if there is nothing they can do about it right now. Likely also fear... that if they did turn away, they would be making themselves into monsters, joining the complicit majority of people who do not act to prevent suffering, who do not seem to care.

I am one such a person, and the kinds of people I make friends with are often prone to this phenomenon. Jennifer Freed calls it "The Empath's Dilemma," but I am not under the impression that it's a term in common use.

A friend of mine came to me tonight stuck in a mental spiral of concern and guilt I recognized as the state of someone being overwhelmed by the Empath's Dilemma, and I swooped in with my own concern, to reassure and comfort them, to shake off the undeserved guilt and help them toward a mental condition from which they would, hopefully, be able to get a decent night's rest.

And then they asked me, "How did you get through this sort of a dark night of the soul [...] whenever that night was for you?"

This is my answer:

I constructed a question. A scenario that might be put to people by which to judge their preferences in a pinch, like the old standard one about pulling a switch to route a train onto a track where it would hit only one person rather than five.

The scenario was this:

Imagine that you are a prisoner in a terrible prison. In your current position, you are almost completely helpless. Your contact with the other prisoners is minimal, and tightly governed. You cannot, now, save them... But you do know that they suffer. If you don't cover your ears at night, you can hear them screaming. If you don't turn your eyes away, you can see how the guards habitually beat and torture and belittle them.
Taken metaphorically, this is not far from the truth.

Your own condition is good compared to most of the other prisoners, but very bad compared to the free citizens who live outside of it. You do not, now, have the power to do anything that would stop the atrocities that happen here. You think you could grow to have more power, though, after your sentence is up, assuming you actually are released. And assuming you survive that long.

But you also know, because the prison is still here, that the free citizens, who have so much more power than you do, have found other things to do with their time than campaign and publicize and get this prison torn down or reformed. A lot of them don't even acknowledge that it's a real problem. You might worry that you will become like them, after you're free. Stuff all your memories of this place into a bag in a closet in the back of your mind and never dare to touch it, because it would hurt.

Well then? Every night, you effectively have two options.

A: You lay down with your ears uncovered. You listen to the screams, and harden your resolve that you will never, ever, allow yourself to forget or to deny what has happened here... but at the cost of your sanity, and a greater risk of not being able to hold a job or garner any respect after you leave.

Or B: You cover your ears, you close your eyes, you do whatever it takes to swallow your meals and nourish yourself despite the sickening surroundings, and you push away the pain and the fear enough to survive another day in as healthy a state as you can. Maintaining your self and your capacity, but increasing the risks of falling into a habit of denial and inaction.

Which one will you choose?

~~~~~

That's the Empath's Dilemma, the way I see it. People we call empaths will choose A far more often. Some will choose A any time they think they can do so without the pain killing them.

I contemplated this long enough to realize that neither extreme was "right". Given a choice between someone who always chooses A, and someone who always chooses B, neither one is necessarily better. This may be difficult to accept, because it's a very emotional question, and it can be hard to imagine, if you are particularly driven to choose A, for example, that someone could choose B and it wouldn't make them a worse person than you are. Knowing whether someone is more driven to choose A or to choose B could, however, offer some useful insight into that person's strengths and weaknesses.

The optimal solution does something vaguely analogous to maximizing the area of a rectangle which is SANITY units wide and COMMITMENT units long. If you let your sanity fall to zero, your capacity to help anyone will also be zero. If you let your commitment fall to zero, your willingness to help anyone will also be zero. In either case, the prison stands just as tall, and the suffering goes on.

So, sacrifice enough of your comfort to maintain your commitment, until your commitment is sufficient to fuel the most effective actions you could take. Do not sacrifice more.

Sacrifice enough of your emotional urgency to maintain your sanity and health, until they are sufficient to support the most effective actions you could take. Do not sacrifice more.

And recognize that knowing the perfect balance is functionally impossible. There are just too many variables in the environment. Calibrating your model to be more accurate is a fantastic excuse to be neither properly maintaining your self NOR acting effectively in the moment.

Err on the side of overestimating the cost of tweaking the model if you possibly can (because you will probably fail in the attempt anyway), and if you find yourself outside the prison, if you see an opportunity to act which is likely to help and unlikely to hinder, heavily weight your preferences toward taking it, rather than trying to make sure you should. Quantity over quality; it is a provably better cognitive habit to make many mistakes than to wait until you have a perfect plan.

The time that passes as you do things other than actively and visibly and tangibly fighting death and suffering in all its forms is a sunk cost. It is a fallacy that will drive you into irrationality and error to weight it so highly that it outweighs all the factors you actually do have any control over in your decision making.

The only choices you can really make are between the opportunities you actually see, to influence outcomes you actually have the power to affect.

And, actions taken to sustain yourself, your life, your sanity and in fact also your morale, are instrumentally necessary to preserving your own capacity to fight death and continue to fight death into the future.

You cannot stand to fight if you have laid down to die with the first of your fellow-soldiers to fall, out of compassion or love for them.
So get up. I will not tell you not to remember the dead and the dying.
But we fight for the living.

I decided to borrow that line from a video game trailer. It's been used in other contexts as well, but this is the one where I personally first saw it. a damn good line, in my opinion. Hell, it's a damn good motivational video.

I would not have communicated it in quite these words when I first built the question over five years ago. I had not even read HPMoR up to the Stanford Prison Experiment arc (where a call-to-action is realized in pretty similar terms) yet at that time.

If I had, I probably would not have constructed the question this way, as it would have felt like a form of plaigiarism.

Why do Monsters Make Me Happy?

Hello, world.

My slump seems to continue. I missed several classes again last week. I overcame some reluctance-towards-everything in order to attend a session I had booked almost a month ago with my counsellor on Friday. I spent just about the whole time venting and ranting and voicing my assessment of the great streak I had been on for a while, and the restfulness, and then restlessness, of my disengagement since February 19th.

The next day, I went back to the gym. I had a headache, that ebbed and returned while I was working out, and part way through my strength exercises, my willingness to exert myself gave out. My muscles seemed to be doing alright. It wasn't pain or pushing near the usual shaky intolerance that made me stop one of my sets at eleven, and the next, when I elected to try it again, at ten. It was something closer to boredom, or apathy, or reclusiveness.

I saw the coach who had originally set me up with my work out as I was heading up the stairs, and he asked cheerfully how I was, but I had nothing cheerful to say back, so I only waved. It was nice to see him again, since he was a positive acquaintance and very energetic and understanding from the beginning, but it was uncomfortable to be seen.

I noticed the other day that I had completely forgotten to pay rent to my landlord in February. In a fit of profound embarrassment, I immediately sent him an e-transfer for two months' rent to cover February and March, and filled the comment box and another email beside it with my apologies. He was gracious, and made nothing of it except to thank me for the messages. This landlord has been uncommonly good to us. I count that a dear blessing.

The kitchen continues to be wretched. The stove covered in grease and burned debris, the floor just dirty enough to be slightly sticky sometimes, and slightly slidey with a layer of dirt which is not secure on the floor at others. It is an unhappy, weighing thing to see.

Friday night my roommates had friends over. I have been trying to sleep at night again, and have been having some limited success, sleeping in late evening and remaining awake five hours before waking up on my own. However, I cannot measure my progress very well when I am not left to myself to wake up. I woke Friday night to the sounds of people, coming and going and loudly talking. I did not have the energy, or perhaps simply did not have the will, to move. I only lay in the darkness, awake and tired or perhaps sometimes vaguely approaching sleep again for a while before the voices roused me. Someone laughs. Someone swears, and my tension ticks up another little notch. I do not know how long I laid there before I found whatever I had been lacking and moved.

I should note, it was not paralysis this time. Sleep paralysis feels very different. I was stuck between rest and motion, not between my nerves and the waking world. It was very tiresome, but was not claustrophobic in the same way.

Eventually I stirred, rolled over, groaned, and turned on my laptop to check the time. About 1:30 AM. My thoughts grew darker, but were still tired and predominantly wordless. I wrapped my housecoat around me and staggered out to boil some water and fetch a snack, casting dark, empty looks toward the corner where those two roommates and their guests sat or stood or lay variously on and around the couch, talking loudly and not seeming to do much of anything else. I did not talk to them. I did not have the grace or the desire. In the short term, I was already woken, and in the long term, I no longer felt any inclination to believe my words would make any difference at all to their behaviour. Perhaps they do not understand the affect this has on me, but I have tried to make it clear to them before.

The loud speaking continued until 3:30 or 4 or so. The next morning, the area was scattered with pieces of chips, an empty chip bag, a large empty vodka bottle. The common area thus decorated was slightly worse than usual. Since then, the bottle and bag have been tidied away, but the pieces of chips have not. A few days ago, I left out a note on the counter that only said, "The STICKINESS on the floor is GROSS. Please CLEAN it." It has shifted around and been pushed toward the section of cabinets I reserve for myself, and the marker has been smudged with wetness and the paper spotted with grease, but so far as I can tell nothing has been done.

This afternoon I confronted one of my roommates in the kitchen, toneless, dark, not feeling enough of myself to give of myself. I greeted her and said, "Does it not bother you to see the kitchen like this?" She said quickly that it does, and that she would clean it tonight when others were not in the house. I heard it listlessly, almost feeling this gambit were unfair. I told her that if she did not, I probably would, and that I had a friend I wished to have over tomorrow.

I do not particularly believe her, but I will look to see whether anything is done. She also told me, the other day, when I sent out a text to the household and the landlord complaining that the thermostat had been turned to 78 degrees, that the landlord had set it so after she had complained of the cold, and it automatically reset to 78 if they changed it. I heard from the landlord in response to the same message that he would put a lock box on the thermostat.

I went out and bought some groceries, mostly frozen things to heat in the oven. The freezer I share with another roommate is mostly full. I send her a text message offering to make room if she needs it, and saying she shouldn't worry about it if she needs to rearrange the freezer or anything. I have generally gotten on well with this particular roommate, although she is rarely here. The kitchen bothers her more than it does me, and she has a boyfriend she can spend time with away from here, so I suppose why wouldn't she?

While at the grocery shop, I bought Monster energy drinks again, and had one as soon as I got home. I had been feeling deadened, disinterested, wondering whether my slump had degraded into depression. Shortly after the drink, though, as generally and bizarrely seems to happen, I felt... better. Cheerful, in a way I have not been. Why does this happen? What is it about the energy drinks that sloughs away the misery in a way nothing else does? I find it... concerning. I have a sense that I ought to be able to feel this alert all the time, without having to rely on a drink to trigger it. Why is it that they make me happy, even if I still feel tired and sleepy? Do I really feel my fatigue more as emotions than fatigue? I do know that nothing saps my energy like getting upset, but I didn't expect it to work so thoroughly the other way around. I know tiredness manifests as a form of sadness, but I do not expect energy to manifest more as happiness than as perceptible energy.

Christmas Crash

After my last post here, I decided to look back a ways and revisit what my feelings had been in November, when I was just setting up my resolution to return to Ireland. I was a little shaken to see how uncertain I had been about how I might expect Eoin to feel, and how much more confident it seemed that I had become.

Of course, I have been careful to avoid developing any sort of certainty that I would be welcomed, and every time I think or speak on it, I at least pay some lip service to the possibility that for some reason or another I would not be welcomed back. But by often envisioning him hugging or kissing me, by remembering his smile and his affection, I think I have further reinforced the notion to myself that I will be greeted with love of some kind.

Upon observing the distinct change in my confidence, a crumbling came on me that was probably well due. I had been working hard, catching up and keeping up with my schoolwork in one thing or another, for a solid stretch and I was tired. My spirits had been flagging uncertainly, waiting for the fall for some time, but I kept pulling them up again. This observation, though, and an opportunity to doubt and wonder if all my confidence had been built up by self-conditioning and wishful thinking, was just the slip I needed, and the fall came.

However, as these things go, I will say it was short. I spent almost all of a day in bed or idling, watching YouTube videos to fill mental space with noise, sleeping in frequent bursts. The next day, I reached out to my friends, although wretchedly and in an awful conflict, grumpy from social neglect and fatigue, feeling the stresses of ancient habits of self-doubt and deprecation bending but not entirely broken. I was surly and rude and plaintive to those who took the time to listen, but...

Throughout it, I acknowledged that I was in a crash at the end of a long streak of positivity. I spoke through all of my feelings and complaints over everything from my doubts about Eoin to procrastination of tasks I found intimidating or dull to feeling fatter than usual, but at every point I spoke of feelings and imaginings, and did not say that any great flaw I saw in myself was fact. I managed some gruff apologies and excuses to those friends I leant on. I held my tongue for vital moments some moments, and pointedly avoided some opportunities to pick fights even though I had to wrestle with my impulses and irritability to do so.

I was invited to play Jackbox 4 games by one of my dear old friends and enjoyed them, although the way we played over stream and without voice chat was less intimate than I used to enjoy from Jackbox games and had an irritating delay. Still, being welcomed into the fold for social fun was something I acknowledged that I badly needed, and had gone too long without.

I did not expect anything for Christmas, and did not get much. One friend bought me a game soundtrack that I had put on my wishlist at some point. I was happy to have been thought of with such a gesture, and made a point of saying so and giving my thanks.

With the patient ear of one friend, some friendly invitations and thoughts from others, and the vital acknowledgement that although not perfect, my judgement in times of happy optimism is probably better than when I am breaking down with doubt and fear; that so long as I do not presume to be infallible, sustaining my spirits on a reasonable hope is a fair and fine way of carrying on, I recovered fairly quickly. This morning, I woke and got back to some schoolwork pretty much first thing. In the early afternoon, I made a point of going outside just for the sake of my health.

Having come back here to write, although I have paused uncertainly many times, will be the last thing on my list of things I have set myself a duty to do today. Having done this, I will be free to relax, or to work up the courage to do something a little more intimidating, like returning for a brief refresher to my JavaScript lessons, or working on my resume to send to companies that might be my key to get back to Ireland. Ah... Breathe, Serp, breathe. It is still intimidating, that. Taking a solid step toward a desperate goal usually is, I think.

The Ayn Rand Effect?

I wonder if there is a scientific name for this effect:

That in any situation in which a system is put in place to help a group of people who are presumed to need it, some people who do not "need it" will seek to take advantage of the assistance anyway, and some will succeed. Then, a large third party will equate every single person who utilizes the help to be cheating the system by taking its assistance on false pretenses, creating a social and political situation with loud, vocal deriders claiming that these people are (all) leeches who could get by fine on their own, and any and all users of the systems become stigmatized. It happens with welfare, it happens with food banks, it happens with the LGBT community and supports therein, it happens with trans people and feminists and ethnic minorities; any group of any kind that is partially or wholly disadvantaged in some way, and which people seek to help out of that disadvantage by giving them focused support.
The stigma generally does not start because they are given help, but is deepened or shaped by it.
I wonder what that would be called? Perhaps the Ayn Rand Effect?

Thinking on this got me taking a second look at her philosophies. Some of it's quite sensible if I look at it to understand, rather than outright seeking conflict. I think I can see precisely what she's talking about and warrant her her insight on it, and then see exactly where she makes an oversimplification and calls something an absolute that isn't.

For instance the assertion that sex is "not possible in self-abasement". I read what she's describing about sex, and I know what she's talking about. To see in one's partner's surrender the glorification of one's identity... Suggesting then that I love and desire another person because they, as I understand them, are a complement to my own self-image; because taking them (and them in particular) as mine to please and please myself upon glorifies what I am. I don't actually have any objection to that; she's right, it does. But she stumbles, I think, it defining that as "Sex". It is Ideal and Idealized Sex, as she sees it, and I do not disagree, but it's only one subset of the many possible acts called sex. Sex IS possible in self-abasement. She talks about that as well, and in so doing contradicts herself; but only because she has stooped to making a battle cry of an oversimplified absolute statement and an emotional trope, because one cannot easily make battle cries of the complicated, grey-shaded and fiddly truth. Amusingly, if I am reading this right, that act is against her own philosophy, but nevertheless a mistake she is frequently prone to.

That and a tendency to really overblown patriotism, and perhaps a blindness to downsides of decisions and ideals that she cares for strongly. Common problem, that. Significantly worse problem for a philosopher than a member of the general populace to have. More damaging there. Ah, but of course she speaks of her vision of Idealized America, just as she speaks of Idealized sex. Its victories, without its failures, as though those could be separated and held in different histories. Disregarding the times, and the frequency of the times, that it has failed to live up to its own ostensible vision, and to uphold its own ostensible values. Or indeed, the places where its apparent victories were attributed to glorious virtue, but were as much the result of, for instance, oppression and literal slavery.

Ha. I feel like doing a bit of my own political-sounding speechifying, so I will:

"I disagree with her. Altruism and selfishness, for all that they seem often to pull in opposite directions, are not enemies and are not mutually incompatible any more than the expansion and the contraction of a person's beating heart are enemies and mutually incompatible. They can be balanced. Indeed, they must be balanced, or the individual quickly collapses and dies.
I believe that it IS possible to construct a society in which there is a bottom absolute limit, a floor, to how far a person's wealth and quality of life is allowed to fall, but with no corresponding absolute limit to how high it may rise; if only it were to be agreed that this state is desirable, and to then construct it with this goal in mind.
I believe that giving to others and keeping for oneself are both forces that belong in every life, are both sources of happiness and joy, and that they complement one another as such. To find a healthy balance between them is one of the necessary steps to create a happy and purposeful life, without resentment or hate or shame."

What brought all this on?

Well, the study of and comments on Ayn Rand were of course off of the thought that her name and reputation might fit the effect I was describing, and the thoughts on that effect are a repetition of something I find myself mulling over from time to time. In this case, it was all prompted, somewhat indirectly, by a SciShow video on the Taboos of Science. In the comments, biological and formative differences between different ethnicities and sexes was a (fairly obvious) subject discussed as a taboo of science, as it has become faux pas to admit or suggest that there are meaningful and significant differences there due to some irritating exaggerations associated with the equality movements.

There was also mention of the classification of gender dysphoria as a disease, which got me thinking about the way some people question the existence or legitimacy of trans people and also sufferers of things like Aspergers and Bipolar Disorder, and on from there to an old recurring series of thoughts on how youth who are acting destructively or poorly are frequently dismissed as "just seeking attention," as though seeking attention when one is lonely, hurt, or confused and facing something they don't know how to solve is inherently wrong and shameful, which is obvious bullshit. While acting out destructively is not an acceptable means to it (albeit sometimes true that suffering people do not know how to ask directly), seeking attention should not be seen as a wrong. The "just seeking attention" tends to imply lying and making up ailments or exaggerating them in order to get the attention that may actually BE needed.

Admittedly this actually does happen a fair bit because lesser problems or less severe cases of problems are often dismissed, mocked or ignored, making exaggeration sometimes (tragically and socially destructively) necessary to get help of any kind. And then those who do truly suffer from the ailments most often used as excuses suffer further from stigmatization and an impression that their ailment does not exist because the false complainers reflect badly on them. That's an example of the broad effect I was talking about, which I think also holds true in this broader sense.
That's what brought this on.

Solace in a Tomato

The day before yesterday, I had plans to help another starting freshman student move to her new home in London. I awaited her call or text message to remind me where to meet her, and let me know it was time. As it happened, not only did it never arrive, but a phone call to her failed immediately, giving me the recorded message that this number was not currently available, and the previous day, none of my texts to her were answered. I still don't know what happened.

The day before yesterday, I got into another fight with my boyfriend in which he didn't see me trying (although I was) to account for his feelings and mind them, and I didn't see him trying (he wasn't sure he was) to account for mine, and he wished I'd just drop it and leave it alone like he wanted to do, and I wished he was willing to bear some pain and effort in the short-term in order to learn habits that'd make us both happier in the longer term, but he was no more willing to commit to that than I was to just drop the issue, certain as I felt that it would come up again.

Yesterday, I had an appointment with my doctor, who has in the past seemed dismissive and distrustful of me. I was reluctant to go, but did anyway. I felt very discouraged. I kept thinking about the failed moving day, and even though I now no better than to catastrophize it, since the most likely answer is that there was just some problem with my fellow student's phone and she either didn't remember my number without the use of it, or didn't think of using another phone to contact me... but still, not actually knowing was really bothering me.

I kept not thinking, but feeling, that my plan for school was too ambitious and would certainly overshoot my capacity or take too long to prepare. I know with my logic, as opposed to my feelings, that the only way to find out if I can is to try, and I still remember why the logic is sound that leads me to believe I could. But in that discouraged, I dare say even reactively depressed state, I could not remember why I cared to try.

On the way out to go see my doctor, I forgot my mp3 player for one thing and had to go back for it from the bus stop, reasoning that at the time it was, the likelihood of this making me miss my appointment was very low, I didn't actually care if I was only slightly late, and if I didn't get my mp3 player and bring it with me, the chance of not having it making me much more miserable was high. Even if I don't want to listen to music, not having the ability to choose to makes me nervous and tense.

I also saw my tomato plant.

There was a time around April/May of this year that I asked our landlord here if I could use one of the little square garden plots myself when planting time came, since I was very interested in doing some gardening even though I was a newbie at it. He agreed to that, and gave me the one which had had a rotting pumpkin in it since the last autumn, and said that was good for a garden, of course. It was the second of four little squares built into our side yard with plank edges that he'd set up.

Later, come May when the weather was getting reliably warm and frost didn't seem to be coming back, I went out with my seeds and used two and a half little packets of them, carrots and tomatoes and some low-to-the-ground herbs. I had gotten advice from one of my coworkers who gardens a lot about repelling pests and good plants to plant near one another that wouldn't give a newbie too much trouble.

The same day, the landlord's wife comes out and starts her own planting, and she digs up and uses and plants in all four of the squares. And when I complain that the landlord promised me one of them, she goes and talks to him of course... But as it turns out, he never told anybody about that but me, so he just apologizes and his wife gets all the gardening space and I get none of it, my seeds wasted, my time and effort spent in anticipation and preparation for nothing. Landlord's wife says the soil is too shallow for tomato plants to grow well anyway (although that didn't stop her from transplanting some, just in a different one of the squares).

Determined and angry, I went into my house and brought out a flower pot bowl thing that we happened to have, and set it not far from the squares and said I was going to plant something in that. I planted a few tomato seeds in it. In the following days and weeks, I weeded out all but one of the tiny seedlings, watered it whenever I remembered and the soil seemed not to be moist enough, and watched it slowly grow. Next to the wife's transplanted tomatoes, it seemed like a runt of a litter. Over the months, it grew to nearly but perhaps not quite two feet above the soil, in a maybe not quite one foot deep little pot, and although it seemed to wilt sometimes from heat or thirst or maybe something else, it looked like it was pretty healthy, despite being small.

When it bore flowers and then lost them, there was only one little forming tomato that had taken on its little branches, but that one fruit grew and reddened. It was not as big as even the small tomatoes you would buy in the grocery store, nor as big as several of the tomatoes that its transplanted neighbors grew, but nevertheless it was there.

Any time I left the house or returned to it, which was not every day, mind you, I would see my tomato plant, especially since recently its transplanted neighbors have been harvested and taken away and its solitary red tomato is the only red in the garden. There was the one single fruit of my independent labour at gardening without space or cooperation.

Yesterday in particular, I could really use that reminder. A solid, physical, undeniable thing, small and modest but wholesome, that I had brought about, by trying to do so.

It felt, bizarrely, as though the tomato plant was forgiving me for my flaws and foibles, and had tried its feeble best as a two foot tall tomato plant growing in a one foot deep flower pot, and had put some effort into giving me something in return for my care of it, even though I had sometimes forgotten to water it for days at a time. I felt forgiven.

It didn't immediately cheer me up, for I did not, immediately, want to be cheered up. It is very rare indeed I get to show a doctor rather than merely tell them about the lows of my moods; generally, the act of going to the doctor's to begin with was proactive enough that it cheered me up considerably on account of actually doing something. But today, I did not want to see that doctor again, and my discouragement was weighty, and I rather wanted a medical professional to see it first hand, so I held onto it, and made a mental note to write this blog post later, which would help me focus on something positive, when I was ready to do that.

My doctor seemed no less dismissive and accusatory this time. The problem I have with my throat, that makes me gag and retch whenever I brush my teeth, and feels like I have a hair stuck in it? She says unless I am actually having trouble swallowing (something physical like food, I guess), she cannot give me a referral to a specialist. She didn't bother to ask if that was what I was asking for, no, just said I couldn't have it. I mentioned that there had been times I had been kept up at nights, my swallow reflex triggering repeatedly, but feeling uncomfortably blocked or aborted. She said nothing to that, almost as though she had not heard me.

Her responses to some of my other matters held a similar attitude; she personally does not believe the evidence for intestinal flora being important to healthy digestion is strong, so she will not prescribe me anything to improve intestinal flora, but she will, if I like, hand me a chart of foods I should and should not eat for better digestion, and seem to expect that it is no harder than a whim to radically change one's diet.

It seems very much to me as though this member of "a caring profession" does not care to help me unless I am in a particular amount or kind of suffering; otherwise, she does not advise me. As though it were somehow beneath her, a general practioner, to put any effort forth on improving health that, though not good, is not yet in the realm of critical illness or injury. Apparently it's meant to be my own responsibility to judge how best to make my crummy-but-operational body work better, and to put forth all the effort of that path myself. Of course, how stupid of me. I thought doctors were meant to help their patients to be more healthy, regardless of how healthy they are to begin with.

I took the bus past my home to the college, and went back to the Learning Center, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite places, to talk to someone. Isaac, my favorite person to talk to so far, whose sound judgement, signs of honesty and assertion I could do anything I put my mind to have inspired me to try, was not there; he will likely hang out there sometimes, but he recently gave up his post as scheduled staff of the place and was not there yesterday, so I ended up talking to "Shay" Sheryl instead. She had put on a lecture I liked, full of effective ice breakers, and with a casual, engaging atmosphere.

I talked to her about some of my stress, and about my plan for school, and she was supportive, giving me some helpful suggestions, and becoming a little alarmed on my behalf when I told her the Counselling and Accessibility office would not book students for ongoing counselling until after the tenth day of classes when they were no longer able to get their student fees and tuition refunded without specific cause. I learned her nickname, and enjoyed her company, though it was not quite as uplifting as Isaac's had been.

I felt better, not completely restored but much better than I had been, on my walk home. And when I got there, I ate my tomato. It was delicious.

Spring Update

Alright, I feel I owe anyone who reads this a little bit of a catch-up talk on what's really been going on in my life, plumbing aside. In the last two months, I had two teeth completely extracted, and after each operation I fell into a state of increased moodiness and fatigue, sometimes extreme, for somewhere around two weeks. The first of these lasted for the last couple weeks of February, the second filled most of mid to late March, and that's one of the reasons I haven't written much, although I did think about it.

Near the end of my period of lethargy in February, I wrote this journal at work, intending to share it:

February. Lethargy. For at least two weeks now - or going on two weeks, maybe?
Exhaustion has been my constant companion. In my dreams, I struggle to sleep or I struggle to wake or open my eyes. Dreams feel like waking hallucinations, fitful and flighty. When I wake, I may feel awake for a fleeting moment, but sleep calls me back to her like a siren.
If I must, I rise and dress drunkenly to march my weary body to work, and for a time, forced activity revitalizes me, but my energy does not last even my shift. I have felt nauseous and weak 'ere I am done even on short days.
My nose and tongue trick me with experiences of old, rotting blood, sickness, tobacco and skunk...Perhaps the skunk smell was real. I am no longer sure I can tell.
This morning continued this drudge...
...but when I arrived for my early shift, I was honored to discover I was being placed as primary cashier - alone for the first hour unless I were to call for my boss. Perhaps there is hope this may be a better day.
Nearer the end of my workday, the fading sets in and the world becomes slowly less crisp and more unreal. I am still enjoying the honored position not often mine, so this day is better than most, but it is not enough to entirely drive away the fatigue.
My eyes ache, slightly, warmly.
I am thankful for the shot of perspective - spending long stretches of time at cash and dealing with customers, I understand better now how hard it is to do any stocking as well. 

One of my customers was a very soft-spoken young man, slender build, light hair I think, and there was something noticeable about his teeth, perhaps they were set a little forward. He spoke in a way that was... not merely polite. Somehow reverent, perhaps? Unhurried, and sincere, certainly. He seemed almost eager to move around the counter when I asked, and showed no irritation when I looked with some interest at the books he was buying. One was titled "The Pagan Christ," by Tom somebody. I've never heard of it, but that is definitely an intriguing title. I made no comment, but neither any move to hide my interest. Perhaps I shall have to look up this book - partly on its own account, partly out of a striking curiosity to learn what this quiet young man was reading. He could, I thought to myself, have been a priest. If so, of what faith, I wonder? Of course it's silly, but I am enjoying the silliness of fancying after him.
I bid him not let the cold get him down. Pity, but I don't remember clearly what he wished me, only that it was kind and said with quiet, unhurried sincerity. Perhaps wishing me a good remainder of my day.
One way or another, the quiet man and his mysteries make the unreality of my tiredness nearly enjoyable, and certainly much more bearable. 

Yes, this is a much better day so far - but still, I will have to call my doctor for advice or an appointment as soon as possible. I suspect my lethargy may be related to the increase in dosage of my daily supplements that started a week or two before I began to notice the fatigue...

Of course, at the time I did not know it was almost over. Perhaps one of the other reasons that my tiredness in February was much worse and a bit longer than the one in March was also that I was getting into frequent, nasty fights with my online lover. Things had reached the point that I had become afraid of him, despite how far away he lives, because of how effectively he could tear me down, intentionally or not, into a mess of guilt, rage and smallness. When he was angry enough, I was sure that his anger at least, which is in some ways separate from him, did it on purpose. Little comfort to me that he was also unhappy with this - his anger was easily roused and easily controlled him, particularly with regards to me. I guess he was fed up with my own weaknesses, among them a tendency to be defensive and accusatory when something strikes me as potentially offensive.

Often after our fights I was left so angry and depressed that I had neither wish nor will to do anything, and so I would just lay down and either distract myself with comfortably familiar recordings of voices, or sleep, or both. Certainly the despair could have added to my sense of lethargy and hopelessness.

A couple of days after I wrote the above journal, my boyfriend, my rabbit, the one I live with, who had been trying, with mixed success, to be supportive while I was suffering, ran the first session of a Pathfinder game he had been planning. Both lover and I were in it, and some in-game politics started another fight. I told him it was over. The next day, I woke up with my energy back; free...

Of course, breaking up with a lover who is friend to one's friends is not as simple as that. Breaking up with anyone one really cared about isn't. The next few days were extremely hard in their own way as I negotiated for peace after separation, for protection from any potential anger that might come after me for leaving, and kept clamps on my tongue anywhere around that group of friends. Keeping myself quiet was tearing me apart, so at one point I turned to another one of my friends and rambled my aching madness to her, instead... and may have lost her for a long time or forever.

So two weeks full of lethargy were followed by around two weeks of very heavy grieving for a dead relationship. I threw myself forward into it and hurt as hard as I could bear rather than trying to hide from it, in the hopes that I could get through it faster that way. It worked; after a couple of weeks, I felt better, but of course any thoughts of my fresh ex were still painful. Flash forward for a moment to now, and I realize that I now feel about him much the same way I did before there was any romance between us; I dislike his attitude, and he frequently annoys me in almost exactly the same ways. It's disappointing to see that we are so, seeming just back to square one.

Soon after that came my second surgery and its following period of fatigue, but the depression this time was milder and the fatigue did not haunt my dreams. I also had the previous lethargy to draw from, and had some hope and understanding that my bizarre recovery period after surgery would last about two weeks, which it did. And that carries us to my birthday, which was just a few days ago. I was busy that day and the next, so we didn't do much celebrating for it; but my roommate and my boyfriend and I did sit down together to watch a movie of my choice; Indie Game: The Movie.

That morning, I woke up and stared at my ceiling for a while. I was still not in a good state of mind in which to be assessing things or making decisions, and I knew that, but at the same time, I was not sure when was the next time I would be, and felt that assessments and at least tentative decisions needed to be made.

I was 25 years old, had had a job in a charity thrift store for almost two years. I was making a lot of headway on my emotional scars and healing, despite setbacks. I was much less often self-destructive these days, and when I was, it didn't go nearly as far. I was being better to my boyfriend, and for that matter, had arranged to live in a house with two people I liked and was capable of getting along with quite well, generally speaking. But was I happy with where I was, and where I seemed to be going?

No. I wasn't. I had been feeling growing frustration and discontent at work. I felt overworked and under-appreciated and lorded over by at least one supervisor that I felt knew no better than me, and often seemed to know worse. I had been having a very hard time not taking the messes I cleaned up at work personally, and felt I had to sacrifice the things my bosses cared about more in order to do my job right. I felt I had learned most all I ever would from my main position on the sales floor. I did not feel I was getting any closer to moving up the ranks, even though I had been trusted to man the storefront mostly independently for a few hours at a time.

So I thought about that, and that night, I talked to my roommates about it. I think I am ready to take one of the next big steps and enroll at a college or university soon. I think it's time for me to investigate the resources and the courses that may be at my disposal. I still have too many interests to be sure there is any just one thing I want to do, but perhaps I never will be. I'll start somewhere. Perhaps somewhere safe; a business administration degree would be useful in finding a higher ranking position... And, of more personal interest to me, might give me the knowledge and skills to start my own small business or few. Perhaps even an indie game development team.

In the few days since then, I've attended the first session of a group counselling initiative rather cheesily titled Making Changes In Your Life, and have been dutifully trying to fill out the rubrics they gave me to track positive things I have been doing to control and steer my reactions and initiatives. I enjoyed some delivery fried chicken and had my roommates bring me a cake covered in candles to blow out, complete with the traditional Happy Birthday, even though it was one day later due to time constraints. None of us minded. The day after that, we went downtown together and my boyfriend bought me a birthday present; a card game I recognized and liked called Gloom. We picked up snacks in the Covent Garden Market and sat in the mezzanine and ate and played a round of my new game. I got the wonderful feeling that I got to have three days of birthday this year, perhaps to make up for the years in which I did not celebrate. Actually, I felt as though the time from my birthday to the second anniversary of the day I met my boyfriend (which is the date I track, since we found ourselves interested in one another right away) a couple weeks later had been made into a festival for my life, our lives together, a celebration of friendship and support, and feelings of family. I was very happy.

I also, by serendipitous chance, popped in to my workplace on the way downtown just in time to hear my boss congratulate and deeply thank all of our staff for the hard work we've been doing, and our excellent results on our most recent sale. Some of the unappreciated feelings and resentment I had been having began immediately to lift. I was glad I had waited on my impulse to complain.

I still think it would be a good idea to investigate university now. But happily now I'm feeling more carrots and fewer sticks about it.

This morning, I woke up and showered... and came here to write. I am taking the time to get around to some things that fell by the wayside during my month and a half of mixed miseries. And I am proud of myself for it. This is progress. This is... Well. Good steps. This is good steps.

Sinking, Stewing, Waiting, Procrastinating

Hi, blog.

I, uh... I'm feeling pretty down on myself right now.

I've decided to start looking for a place I could move into on my own and afford by myself for a while but that Robby could also join me in after a few months. But I haven't started looking yet. When I'm not at work, I'm lying in bed, watching YouTube videos and doing largely useless things. My floor needs vacuuming, but I haven't done it yet. My clothes need washing, but I haven't done it.

I've started talking to people about the route toward more interesting duties and positions within Goodwill. Maybe my ambitions are making me scared again, and the fear is making me shut down and stop everything. I certainly am afraid. Of the risk, I suppose. I would like to move up, learn new things, make more money... But I'm afraid, so I haven't done it yet. What I have done is kept working, and otherwise remained mostly passive. I'm probably burning myself out.

My body... feels... weaker, these days. I become sore more easily. I am less eager to walk places. My left wrist often hurts at work. I feel fat and I feel as though I waddle slightly when I walk. It's probably due to poor diet, I suppose. I think I am fairly active at work, where I am always on my feet and usually walking about.

Three times I've phoned the psychologist who originally prescribed me my psych pills, seeking a follow-up appointment. I have received no calls back. I am beginning to think I may have to depend instead on getting a "family doctor", who may be able to make appropriate judgments on my drugs that the clinic doctor is not allowed to.

I've saved up a fair bit of money over the past several months, perhaps one advantage of my passivity, though I'm sure I could save money as well or even better and be more active by choosing activities that aren't costly.

I feel... weak... and uninspired...

I'm in another little rut, I guess.

I will wait for a way out.

Eventually I will pick up a search for a place I can afford to live by myself, with a kitchen I don't have to share, where I can be naked in my living room if I wish, a cheap place I can make my own. Maybe even still conveniently close to work, although I am starting to think a longer walk to and from work could do me good.

Hold out hope for me, readers.

Frustrating Day

I spent the last several days with my love, recovering from a deep abyss of sleep deprivation and fatigue that I'd fallen into over the previous week or two. I started staying up all night over my Christmas holiday, and couldn't seem to break the habit. I've had troubles like this all my life, and unfortunately, the more important it is to get to sleep at a reasonable time, the less it happens, because the importance only creates urgency and anxiety, which does not induce restful slumber, but only adds to insomnia.

I started prioritizing sleep, and thought I'd managed to get it back into pattern. But now I'm back home... and although I've been in a muzzy, confused haze of blah all evening, now that night's come and I should be sleeping, I'm wide awake and my chest feels coiled tight like a spring, and alert as a hunted mouse. Through the haze, I suspected there might be something I'm avoiding facing, because I felt an urgency to keep myself occupied; moreso than usual, though I have rarely found it easy to really relax. Now, after a shower in which I briefly wandered off into relaxed fantasy, but only became tense again at the thought that tonight, it's actually important I get to sleep, because I work in the morning... I think I may understand why my body is registering this sense of panic or grief.

A couple of days ago, my boyfriend called me after work, while he was getting to the bus to get home, and told me that he was being retired along with all the other seasonal staff at EB Games. The higher ups were determined not to keep on any of the seasonal staff. On the upside, he had made a fantastic impression and was now at the top of the list of people that his branch would call on if they needed someone... But that still means that after his last couple of scheduled days, the last one being tomorrow, he's out of work until he finds another position - with EB Games or otherwise. Now, at this point, I think he's proven sufficiently that he can find work, and I don't need to worry to much about his ability to support himself in job searching and in the mean time... But it does mean that according to our plans, I won't be moving in with him for another five months at least, probably half a year, and I have been looking forward to it with aching intensity. It has been extremely annoying having to wait. The place I'm in is certainly not all that bad, but it doesn't have my boyfriend in it, and the place he's in is rather awful. We will be able to save a lot of money living together, too. Everything is inefficient now. Spending time together takes too much arranging. Ensuring that Robby is well fed, heck, even cooking for myself, is complicated by not having my own kitchen (I share mine with my landlord). The next few months may be tighter for finance, with my after-Christmas hours scheduled to be reduced, and Robby's earning opportunities completely unknown as yet.

Aside from all that, in parallel, I think I am deciding to be done with the Pup again... And having once taken him back after such a final decision, I think and hope that I will not be so foolish again.

All things considered, I suppose I do have fair reason to be stressed. That helps. Feeling that my pain is significant even from an outside perspective helps me to forgive myself for getting caught up in it, and forgiveness is the key to freedom...

I do not know what to say now.

Goodnight... Though I do not know when I will sleep, or how many more nights I will be restless.

Walking Away

AAAAAAAAAUUUGH!

please don't hate me

The suggestion of parting ways, why do I hate the idea so much? I wanted to go home, relax, play games. It feels as though you are being taken away and so my immediate impulse is to hold on to you... Even though I had not intended to "use" you right then anyway. I should probably talk to a counsellor about this clinginess. Letting you go should NOT be that agonizing.

God it was hard. And then I just started walking and I swear at least three distinct parts of my mind started freaking the fuck out. I mean seriously losing their shit. Hence the first two parts of this message, selected as about the most coherent thoughts in the storm of screams and so much fear my breastbone hurt. But I am pleased to report that another of the clearest voices was saying, "It's okay. He still loves you. He understands. It's going to be okay. He knows you still love him..."

I want you to understand this is the kind of broken I am. This is the kind of fear I'm surrendering to when I don't want to leave you. This is a passable description of my mind from the inside when shit gets a little crazy. And it's often what I'm avoiding saying or doing when I fall completely silent.

I think just walking, though rude if one doesn't understand I can't communicate, was right. The storm happened, but that means I faced my fear, and I felt liberated, denying it the control over me to keep me paralysed. It was me deciding firmly that you could go home and I wasn't going to whine about it or beg you to comfort me about it. And I could go home and relax and game and not need you beside me to enjoy it.

Fear

I've been reading Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl. It's probably not been the best idea for keeping a positive attitude. I haven't mentioned it here yet, but I had my three months' probation end meeting, and it was a rather difficult awakening for me. My punctuality and my attitude both needed work, but my managers seemed to think I could do it. I've been doing well, and I think I generally can, too.

Today... yesterday, I heard from our most recently applied to potential landlord that he probably won't have an answer for us regarding whether we have approval to stay there until mid week at the earliest. We have gotten two rejections so far. There will be little to no time after this week for even one more chance. Today... I woke up sluggish and took the bus rather than walking, for the first time in a while. Today... I spent the first two hours at work mostly cleaning and mopping...

And I feel... so tired. I can think of nothing except the dread of going back to the Center of Hope, the place from which I was taken to that little room with the port-hole window and the straps on the bed, because I was so upset and stressed I could not speak... Where even if I can get a private room, paying for my lodging, which is not, as far as I know, guaranteed, it seems likely I would still have to get my pills every day in the morning in the narrow time slot alloted for it or ask for an extra dose for the following days. Have to confirm and clear my schedule through someone else every day, in several ways...

I've been doing reasonably well before now at keeping a positive attitude. I've been getting lots of rest and eating fruit and enjoying the music here at work. Today, I feel haunted, and dread the thought that I will fail my extended probation as well, and lose the job I've worked hard to get, and keep.

I don't feel able to smile right now...

A Lump

I'm actually writing this one from work, and it will be short, as I have to start my shift soon. It's just a brief status update.

I've now been working several weeks, been with Robby the rabbit for going on three months, and been taking birth control pills for four days, and my new, stronger dose of synthroid pills for a few days more than that.

I've hit a wall. Not an especially high or unscalable wall, I think. Probably only chest high. But it's a bit of an obstacle.

I don't know whether it's my body adjusting to the pills, or my mind adjusting to the work, or my everything adjusting to a relationship, or my reactions to Robby reacting to my scars and anxieties. It might be related to general stress at work, as apparently the store isn't hitting its sales quotas, and I think the management are worried about that. I'm going to generally guess it's a bland mix of all of the above. But I've been feeling depressive for the past couple days. Not so much that it keeps me from writing, as you can see, or even from enjoying myself... My date slash hang out time with Robby in the past two days was great. I think. No, it was for the most part...

Right now, I feel slightly nauseous, have a mild headache, and am very groggy and tired despite having slept a full and uninterrupted eight hours before waking up naturally to no particular disturbance.

I should probably ask my doctor if this is to be expected given a dosage change and new birth control pills.

Keep strong, my loves. Be happy. Happier than me, if you can manage it.

Rumination

It is nearly 3 in the morning, in a week in which I've been in bed long before midnight every day. I have a meeting tomorrow... Not with OW, not a job interview... A meeting with my worker at Goodwill. I am, for some reason, terrified, and although I know in my mind that there is no reason whatsoever to expect he will be anything less than impressed and encouraging at how much I have accomplished, learned, and done over the past few months, what I actually expect in my heart is to be told that I am an utter failure at job searching and at life no matter how hard I try. I have been feeling a deep malaise for the past two days, drifting between a depressed despondency and the edge of panic. I'm quite aware of it, and it's driving me crazy. I know I'm being irrational, but the capacity I seemed to have a couple of weeks ago to simply stop seems to have evaporated somewhere. Could it have something to do with the two consecutive days last week that I missed taking my pill because I'd forgotten to get more of them? Am I just really this insecure about not doing everything the way my Goodwill workshops advised me to? Is this a hellish conspiracy between my menstrual cycle and my self-destructiveness to throw me into the most hormonal mess I'll be in all month at a very important time?

None of my progress has been undone... And yet it all seems empty. I can repeat in my mind that I've come a long way and done a great deal, I can list my accomplishments - among them the fact that I've gotten two shifts of paid freelance work from my job searching... and none of it is enough for my inner critic. Why? I was capable of being so self-assured last fortnight...

I think I know why. I spent a modest chunk of Thursday and Friday last week job searching online, and it was completely fruitless. I tried posting ads for service on Kijiji, and got three responses: one asking if I was interested in a pure commission job from home, which I am not, and the other two, one duplicated across two ads, from characters who read as sexual predators seeking prey significantly less wary and streetwise than I. This abject failure and reminder of the dark side of humanity has been a harrowing and exhausting experience and has drained heavily on my hope. That's probably got a great deal to do with it. I feel I've been doing everything wrong because as of this writing, my last attempt was a horrid failure and it leaves me feeling incompetent and doomed.

Hopefully, then, moving past this to some other try, probably using a slightly different medium, will refresh and reinvigorate me. I am glad I was able to identify the seed of my malaise. Now, powers willing, may I move past it, and present myself and my accomplishments with the pride I deserve in my meeting?

Old Battles

Whoa. I just got through writing an email to my mom. It probably went on for about three pages of ancient hostility and ranting that I have badly needed to say directly to her for... far, far too long. I rather doubt it's the road to peace, but it may be a fog that needs to be cleared before I can travel that road. Despite the weight I've thrown her, I have high hopes, and it is a relief to finally voice some of my resentment after so long. Who knows? It may not be too late.

I'll try to brace myself for an equally hostile response and be forgiving toward it, even if it's shrouded in words of sweetness and steeped in the role of the victim. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Dare the conflict. Ride it out.

Maybe this is the start of something vital and important. We'll see.

Status Update

Yeah, there's been some stuff to talk about, but I just haven't been wanting to sit down and write to you guys. Almost a month ago, I broke up with Pup on Valentine's Day. I didn't even realize the timing. We talked a lot, I decided on the terms of One Last Chance, and consented to stay. But he still annoys me almost every day. Over the past two weeks, he's been breaking down after listening in on a conversation between me and a friend of his apparently taught him that despite his pretenses to morality, to logic, to rationality, he doesn't know a goddamn thing. Now for the last two days, something seems to have broken, and his answer to everything is saying "I don't know"; blaming everything on his Aspergers, on overexposure to mercury, on the stimuli he's responding to... including me... and lashing out.

For about a week, I've picked up Fitocracy again; I've been planking, but not really anything else. It's too early to say whether I'll stay with it. I do manage to do it for a while even when I'm really not very into it, though... I just tend to collapse after a minute if my spirit isn't in it or I'm otherwise worn out.

I returned to Writing.com and wrote a few contest entries, the first of which won an on-site prize. The contests I'm entering have a 300 or 100 max word count, and make great practice for cutting stories down to the vital core, making them succinct. I did fall into a jealous habit of comparing my work to the other entries, though, when I didn't win. Or worse, calling into question the taste and legitimacy of the judges. I might post my work here, some of it. I might not.

I've also been doing a little bit of sketching and artwork. For a while, while things were going well with Pup, I sketched him in anime style, something I've never really managed to work in before, and it seemed to go really well. I think of, or say, something funny, and I do a quick sketch of it, sometimes.

This week, I finally got my First Aid/CPR certification, Level C. I felt noble learning the material, and it was a bit of work, mostly because Pup kept me up very late so I was doing the 8-hour courses on four and three hour nights of sleep. The course itself was fun and seems very useful. If I'm ever in an emergency situation, I think I will feel much more confident dealing with it now. There was some confusion with my certificate card, though. The course instructor accidentally filled out the expiry date and the issue date as the same, so that I would be certified for 24 hours, rather than three years. I brought up the mistake to Goodwill, and my card was redone properly. I was told the other staff members laughed at her for the mistake, though that bit didn't make me feel any better.

Yesterday I had a mild, prolonged anxiety attack, apparently prompted by a bunch of people trying to help me with my questions at Goodwill, and someone answering other questions a bit shortly, since he had a lot of different things to do. The attack lasted over two hours and I felt hostile and feeble throughout it. Then came home to Pup and fought for a long time about him failing to aplogize to me or take my feelings into account even when I make them clear, and me being irrational and unstable to a point that he feels he has to be afraid of my leaving him any time he does anything at all.

Today, from the time I woke up, despite doing my planking and having a shower, and despite close to twelve hours of sleep, it felt like the world was slowed down. When I listened to my music, it all sounded slightly but uncannily flat, and I didn't care about it, even though it was music that was usually very powerful to me. I went to Goodwill to retrieve a flash drive I'd forgotten there, and came home immediately. It was obvious to me that I needed to just rest, today, and recover from my stresses... my body and despondent mind were telling me something was wrong and I needed to tend to that before anything else.

It seems much of this, my own participation in all sorts of other activities, including some active job search work, practicing various forms of my artistry... was largely prompted by Pup's computer being fixed, meaning he now has something to spend time with without me having to be there to engage him constantly. The fact that it's now, after this, that his responses to me have seemed to step up again in aggression and disrespect has some very disappointing implications that now that he doesn't need me as much, there's a lot more dissatisfaction and hostility he may have been holding back, that's now out. Perhaps having what he wanted has actually made his mental and emotional condition worse, because he can junkie out on video games and avoid real world responsibilities as much as he wants. I don't really know. Whatever's going on, I don't think this will last long.

P.S: I... just discovered something weird on my Writing.com account. Apparently someone spent $20 on me to get me three months of upgraded account. It was an anonymous gift, with the message: "Keep reviewing!". I... feel kind of stunned. It's weird that some random person on the internet would spent money on me to get me to keep doing reviews of writing... I wonder, is this how Grimith feels?