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Towards the light

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i like people who just let me be quiet.

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Sleepy. Mind racing. Want to rest, but then body feels antsy. Frustrating, but tolerable.

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make love to madness,

but marry merit

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The most terrifying part of having memory issues is when you can feel something from 5 seconds ago be thrown out the window and there's an empty hole where it once was. You remember that you forgot something.

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disordered heart and disordered mind

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Decathect To withdraw one’s feelings of attachment, as in anticipation of a future loss.

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Anandhika

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It's interesting, writing about the void and emptiness from such a negative perspective, while also studying Buddhism, which talks about emptiness being one of the doors of liberation.

It makes me wonder if I can repurpose this quality of mine. It feels foreign, welcoming in this quality of lightness. For so long, I have been an embodiment of heavy fog, to blind myself from the stark agony within. It feels strange, placing trust in aspects of myself that I deemed unwise and sometimes even dangerous.

It is unfamiliar territory for me. I will explore it at my own pace.

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I wanted nothing to do with that world. I didn't understand it and I didn't want to. That didn't stop it from existing, however. Ignorance would not have kept me safe. I had to learn to recognize the signs or else fall prey. I had to be aware.

I didn't want anything to do with the yawning maw of terror it opened up within me. Not looking into the void would not have stopped it from being able to reach me, though. I became emptiness incarnate as a protective measure. This merely kept the wound in stasis. The pain remained, for the world kept turning and each time it brushed against me, I screamed in silence. I tried to keep it all contained within the void I was becoming. This only fed the maw. It continued to hunger. I came to realize it would always hunger, as is the nature of placing a thing in stasis.

Years passed. Many methods were employed, all ultimately following the same governing principle of contain and displace. It took many failures to recognize that stasis could not be a long term strategy.

But what would the alternative look like? Approach the void and risk annihilation? Did I dare?

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rest assured that everything will be ambiguous for all of time

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Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha [originally published 1922]

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I remind myself that in a true emergency, I have no time to think - I can only act. If I have time to ruminate, it's not an immediate threat.

If it's not an immediate threat, then my anxiety is compromising my ability to make rational plans. I have to dial back the response in order to properly decide what I can do about it.

So, step one is usually calming down.

Once I am not in anxiety overdrive, it's easier to recognize not only what is making my anxious (and why), but what is possible for me to do to mitigate the worst outcomes.

An example: if you're worried about bandits attacking your village, staying up all night in case they show up out of anxiety is less effective than other plans. Physiologically speaking, you'll be so drained that if they do show up, you are not as well-equipped to deal with them.

Securing valuables, making traps, strategizing with other people who also are concerned about the oncoming threat, starting a community watch, taking intentional breaks from the problem to regroup.... any or all of these are more effective ways to handle an incoming bandit attack... but it is difficult to get to these strategies if anxiety is keeping you rooted in place.

Tldr; calm down enough to evaluate options, then follow through with what is possible for you.

"I hate reality just as much as the next guy, but it's still the only place to get a decent meal"

- Groucho Marx

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𝙹𝚞𝚕𝚢 𝟷, 𝟷𝟿𝟷𝟹 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙳𝚒𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚜 𝙾𝚏 𝙵𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚣 𝙺𝚊𝚏𝚔𝚊, 𝟷𝟿𝟷𝟶-𝟷𝟿𝟷𝟹

[ID: July 1. The wish for an unthinking, reckless solitude. To be face to face only with myself. END ID]