relapse
i relapsed today.
i shall rewrite here the important words of visakan.
idk if i was gravely ‘mentally’ ill, but i was down ominously bad (false hope, impossible desires, intense grievance) – i feel like this has parallels with being a heavy cigarette smoker then going off of them. my favourite way of describing that is “quitting punctuation”
i used to use cigarettes to punctuate my life. started the day with them. kept time with them. regulated my moods with them. finished meals with them. socialized with them. cigarettes kept my life in order. they provided structure. rhythm. i looked forward to the next one.
when i went off of them the punctuation marks fell out of my life and all of a sudden i was falling spinning circling everything is chaotic and makes no sense where am i going who am i even what is happening oh god it’s all too much and its everything at once help help help
it took time for me to figure out new ways of arranging my life
without the punctuation marks i had grown accustomed to leaning on
turns out for example that you can use linebreaks as a form of punctuation
i had never considered that when all i knew was fullstops
similarly, the basic flavor of sanity seems disappointing, mundane, boring, when you’re used to excitement in the form of intense mental activity
it’s like going from walls of heavy distorted guitars and crashing cymbals to a single solo piano. at first it seems thin, weak, flat
but its just a different instrument, a different aesthetic, something you have to learn anew. there’s infinite nuance within that seemingly boring simplicity. it just takes time and patience to allow yourself to learn to appreciate it. you have to relearn everything
appreciation is a skill that can be cultivated
you can learn to appreciate the elegance and simplicity of having less anguished mental activity
this might sound weird to anyone who’s never used that anguish as a comfort blanket
you can learn to relax in the emptiness
