Day 59

4AM:

I live a life based on stress: stress of being hungry (only eating when I am so hungry that I relieve the stress) versus preventing the stress in the first place; the stress of being alone instead of finding where I belong to prevent this feeling in the first place; sitting down to relieve the stress (which doesn’t really work because the blackness’ voice is screaming at this point, as opposed to sitting down when it’s quiet or a murmur, to prevent it in the first place).  I think I live this life because the electricity of the stress is controllable and sometimes the only thing I feel that’s manageable.  That sounds too poetic, this electricity I feel like I’m in the driver’s seat for (which is a fiction I have believed for far too long).

A big step in this recovery will be changing my mindset to stop the electricity from every happening, to stop it from flowing through my veins and feeding the blackness with hatred and bile.  I live so close to the edge, the precipice that causes this black stress/anxiety, that no wonder I have thought of jumping.  But I don’t feel like I am able to change my mindset, even after so many attempts at increasing this or being better at that.

Instead, let’s dream: what if I was able to change and be the person that prevents the stress in the first place.  Not to completely prevent stress (work stress, family stress, fuckers driving like maniacs in the fog without their lights on), but to make it so that the anxiety that I feel waiting for something to be cooked for me or when I am chopping vegetables (because I have taken too long to eat so that I can’t focus on being appreciative or of the joys associated with these things) doesn’t exist.  It doesn’t have to happen.  Being so distracted by blunt emotions – hunger, stress, anger – has distracted me from appreciating the beauty of food, the beauty of relationships, the beauty of my wife, the beauty of what others do for me, the beauty of healthy eating, the beauty of our pets and their intricacies, the beauty of the world (look up!).  Does looking up make for a better life?  I think so.  But in order to look up, I need to stop having hell distract me and keep me looking down.

And that means feeding myself regularly so that I’m not always on the fucking edge

And that means resting so that I’m not always on the fucking edge

The edge doesn’t help me do anything (burn calories, concentrate, believe in unicorns and magic and Winnie the Pooh, appreciate the people that are around me, build the relationships that I need to keep me alive and keep love vibrant in my life)

The edge is a comfort – I feel that I can lose calories when I’m on the edge and that I control the feeling of being on the edge and that I have my own life in my hands, but none of this is true.  Staying at the edge is not good – so I need to stop doing it.  I need to stop walking so close to the edge that I don’t foster the love I am walking away from each time I do it.

I am strong enough to step away from the edge and it won’t make me lose my edge.  If anything, it will prepare me to be resilient when I need it (a battered wife isn’t resilient at the end of it, she just murders her husband).