November 12th

My relation to and understanding of this world is unstable and incomplete.

There is not much of a continunous "I" throughout every month. Some weeks I am crushed by the abandonment by God; other weeks I feel touched by grace with fire in my stomach. My perception of the world, and thus my understanding of it, is heavily colored by the lens of that particular moment. If there is no stable self, then there is no stable way for me to relate to the things in this world. If "I think, therefore I am", then I am fucked.

Yet here I am, a few days into medical leave. I think my mood stabilizer is in effect, and, for the first time in what feels like years, I feel like a 'light and winged and holy thing', able to handle the world in front of me without suffocating under infinite weight. This is, without a doubt, a bizarre feeling.

Do people feel like this all the time? Are they really aware of the outline of their skull, that hovering knowledge that they have a body? Not a ghost who perceives through someone's eyes? Where simple things like cleaning are really just simple and not insurmountable?

For the first time in years, I have had two days where I feel 'good', something above and beyond feeling nothing.

Because of that, I suddenly have the desire to fix the things in my life. To go out there and look for a new apartment, which I need to do. To handle simple legal obligations, to clean my house. If I felt like this forever, I could have a normal life.

Here lies the problem with this sudden and new feeling of normalcy: I am uncertain to what extent this lens is affecting my current view of the world. Staying in tech doesn't sound awful now, but will that really hold up to be true in the future? Will the actions I take now inspire a feeling of dread and regret later? Because of this personal fragmentation, there is no stable understanding of this world, and therefore there is no complete picture of this world.

But I will be punished if I choose wrong.

I would rather stay in perpetual despair than to feel normal right now. Maybe then I would have some coherence.