Day: 25-27

day twenty-five:

I am fighting a two-front war--on one front, my individual circumstances; on the other, chemistry--resources were stretched today--still vulnerable--still fragile

bad day--individual circumstances overwhelmed progress--emotional reactivity slowly returning--drugged feeling virtually gone



day twenty-six:

libido unaffected--ejaculation still more difficult, albeit possible, than premed--the mechanics of ejaculation are different--lacking premed force--I would still characterize the event as more ejaculation than orgasm but there seems to be positive movement in the premed direction--desire to buy books returning--low levels of anxiety, which I consider healthy, returning--sensation on crown of the head is unchanged--appetite remains suppressed--I ate only one meal yesterday, about 3pm, with no desire to eat before or after--and today, as it approaches 3pm, not having eaten in twenty-four hours, there is still no appetite--emotional reactivity, although greater now than a couple weeks ago, remains low--thought remains more logical than emotive--vocal music is judged or seen on a sliding scale of authenticity--ability to be manipulated by emotion, in song or otherwise, remains very low--in reading the fourth part of Bolano's 2666, the part about the crimes, perhaps some of the darkest reading this side of the holocaust, I've been watching closely how I process/react--have reached no conclusion other than my sense of disgust toward crimes of this nature remains unchanged and although the feelings of disgust are not as emotional as they might have been before, there is a depth to the logical response of injustice that seems stronger, clearer--as if I am able to comprehend better without the filter of emotion clouding conclusion--a sense of outrage based on fact rather than visceral reaction--the more I read Bolano, the more impressed I am

creative thought still lacking--the mind does not branch or mind map as if did before--one idea or thought does not immediately lead to two or three possibilities--thought occurs and then sits--it doesn't branch--several thoughts can occur but they are not linked--there is no concatenation--thought becomes discrete and to generate an imaginative thought, similar to ejaculation, requires a great deal of effort, focus and concentration--and what occurs seems more manufactured than natural--there is almost no sense of being drugged--dosage has not changed--the ability of the mind, of thought, of imagination to flow, to weave a narrative, seems to be absent and the feeling is of wires that have been disconnected--as if emotion was a major creative key and without that key, little happens--but it is more than just the absence of emotion--something far greater is occurring on a cognitive level--and I wonder if the absence of sadness is somehow related to the inability to construct and hold a narrative train of thought, the inability to mental mushroom so to speak, to take a single thought and build and therefore, negative thoughts are like orphans--they still occur but there is no, or little, ability to build a narrative around them and without the narrative, affect is vastly minimized--just a theory

for the second day in a row ghosts from my past have reappeared--I refer to ghosts as past negative events or situations that in my premed period were growing in force and strength--until yesterday, the sense of being drugged and the sense of progress had held both at bay and had given hope of a new beginning, a new start, a chance to experience life from this point forward--I fear this is not the case and I fear a slow return, in spite of the meds--to that all consuming darkness--I knew there would be days like yesterday and today--that there would be bumps in the road--but I am reminded today, despair has the gravitational pull of a black hole--one knows light by theory, by memory, but it seems unattainable, beyond reach, for other people but not yourself--I want to be healthy--I have no greater ambition--to experience simple joy and basic happiness with a modicum of peace and tranquility--and perhaps to do meaningful and significant work--to do no harm or as little as possible--today, there was an inkling of premed paranoia--this was the first time this particular energy has reemerged through the meds



day twenty-seven:

although the last two days were trial and tribulation, thoughts of suicide, which were present every day and every night for a period of eight months, maybe longer, premed, these thoughts are/were absent--or I should say, if they occur, the energy is very, very low and the mind feels no need or desire to invest--I've been told that we never get rid of a habit, we only replace it with another--whether this is true is beside the point--thought, as I experience it, is similar--which is to say, the mind, of its own accord, is always thinking--it doesn't just sit idle--this is not to be confused with creative mind mapping thought--in this case, the mind finds an object and almost relentlessly obsesses upon that object in the most detailed and subtle way, as if looking at the same thing from many different angles--what I find interesting, and this is where I think of habit, whereas before the only fixation, morning and night, was suicide--that fixation has been replaced with sexual fantasy--and I wonder, again, if the mind is simply not seeking a place, an extreme, that once there, is like a panic room--a place, that once there, is so encompassing as to thwart all the fears I am afraid to confront--as if the mind seeks an extreme--suicide or sex--antipodes--both, albeit from different directions, based on the same subconscious need--a drive unspoken--a need for protection--a need to focus so intently on one thing and one thing only as to eliminate the possibility of any other thought--as if the mind can, by its own processes, suck the oxygen from the brain--some form of instinct toward self-preservation that lies just below the level of conscious thought

appetite remains strangely suppressed--I have all but given up eating breakfast--there is simply no hunger till early afternoon--this is the one side-effect that seems to be increasing--yesterday, again, I ate only one meal, around 3pm, although I did snack lightly around 9pm--this eating behavior is in direct opposition to premed eating, when I seemed to snack all day long in addition to eating three meals

sensation on crown of head remains--drowsiness all but absent as too the sense of being drugged--on issues of conflict, there is no need or desire to find or fix blame, only the logical desire to move forward, to fix whatever is broken--there seems to be no emotional energy when wronged, no need for retribution or to defend oneself in the way that assigns blame to someone else, even when someone else is wrong--assigning blame is processed as a waste of time--periods of melancholy still emerge from time to time and for the life of me I cannot root out their origin--the melancholy is not as intense as premed nor as lasting, but there is no mistaking that dark energy--and there is the sense that the darkness is adapting to the meds and growing stronger--resistant to the antibiotic so to speak--if so, this is an ominous development--perhaps most perplexing is this continuing blankness of mind, the utter absence of creative spark, effort notwithstanding--I wonder to what extent there is a relation between the meds ability to ward off depressive thought and the meds ability to dampen creative thought, imaginative thought--what was originally experienced as emotional dullery feels as if it is or has shifted to a more subtle imaginative blunting, which, for the record, as been there from the first day, but with the reemergence of some emotion, seems more stark in being left behind, of there appearing to be little progress on the cognitive/creative/imaginative front

in the first few weeks the feeling of being drugged was such to dull all thought and all emotion--as the effects of the meds/side-effects lessen, so too the ability of the meds alone to hold melancholy at arms length--taking ownership of one's own thought processes and becoming more skillful, more aware in the moment is going to be a critical part of the healing process--the meds alone will not do it