mostly david ephgrave

While it's fair to say life's currently challenging, I'm carefully trying to navigate the difficulty - despite the pain involved - to look to the future and a time of change. Before I continue, I should make it clear it took me a long time to arrive at that sentence. It was by no means my starting point, having gone through three of four bleak drafts that painted my situation with brutal honesty. But while I'm allowed to speak my mind, I'm bored with giving negativity power when I want to be done with it.  One thing's for certain: right now my anxiety levels are through the roof. I'm permanently in fight or flight mode, psychologically waiting for the next attack. It's probably counter-productive, but I've been drinking more than usual, something I'm not supposed to do on my medication, though I try to be careful. This probably doesn't help my mood, but it waters down my edginess a little and switches my brain off. While it's...

I don't have the mental energy to write at the moment as recording my current situation is overwhelmingly repetitive and negative, and attempting anything comedic feels forced. It's been like this all year to an extent, although it worsened recently. I've been treading water, which I hate. Work has been stripped back to the bare bones and is mostly too much to contemplate. Meanwhile, negative events in my life are being reframed and debased, while my acts of support and forgiveness are forgotten. And I'm trying to navigate a situation I think anyone would struggle with, let alone when they're prone to mental illness. Perhaps the most commonly recurring lesson from therapy is you can't change the way other people act so much as how you respond to their actions, which I think is true. But, my God, that theory's being tested at the moment. Patience is the key, but it's devastating when the penny drops that you'll never be able to reason with th...