Perspective is everything. I got my right eye re-Lasiked back in July, but then the milky clouds of depression started setting in, blocking the view. Hindsight is 20/20 and so is my vision now. For the first time in months, this morning I woke up and felt like myself. Not wholly whole, but contained within my own walls at least. The day didn't feel like a day away from the loss, but a day away from the fall. Dreadfully, on the other hand, it also feels like another day towards what could be another spill, leaving my brain all over the floor.

Jesus what a weird summer. All my senses were firing off at full throttle. First, it was positive and I felt so alive. Sure, that was fun. But was the end worth it? Topic for another day. 

I'm terrified of my own mind now. I'm checking all the boxes to get back to myself. Exercise. Meds. Therapy, so much therapy it's burning through my finances. Seeing friends. Being productive, keeping busy. Trying out new hobbies. Focusing on quality sleep that never comes. It's getting better but there is this gnawing that keeps me up, wondering when it will come back. Why fight so hard to be the person you want to be when you can lose it all at the drop of a hat? I'm trying but it's incredibly more difficult to gain back your sense of self when you feel like a ticking time bomb.

The mental effort it took to pick myself off my bloodstained floors and go from self-harming, suicidal, and in an actual mental health facility to, in a week, attending classes and reading hundreds of pages a day trying to digest corporation law terms and Supreme Court decisions, it was no easy feat. In a way, I'm proud of myself for once again getting through it. But mostly, I am scared that it's just a matter of time before it all fall apart again. I fall apart again. Am I resilient in the face of a crushing disease or am I a wobbly Jenga tower just waiting for the next turn to collapse? Before I used to pride myself on how I picked myself up, but now I feel like a fall risk, a disaster waiting to happen and there's no way to escape or avoid it since it's my own mind that holds the gun to my own head.

This time was the worst time. I have never felt so low in my life. How can I trust a mind that broke so cleanly, that broke from reality, that betrayed me in the most fundamental way that what I was perceiving couldn't even be relied upon? My emotions, particularly the sadness, those have always been problem children. But my memory, my capacity for logic, my sense of what is real. Those never left me. I could always know what was happening and even if I couldn't control the reactions I had, I was at least sure things were real. This time, I fell apart so completely that all my systems exploded. My nervous system. My support system. My self-care. It was all gone. And the worst part is I can't even remember half of how I lost it all. Even when I can remember things, they're tinted with doubt. Did this really happen? Was this real? What the fuck?

I've stopped counting the days as the distance between when I lost the relationship to now I see it as space from when I lost my joy. But looking forward instead of backwards, I've started counting them to see how long I can hold it together, to try and notice if there's any pattern to this, some succession of years where I can predict it coming back. I can't go through this again.