The Light
2026-07-19
Tell the demons to go fuck themselves by living anyway.
Every day is a small, but beautiful act of resistance. Divine Liturgy was great by the way, thanks for asking. I'm writing here this evening under some fatigue, but what's new? I told myself I wasn't going to come here and write today, but I just came up with that sick line and now I have to explain myself, so sorry about that. Here in Texas, we're looking at an intense heatwave coming in these next two weeks, with temperatures exceeding 110 degrees Fahrenheit (around 43 degrees Celsius). I might have to buy some nicotine pouches because I don't want to be outside at all for the rest of the summer. Late October can't come soon enough, man. Last year, one big reason why I quit smoking was because I was tired of being out in the heat to smoke, and I might just have to do that again. For how much I love smoking, the heat and all the sweat-stained clothes don't make up for it.
Despite my fatigue and whatnot, my energy levels have been improving; most mornings I wake up before my alarm, and usually I can get out of bed without immediately feeling like falling back asleep, which hasn't been the case for years. I've been losing more weight, and I think I'm finally starting to see the benefits. My sleep still stinks, but clearly it's been a lot better than it was. I just have to keep going until I reverse my diabetes and sleep apnea, and hopefully some real work can begin. In this fatigued state, I was able to build this website and write very consistently, so an increase in energy—while it seems nice—is something that scares me more than anything else; the more I do, the more I fuck up, mathematically speaking. I'm afraid of my own motion because of how volatile I can be, and this website has acted as a fair level of "containment," so to speak. Much of my life has been out of my control; I can't control when I get depressed or manic, nor can I control whether or not I get a job or basically anything else outside of my bedroom, but I can control coming here basically every day, writing something, and putting it out.
It's an ascetic position I've put myself in, and my site can be described as a sort of digital monastery for some. While I value this work—even if it's mostly for myself—I still have to contend with what's out there, and it scares the shit out of me, quite frankly. I want the Lord to give me an easy yoke already, but I doubt that's going to happen. I've seen too much; too much has happened for me not to have an easy yoke. A story I haven't told y'all yet: I've struggled with hallucinations in my past, and on top of that, I struggled with an addiction to nitrous oxide. They sell food-grade nitrous at smoke shops in these large containers with plastic screw nozzles; there was a popular brand known as Galaxy Gas, but I've been doing this shit since long before those guys hit the scene, just so you know. A 3.3L tank can last me somewhere about 4–5 hours, and at the worst of my addiction, I used to consume about three a day.
When you do that drug in those absurdly high quantities, you see some shit. I'm already predisposed to hallucinations as it is, and the fact that I engaged in substances to make it worse tells you all you need to know about me. Some people play video games, others go clubbing; I do whippets alone in my car and cry while getting assaulted by demons. A few years ago, when I was recovering from my addiction, I relapsed one day. At that time, I was attending 12-step programs, and the three steps in those programs are as follows:
1: We admitted we were powerless over [drugs] — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
I was unsure of how to encapsulate that higher power for myself back then, and at the time I didn't consider myself a Christian. However, in the throes of this relapse, I asked that higher power to reveal itself to me. Next thing I know, I saw from the back of my head a black silhouette of a man with a bright nimbus surrounding his head. A wave of peace, tranquility, and love washed over me.
I don't have to tell you the rest.
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