Compasses
2025-12-24
Today is Christmas Eve, but to me it just feels like another day. There's no major event happening at my house for the holiday, which I find to be a good thing. I find that there's a good spirit behind Christmas, but nowadays the holiday just celebrates American decadence and consumerism. It's something that makes me sad and adds to the pile of things that I feel disillusioned with. Despite these sad feelings, I know that there are still things to be thankful for. I'd prefer to focus on gratitude over disillusionment today.
I've reached another stage in life where there's nothing on the docket. I was having a hard time sleeping last night, and realized that I still had a few as-needed antipsychotic pills that I take when I need help falling asleep. I took one of them and I slept past my alarm and woke up at noon today. When I finally woke up and checked the time, I was upset about skipping my entire morning, but also came to the realization that it didn't matter anyway. Like most days, there are no obligations I have to wake up for, no Big Thing keeping me tethered to a specific wake-sleep cycle. However, an inconsistent sleep schedule inevitably leads to more disorientation.
There's no reason to beat myself up about stuff like that anymore. It just happens and I deal with it, and that's it. Despite a calm that I've felt recently, there is still a great sense of fear that I feel. I know that at any time, this can all be taken away. I fear for trouble ahead because I know that it's coming. Scripture states that God doesn't give us more than we can handle. These days, however, even a simple minor inconvenience makes me repeat the phrase "I can't do it" to myself over and over again. The overwhelm consumes me, I'm afraid.
It makes me want to wish that I could become a stronger person. I wish that I could take the harshness of life and conquer it through my own will, but I have spent so long feeling oppressed by my own mind. I don't think there's anything I can do other than just wait it through or run away or submit to it altogether and constantly force my conscious mind to take a back seat. It's a tough thing to not know how my mood might shift during the day, to lose my bearings. Regular stressors that happen to everyone can be the difference between a period of remission or relapse into another episode. Toeing that line every single day is exhausting.
It's easy to blame myself when I feel another episode coming on. Even though the triggers can mostly be unavoidable circumstances, I still feel a distorted sense of comfort in blaming myself. It's a warped way of trying to feel in control. That self-blame becomes a false map. Not every bad thing that happens to me is a personal failure. A lot of the time, bad things happen, but they aren't prescriptions. Nature, more often than not, is simply indifferent.
Good things happen too and it feels right to make those prescriptive, but whether or not a good thing happens or a bad thing happens, they both share the same conclusion: the feelings towards them fade away. The person I was in the past is gone. He exists only as a memory. The person I'll become doesn't have any say in the present, so it's best to not put him where he doesn't belong. I know that I am a fluid and dynamic being. There is always a chance to change, to become something different.
My emotions are a compass, not a prescription.