30.04.2019
Yesterday was… intense. To be honest, it was incredibly crappy. Mood swings have always been part of my life, but for a long time they weren’t as intense as yesterday. I suddenly started crying in the shower and when later not even the physical exhaustion of my workout provided the relief I had hoped for, I took the knife for the first time in ages to numb the emotional with physical pain. At least that brought some relief. Certainly not an ideal method, but it is much easier to live with physical pain. And that’s what I’m still doing. Living. I am still not suicidal, some days are harder than others. I have been thinking for some time about starting a therapy again. So far my own pride seems to keep me from doing so. After all I was able to do the last few years without it, I got through reasonably well. And I have written a whole chapter about how to deal better with such episodes. However, I have always stressed how important it can be to lay the necessary foundation through professional help so that the mechanisms I have described can work. How can I expect others to follow my advice if I don’t even do it myself? Do I owe it not only to myself, but also to my readers, to stand by my own words and to act accordingly? Would that not also be a form of hope that I can pass on? If I succeed in overcoming my pride and seeking the help for which I myself have been so aggressively advertising for years? Perhaps it is time for me to actually reflect on what I have written myself. So I will get a prescription from my general practitioner and go looking for a therapist. Surely it will take a while until I find what I am looking for and the first interview takes place, but that would at least be a good start. Just start. The eternal mantra. As hackneyed as it sounds, there is so much truth in these two words. Basically, it is a very simple cost-benefit calculation: The probability that I will feel better as a result of a new therapy is quite high, whereas doing nothing will probably contribute to a worsening of my condition. Another advantage of my smarter self in comparison to then: I am more honest. I didn’t tell my therapists some things out of shame and vanity or simply lied. Meanwhile I have become aware that it does not make sense to leave these things in the dark, which is why I can deal with them more openly. I am thinking about whether I should spend time with people today. I’ve wanted to go debating again for months. Maybe today would be the right moment. Social isolation is not necessarily the Grail’s Path to get out of an emotional low-point. Whereby, right now I at least don’t feel as crappy as I did yesterday. Right now I’m back in my everyday state of indifference. Not too much better, but at least I don’t have the immense need to reach for the karambite on my desk and inflict pain on myself. After all, this is a start. Perhaps the next step would actually be to be among people. I don’t know how much my debating skills have suffered without the training of the past months, but starting again can’t be too bad. When I think back to how much fun I had at tournaments and what fantastic people I met there, I realize again how much I miss this whole scene. I think it’s time for me to leave my hole and climb up the wall. The best antidote to despair is action. I forgot who wrote this quote, but there lies an undeniable truth in it. If I do the same things every day, follow the same routine, it’s hardly surprising that I regularly feel like shit, because I do (or don’t do) those things that contribute to that feeling. If I want change in my life, in my perception, I have to change my actions. Only then can I succeed in breaking out of this self-destructive everyday routine and setting new impulses. If I always only expose myself to my thoughts, then I will not gain new insights. Contact with other people, on the other hand, can be extremely enriching.
Egotheist 