I recently celebrated my 28th birthday. Things are going a lot better for me

than they used to, even though I'm not managing my life as well as I'd like.

I'm not looking after my body (I'm partying too much) and am really bad with

money. There are some important relationships in my life where I could be

communicating a lot better. My 27th year was very stressful at times, but I can

also feel a much richer spectrum of emotion than at any other time in my life,

so that seems like a fair trade-off. Mostly I recall having a lot of fun over

the summer. I went out frequently and made lots of friends. I don't remember

(or at any rate, I don't fixate on) the hard parts. I'm glad to be here and

want to do a better job of being here in future.

Today I have a mild cold. I had an extremely eventful three or four days and

overdid things more than once. My heartrate has been elevated. I'm exhausted,

so I'm not surprised that I've caught cold. I do like having a lot to process

and a lot to think about, so long as it isn't the sort of thing that wounds you

if you let it in too deeply.

I had appalling nightmares for all of last Sunday night and spent some time on

Monday morning weeping and praying, because I thought I was losing my mind.

(One of the nightmares was so viscerally disorienting I thought I had had a

psychotic break.) That sounds very dramatic and maybe quite painful, which is

true! But that's what happened. (And even still I'm quite happy.)

For eight months or so I couldn't read recreationally because of a lingering

visual injury from a concussion. The visual therapist I saw diagnosed it as

something more complicated than convergence insufficiency: an inability to relax

the focus of my eyes, which actually converge just fine. It wasn't until I got

a pair of reading glasses a month or two ago that I was able to read again. So

far I've only managed to finish Simone Weil's "Gravity and Grace", which I had

initially started reading as long ago as February. Regaining the ability to

read has brought me back into contact with an important part of myself and

seems to have reinvigorated my mind. Even though I'm wearing myself out all the

time, I seem to be thinking more clearly than I have for many months --- or at

the very least I'm quicker and more precise in conversation than I used to be.

I feel as though I have so much love to give and am only slowly and in a clumsy

way figuring out where I'm allowed to express and provide this love in the

lives of others. I want to be held close and treated kindly. Those close to me

seem to be treating me in this way more and more. I don't hate myself as much

as I used to and I think others sense this (sometimes consciously, sometimes

not) and find this more comfortable and enticing than the way I felt before.

I've been on estrogen for over a year now. My HRT regimen hasn't necessarily

been consistently effective in that time, but at least I'm sticking with it and

trying harder to look after myself. Sometimes I recognize myself in the mirror

but not often.

I've been doing voice training lessons for around two months now and even

though I've made progress, I'm still insecure about my new voice and don't use

it except at home and in occasional voice memos to a close friend. But with

discipline I think I can achieve something really special, maybe even something

beautiful.

Because of my concussion, I learned to play guitar. It was one of the few

activities available to me that didn't exacerbate my visual issues when they

were worst. Now I write my own songs quite often. They're very crude but I

enjoy making them and hope that songwriting can become a deeper and more

expressive part of my life.

It's entirely possible to be acutely depressed and still quite happy at times,

even most of the time, and my life lately is clear evidence of that fact.

I'm in love with someone I know who is possibly (though not necessarily in the

same sense) also in love with me. We try to talk, though I don't think it goes

very well. I love them and want to keep trying for their sake and mine, so I'm

not giving up on them, and I hope they don't give up on me. We're cut from the

same cloth and I would be much lonelier without them.

I feel so drawn to reclusivity lately...I want to replace my blinds with

curtains, make my apartment hunched and cozy...and maybe learn to code again.

To soothe myself, I often fantasize about napping on a bale of cottongrass on a

beach near my hometown...it's overcast, there's light mist and sea breeze, I

can hear the rolling waves and the wind in the grass, and I see myself from

above, I'm a natural part of this peaceful scene, and I feel so at rest...

I'm paying attention to the lives of people I know and learning that there are

lots of ways to be close with other people. I know I can have a much richer

range of intimate relationships, I can feel closer to people, feel important to

them...

I'm thinking about religion and trying to approach it again, but with adjusted

expectations. I still believe there's a problem, one that surrounds me: it's

here with me in my room, it's out there with the people living on the street;

it's in the clouds, the rain, and the sunlight too. Nothing can explain it away

or make it so that this world is devoid of anything problematic. But in

relation to this problem I can live differently.