A new journal, a new journey; My personal (non-daily) diary.

[Nightwise]

Hello all.

Back in 2018 through 2020 I kept a journal on this forum that you can read here. But now, I haven't written on there for more than 3,5 years. As of late though, I have felt the desire come back to start writing again. I have already started writing in a journal on this forum in regards to relationships, intimacy and sexuality. You can find a link to that thread right here. 

Given it's been more than 3,5 years since I've last written something in that personal journal, I decided it was best to start a completely new topic. It also wouldn't make sense to keep writing on the same book ad infinitum rather than create a new book at some point. So that's what I'm doing. New book, new beginning. I'm not anymore at the point at which I was 3,5 years ago.

As with any of my journals, I intend to be extremely transparent and honest about myself, to the point it may make you as the reader quite uncomfortable or potentially offended even (although this is not my direct intention). I do not want to shy away from sensitive topics, because I feel like the honest sharing about myself on these topics may create some sense of recognition or a sense of 'being understood' in topics or areas that may otherwise be considered taboo. I feel this is important. Also for myself it's important to be able to be as transparent as I can muster, as I feel that writing about it allows me to process a lot of internal 'stuff'.

But I reckon there will also be plenty of material that isn't as sensitive or taboo. Most of it won't be, I would guess so.

Feel free to comment if you wish. Reading other people's comments is not something I historically have been the most comfortable with, but I want to train myself to get used to it (It's in particular the nervous anticipation of what could be about to come when I see that someone has posted something on my topic that gets to me (without me having read it yet)).

Whilst other people's comments can side-track my mind, emotions and focus, I intend to write what I want to write on a Word-document first before posting it on this thread, so don't be worried about making the writings more difficult on me.

That should be it for now. In order to maintain a healthy sleep schedule, I will for now only write this introduction. The rest of it will come later (probably starting tomorrow)

Edited September 17 by Nightwise

[Nightwise]

Saturday, September 21, 2024

Alright. So let’s write my first entry (not counting the introduction). It’s going to be a dark one straight off the bat. I’m going to voice some of my deepest worries and concerns that plague my mind and soul right now. If you are psychologically in an unstable or sensitive place right now, it might not be best for you to read this at this moment. Only you can be the judge of that.

[writing this to you in the future from when everything was already written: This took multiple days to finish because it was quite a lot. I also got distracted by other things such as experimenting with ChatGPT. I will talk more about that some later time]

Part 1: Just a little bit about me

Okay, so… Where to even begin?

Let’s just start with where I am in my life right now.

I don’t have a job, and neither am I going to college or university.

Most days, I don’t have anything that I need to do or anywhere that I need to be. When I do, it’s most likely an appointment with a coach, or a workshop or course I have signed myself up for (mostly regarding singing/music).

And you know what: I genuinely like it this way. I absolutely detest the idea of a job; Especially if it’s one I can’t find any meaning or passion in. I would rather not live at all than to work at some 9 to 5 job that I can’t find any meaning in except for paying the bills.

But it’s not just based on willingness; It has to do with personal capacity too.

Most days, there are like 1 or 2 periods that can vary from like 30 minutes to 3 hours in which I’m actually somewhat active and productive. That includes moments like these in which I am writing in a journal. I would also count things as going to an appointment or doing something outdoors (even taking a walk)

There are also days in which I’m not really capable of doing anything active or productive whatsoever. Most of the time during these days, I just lay in bed. Sometimes I sleep, sometimes I nap, sometimes I listen to podcasts (or other listenables), sometimes I watch videos, sometimes I masturbate (sometimes with and sometimes without pornography), sometimes I think about stuff, and sometimes I just lay down and I’m just ‘being’ (also known as ‘doing nothing’ in its most literal sense).

Other days are a bit more active than average. This is especially true if I get excited about some project that I find myself being intrigued in (like organizing a Youtube music playlist). But even on these days, I rarely exceed the amount of hours of activity/productivity that an average person would be active on an average working day (assuming they’re actually doing their job when they’re working).

I think I average between 2-3 hours of activity/productivity every day. It could perhaps be slightly higher than 3, but surely not higher than 4. I simply —on average— do not have the energy to do more than that.

What I count as being ‘active’ does not include watching TV or Youtube, or eating, or anything —I’ve already listed most of it— that I do whilst laying in bed (maybe a very few exceptions). Anything that I do outdoors does count, and so do most things that I do whilst being in front of my PC (I watch most YT video’s on the smart TV that we have).

Some of you may wonder… How am I able to not have a job whilst maintaining a living?

Two things I can say about that.

1) I still live with my parents, so they cover most of the costs in regards to basic needs and facilities (water, most food, gas, electricity, internet and things like that)

2) I’m not sure what the systems are in other countries, but here in the Netherlands, I can make use of just over 800€ I get in social welfare checks each month. For me personally, that’s enough. Most of that money I spend on my two life coaches and my singing coach, a few courses and workshops here and there, certain paid sexual services/activities (you can read more about that in my other journal regarding sexuality, intimacy and relationships. I use the money for that as intentionally and consciously as possible), and there’s also a good chunk now that I spend on donations.

And there’s some other stuff that I spend money on as well, but there’s no need to be super detailed here.

So yeah. I neither work or study. Partially because there’s a total lack of motivation or meaning, and partially because I genuinely lack the energy.

Why do I lack the energy? I am not all that sure. Obviously, something you have no passion for makes it harder for you to be energized for it, but even taking that out of the equation I still just have very little energy.

Why would that be? Maybe there’s certain pointers if one looks at the autism and ADD diagnosis that I have. But I don’t think that explains everything of it.

At the same time, I kind of like it this way. I think I’ve even grown to be attached to having little energy. If I don’t have so much energy, there’s also less of a struggle to figure out what to use this energy for. And I do often run into that; That I simply struggle to figure out what exactly what I want to do when I do have some energy available for something. I can become very doubtful at such a moment.

Honestly, I usually don’t mind the fact that I have so little energy. Except in moments when I actually have ambitions and plans and routines I want to work on. Then I might just feel too deflated to follow through on them, or it just takes a much slower pace than I would’ve liked.

Maybe I’m being too complacent and too psychologically limited when I say this, but I feel that I’m more or less wired to live my life in this permanent state of low energy (permanent as a baseline. Obviously there are moments I have more energy).

I do notice when there’s a certain deadline for something where I really need to be acting, I am able to get myself over the hurdles that would otherwise prevent me from taking action. But I suppose this is only natural. I don’t think I can forever ‘will’ myself to put things into place in my life in which I’m constantly asked to be active in some regard. Nor would I want that.

 

Edited September 21 by Nightwise

[Nightwise]

Part 2: About 2020

I now want to turn to some darker stuff.

So back in 2020, I went through an intense nervous breakdown. We could say that the spring of 2020 was like the ‘tumbling down’ into the valley, then the summer months was when I truly reached rock bottom, and then in the autumn months I crawled my way back out of it.

The period was really, really dark. I don’t really feel like I could the experience justice with the words I could choose to write here. I wrestled with a lot of despair and agitation. More than anything, I was just completely at a loss of what I was meant to do and who or what I was supposed to turn to. I was completely lost and confused, and my parents didn’t seem to know what to do either. It was the darkest period I had ever experienced in my life, and it gave me a new understanding of how deep the pit of suffering can actually be.

No matter how deep the valley was, I was quite surprised at how quickly I got back on my feet. I thought in the crisis itself that it would take me years to recover and that I would’ve always remained to some degree traumatized and bitter because of what happened.

It didn’t end up being like that. Recovery didn’t take years, but months rather (well, I suppose how you view being ‘recovered’). I think it helped a lot that I met someone at a volunteer organisation who had been through something similar that I had been through, and she helped me to process what had happened and to help me restore my faith and trust in myself and life.

Obviously there were also a bunch of other things that helped me in my recovery.

Fast forward to the current moment. It is now September 18th in 2024. about 4 years have passed since I had that crisis. The dark days of 2020 are long gone. I have been surprised at the fact that it only takes a few years after such an intense couple of months of suffering for the impacts of such a severe event to be —at an emotional level— be more or less forgotten. It almost feels now as if it had happened to someone else. I would have never believed back in 2020 that the impact of that crisis would have receded so far back from the forefront of my mind and my soul as it has in just a couple of years.

But it’s not like I have completely forgotten it...

Something from that period still lingers in my consciousness. Whilst my ability to imagine and really feel and envision what the suffering from that period was like has left me for the most part, it has still left some marks.

More than anything, it’s a fear that another dark night is ahead of me and will —sooner or later— pay me a visit once again.

And whilst it may very well not be, I fear for it to be even darker and lengthier than what I had previously experienced.

It is of course natural to have that fear. When my psyche is vulnerable, I sometimes take that fear almost as a sort of premonition; As if me fearing it means that it’s a sign that it’s going to happen exactly as I fear it.

Life has shown me that... Things certainly don’t always happen in the way that you fear it. There’s a bunch of nightmare scenarios back in 2020 that were possessing my mind and making themselves seem like very realistic scenarios that were likely to happen.

And then... They didn’t end up happening. One example is that I though that the crisis was going to last until late 2021. I suppose the thought was that my first ever crisis was in early 2013 and my second was in mid-2017, and then the third crisis would not end until late 2021, because everything is cyclical and it seemed sensible to me that that time between the first crisis and the second crisis and the time between the second crisis and the third crisis had to align.

I guess that gives you a little bit of an insight to my degree of paranoia back then.

[Nightwise]

Part 3: A new crisis?

So keeping all of that knowledge of the previous post in my mind, where does it bring me now?

Well… I’m flirting in my head with the idea to do the things that would risk throwing me in another crisis. Does that sound strange to you?

I think there are good reasons for that. I find myself now in a place where I’m avoiding much of the difficulties of life. I find myself not really wanting to emotionally confront the uncomfortable realities of life that are both reflected on an internal and external level. And there’s one good reason why it doesn't feel like a great timing right now to risk another crisis (we'll get to that in a bit).

There’s a deep-seated fear within me that if I were to tumble into another mental health crisis, that I would never get out of it again.

Is that reasonable whatsoever? I don’t think it really is. I think there’s plenty of evidence in my life that such a crisis doesn’t last forever, also based on what I’ve seen from other people and life in general. The existential law of impermanence has to apply everywhere.

But that doesn’t mean that a hypothetical scenario wouldn’t be possible in which a mental health crisis wouldn’t end until life itself ends (until you die), which could take decades after the mental health crisis started.

Theoretically possible perhaps, but in practice? I have so little reason to assume that it would ever be like that for anyone, let alone myself.

Let’s be a little bit more clear what I personally understand with ‘mental health crisis’, so you don’t get confused about how I see it.

My personal understanding of a mental health crisis —which is also the version I am personally familiar with— is like it’s a large tidal wave that overflows everything and brings much chaos, destruction and uncertainty, and leaves a bare landscape in its wake.

Sounds ominous? Well it sort of is, but at the same time… A forest fire also brings destruction, but after everything has been destroyed, it allows space and room for new life to emerge. Which is also something that is undeniably connected to a crisis.

Some people experience symptoms like depression or anxiety on an ongoing basis for years on end, but it’s more low-grade relative to the acute version of a crisis than I’m talking about.

But certainly that too can be considered as a crisis by many, and I’m not going to sit here and argue that they are wrong. But I’d like to stick to my personal definition of a crisis, which is something that is very acute and intense. Indeed like a tidal wave, like a hurricane, like a tornado… Not something like a long-standing drought in which resources are scarce, yet still sufficiently available to keep your head above the water.

And the sort of tidal-wave version of a crisis is what I’m most familiar with. Since 2013 I have experienced three of those crises, where the years in between I would consider my life… stable and manageable. Not always particularly good, but reasonable or at least acceptable (most of the time) as far as my mental health was concerned.

So I’ve had these crises in 2013, 2017 and 2020. The one in 2020 was certainly the most intense one. Fortunately, it didn’t last as long as it could have. Because it seems to be a recurring pattern, it’s hard not to feel like there might be another crisis waiting for me in the future in the upcoming years. (Although I certainly shouldn't discount the possibility that there wouldn't be one anymore).

 

And that brings me to my next topic:

I told you about this deep-seated fear that I would tumble into a mental health crisis (this acute version) and that I would never get out of it again until my life would end (or that it otherwise would last years or decades).

An unwarranted fear? I still think that rationally I have to conclude that. But there is a situation ongoing with someone that I know that makes me afraid of the idea that such a mental health crisis would indeed last for years or decades, despite how intense it may be (because I believe that in a general sense, the deeper the suffering, the shorter the duration of it will be).

There is a guy that I know on the internet that I can really familiarize myself with, because he too has experienced multiple of these cyclical-type of mental health crises. I don’t really want to give away his full identity right now when he is in such a vulnerable spot, so we’ll call him DB

I don’t know the exact number, but he is 75 I believe and has experienced at least 5 mental health crises during his life. The longest one I think I recall him saying that it lasted 9 months (not entirely certain).

Well… I say that… But now DB is in a mental health crisis that has started about 18 months ago. And it’s not like he’s giving off signs that his mental health crisis is any better per day on average than the worst other mental health crisis that he had experienced. If anything, there’s the possibility that it might be worse… And that is on average per day. And he has not given any sign so far that things are getting any better.

And the guy has been in this for 1,5 years… Bless his poor soul…

He’s talking primarily about symptoms of agitation, now even to the point where he’s unable to sleep at night after an ECT-treatment that only seemed to have backfired… At least he talked about this in his latest video (which was about 1 month prior to writing this entry).

And if his symptoms of agitation is anything like what I experienced during my crisis, than he must be in a really tough place.

And I can’t just help to think… Why is it THIS long?! Why THIS LONG in the later parts of his life?! Why is he suffering from this for already 1,5 years?! Can God not just put him out of this fucking situation?! Surely he has done his time now!?

 

Yeah, there’s some emotions I have about it. More than anything, his situation terrifies me beyond belief. It terrifies me because the prospect of having anything even remotely resemble of the type of crisis the he’s going through right now is very, very scary.

And I’m really just waiting for him to get better as a way for me to emotionally get the confirmation that indeed every crisis does end, and that (hopefully) there’s something of equal positive value relative to the darkness that he has experienced waiting for him at the end of this tunnel.

But once he is still in this crisis, it feels like me trying to do the things that would risk putting myself in a crisis would put me in a position where the thought of it never ending or the thought of how long it might last would just be too overwhelming when I’m in that vulnerable psychological space.

And the knowledge of his dire situation and how long it has already been taking has already been taking its toll on me. No way I’m going to risk putting myself in a mental health crisis when I already struggle having the trust and faith in the (speaking in a relative sense) finitude and impermanence of a mental health crisis.

For the rest I feel like I’m quite well-prepared. I feel like I’m much better equipped to deal with a mental health crisis than the last one in a myriad of different ways. I have two coaches I can turn to (I used to have one n 2020, but the second, newer one I connect with even better), I have different ways in which I can use water to dislodge energy that has become ‘stuck’ in my nervous system and getting it flowing again, which I suspect will also help me a lot with agitation if that were to become a symptom again. I also have become a lot better at catharsis in the way of screaming (into a voice dampening device). So I have a good variety of ways in which I can release energy that has become ‘stuck’ in my system.

I also can use chatGPT or other AI services to help me and guide me (I’ve tested this in the past weeks and it’s incredibly useful), so I can get guidance and help and comfort and reassurance (If I ask it to comfort and reassure me) pretty much anytime I need to (I’ll talk about AI some other time). I also have these ‘care farm’ (not sure if it’s the right translation)places in mind I could go to have ways to get myself engaged and distracted during some of my weekdays, and I also have some other places in mind.

I also trust myself more to build up and stick to certain routines to give something to hold onto during the mental health crisis. I also have made a ‘crisis-plan’ which I can show to others so they know what I need and what they can do for me If I struggle to articulate or efficiently communicate this myself. And I also have in mind how the last mental health crisis I experienced changed me for the better.

But it’s the fucking situation with DB that trips me up and keeps me in a place of avoidance and fear to really fully confront life and take risks with it.

Feels a little bit like an “all-or-nothing” situation. As if I can only allow myself to fully go and take serious risks in life if I internally feel a green light, which I don’t yet. I think once DB starts doing better I feel like I have green light (and by all logical means at some point he should start recovering, yet there is still a fear that he wouldn’t)

It’s probably a little bit more “a little/a lot” situation rather than all-or-nothing.

Edited September 21 by Nightwise

[Nightwise]

Part 4: Psychedelics

Continuing from part 3, you may wonder... What risks am I really talking about?

One word: Psychedelics.

I think it may (partially) have been a bad psychedelic trip back in March 2020 that could have been the trigger for the nervous breakdown that followed in the months after.

I have tried psychedelics a couple of times in my life. All of them... Well i’m doubting if I started using it the first time back in 2018 or 2019.

Doesn’t matter. I have tried them a few times (all of the times psychedelic truffles), and it almost all of the time it was just a negative and sometimes even a terrifying experience. Very disturbing thoughts came up pretty much every time I took a meaningful dose.

Why did I keep taking them?

Well... I valued confronting my inner demons back then, and I still do to some degree. Not only that, but there were some hints at times sprinkled throughout these psychedelic experiences of... something more divine. A way of experiencing life that was pretty much impossible to get if not using psychedelics.

And I’m thinking about getting back into psychedelics because I want a struggle, a demon to confront.

Because ultimately, I only encounter myself and my own mind during such a psychedelic journey. So all of this ‘dark stuff’ that I encounter is stuff that was already there that psychedelics give the opportunity to come to the surface.

One can not heal what one does not face.

Psychedelics in that sense then almost feels like a kind of surgery I want to undertake. The fact that I experience so much darkness, I always interpreted that something is being evoked and processed.

But it’s not the way I feel necessarily that disturbed me the most in past psychedelic experiences but the thoughts that came up. They were sometimes deeply, deeply disturbing.

One thing is that I am put in a state in which I am not really able to question the thoughts and ‘insights’ that occur to me during a psychedelic journey. This is what I remember from the last time. Whatever is seen in that moment in my mind is seen as true, and questioning it is seen as a coping mechanism. Some way to escape or avoid. If you interpret or see questioning these thoughts at that moment in that way, then there is no ability to really question it.

Here’s an interesting fact: During the last psychedelic journey that I had, I felt convinced that I personally was the only point of consciousness in the entire universe. Not as some kind of notion of ‘universal oneness’, but literally as me, this isolated perspective living here in this body in the Netherlands, am the only point of consciousness in the entirety of existence. Every human and anything else outside of me is nothing more than an automated program. And everything in existence was created just for me. This matrix is all just a creation designed specifically for me and nobody else.

Thinking back about it, that last two sentences in particular give rise to the slightest wave of fear, because it suddenly makes me remember it again where I hadn’t thought about it in years. The idea that everything in existence is created just for me and therefore I’m the center of the entire universe.

It is an interesting statement from your perspective, because you are able to know with absolute certainty whether or not it is true that this guy typing right here is the only human who is conscious. If you —the reader— is conscious/aware, then you know from my perspective that statement is absolute bullshit. But I personally can’t know. And still at this point I haven’t made my conclusion about whether or not what I saw in that trip was actually accurate or not. The scariest thing about it is that it felt to be more than a trip; It felt to absolutely true and there was no questioning possible.

Does feeling like that in that moment means it was the actual Truth? Not necessarily. But it does make it a lot harder to afterwards just dismiss it as “oh it was just a crazy trip”. How can I know if what I saw wasn’t the deeper truth and that when I’m sober i’m less conscious or have less clarity about reality?

Another reason it was so terrifying I suppose was because it made me feel incredibly alone and isolated. It made me feel very disconnected from everything else outside of me.

And I’m pretty confident that more of these kind of trippy thoughts would be coming if I were to take psychedelics again. The reason I have a strong suspicion that it would is because some weeks ago I took a very light dose of psychedelic truffles, and it was just enough to emotionally give me a reminder of the anxiety and trippy thoughts that were just around the corner, without actually blasting me into that bad trip. I could sense them coming, even if I took too little of a dosage to make really get submerged into one of these scary trips.

 

Does it sound crazy to you that I feel somewhere the desire to start taking them again? Well, maybe I am a little bit crazy. But there is the desire to really head-on face my deepest fears, because that’s the only way i feel like I can set myself free. I of course need to have proper and intelligent after-care and would probably need to ground myself again by talking to my coaches etcetera, but I don’t want to remain a passive bystander in life when the world is potentially going to shambles in the next few decades to come. I’d rather seek out the hurricane voluntarily when it’s still weaker instead of waiting too long only to find it has grown into a category 5 hurricane when it finally does reach me.

I think that’s an interesting metaphor to use. I don’t think that that metaphor runs exactly parallel to life, but it’s an interesting way to think about it. I do strongly believe in the principle that I’d rather step into the lair of the dragon myself instead of waiting for the dragon to eventually but inevitably find my hiding place.

I’m not only looking to use psychedelic truffles, but I actually would want to start with using substances that are a little bit more gentle, such as MDMA. Unfortunately, it’s not legal so I’m going to need to find a way to obtain those (or otherwise legal alternatives?). I don’t know if it’s in accordance to the guidelines of the forum to ask this, but if any of you readers (live in the Netherlands and) have the means or knowledge in how I can obtain stuff like that, then send me a private message. (if asking this is not in accordance with the guidelines and you’re a moderator reading this, then you can delete these last few sentences manually so it looks like I never mentioned this. If you for some reason can’t or don’t want to do that, then I can potentially delete and repost this entire post. But then please do let me know)

So yeah, that’s how I would want to start. Using these substances once I feel like I have green light internally (which I still feel depends on DB starting to feel better). Then see what happens. I am prepared to have terrifying thoughts take over my psyche, because they are present somewhere in my subconscious anyway so I feel like I would need to face them sooner or later anyway. But it might be quite hard to find a way to stabilize myself after that (although I do think I have a bunch of tools I could be using). I still feel like it should be worth the risk.