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.