I stopped looking at life as how it could be, but as it was. I stopped to wonder why I had started to write my diary in past tense. Time seemed to me less of an upwards lateral and more of a circle. I sometimes thought I could tell the future. Or maybe that was me simply understanding the present. If life was a series of cycles as I had always known it was, then time was just an oscillating fan in my bedroom lulling me to sleep. It marched no further than that and was no more a bully nor a friend than a piece of furniture. It was the only neutral in life—the very foundation of all I knew and didn’t know. Maybe God was time—a constant.
I found it very comforting to know that I could predict my ups and downs by understanding my brain chemistry and reading my symptoms. Maybe that is why I thought I could predict the future. I saw all my successes and sorrows happening again. The same feelings welled up again with each change, the same growing pains numbed out by my aversion to vulnerability, and then the same growth as I learned how to face my fears. Why was I afraid? It was one of the absurdities of life I was always trying to put words to. What was fear? What was love? What was time if not something to understand; to marvel at?
Read more from my journal: