albertnothlit

Nice! That's the vibe I was going for - glad you liked it!

I often wondered, in the years following Charles’s disappearance, whether the friendship which linked us had been the inescapable product of fate, random happenstance, or something much more sinister. In hindsight, however, I now see that circumstances surrounding us both were such that it was all but inevitable that we should become close companions since childhood. He and I came from very different backgrounds, but the business relationship linking our two families linked us as individuals

Where Charles Wentworth is now, I do not know. I thought he was dead. It took decades to get over the heartbreak of his disappearance. And yet now that he has sent me a message, I feel not relief but horror… because, if my interpretation is true, then we are all in danger. The message in the sky is clear. Humanity may be about to go extinct.

A full moon is coming, and I fear its gibbous one-eyed gaze. Throughout the years I had managed to bury my doubts and most of my memories concerning the horrific events which surrounded the ostensible death of my colleague and friend, Doctor Charles Wentworth. I had even managed to convince myself that some of the things I witnessed during that final night had been nothing more than hallucinations wrought by frayed nerves and physical exhaustion. As far as the police were concerned, my testimony

Thank you, Parker. Your support means so much to me - all of the support I've found here has been crucial in my path towards getting better, and it continues to be one of the cornerstones of my healing.

Thank you for all the support, guys. Each day has its own challenges, but I think I’m learning how to deal with them as they come. I think right now I’m in this odd place where, although I know I am doing better, I’m still terrified of just losing my grip on the progress I’ve made and going back to the very bad times I’ve lived through. I need to allow myself to be, as I once before already put it, cautiously optimistic. Things are looking up even if my natural, instinctive reaction is to not allow myself to hope out of fear that I will fail. Yesterday was an example of a day which, although challenging, showed me that I am able to cope better overall with things that might have previously just been too hard for me to deal with. For whatever reason, I was kind of tired for most of the day. It may have just been accumulated tiredness from last week and everything that happened, or it may have been that I slept longer than usual, paradoxical though that may sound. I don’t really know, but when I’m tired, I get very scared because I fear I won’t make it through the day. There is this horrible fear that I will just run out of energy or something, which will force me to just escape into my bed and be miserable there, unable to move or to do anything, for the rest of the day. That has never happened, of course, and yesterday was no exception. The big difference was that, although I was tired and it was a challenge to do everything I had planned, not only was able to do it, but I was also able to have enough presence of mind to remind myself that tiredness and anxiety are two different things. It’s obvious, I know, but it’s not obvious for me. It’s taken months of effort to bring me to the point where I can actually tell myself this and begin to believe it. I applied the technique that I discovered last week, which is to remind myself not to immediately attach negative affect to whatever is going on in my life. Sure, I was kind of tired in the evening during my last shift. So what? Everybody has days, every now and then, when they are kind of tired. It doesn’t mean that it’s this apocalyptic thing which is going to make me miserable for the rest of the day. Sure, it was a little bit tougher than usual to finish my workout at the gym because I didn’t have a lot of energy – but I still did my workout and, if I’m tired, it’s not terrible. It doesn’t mean I’m a failure, it doesn’t mean I have no control over my life for my emotions. It just means I’m tired, nothing else. I slept relatively well last night – I was tired, after all! Today I woke up feeling better, although perhaps not fully rested, and my anxiety levels are manageable. I’m ready for the day. Bring it on.

Hi guys. Another week has gone by, with its ups and downs. I’m very thankful for the ups and trying to learn from the downs. Something odd happened on Monday evening – I received some rather unpleasant news and, for that entire night, I was a nervous wreck. I didn’t even sleep from how awfully anxious and panicky I was. It had been a long time since I have felt so bad during the night time, and it was definitely not fun at all. However, the next day I decided to fight the negative emotions d

Thanks for sharing, guys, it makes me feel less odd to know others sometimes have similar inner dialogues - I think if I could somehow find a way to substract the anxiety from the equation, I might have a much easier time simply doing the things that need to be done. I'm working hard on that. I keep reminding myself that not everything needs to be associated with a very strong emotion and some things are mundane and not as important, emotionally, as others. It is easier said than done, of course. The thing about the anxiety as an added ingredient to the inner debate is that sometimes it kind of makes it hard to be rational. Things get blown out of proportion very easily and honestly sometimes I feel as though I were walking a tight rope as I go through the day, trying to get to the end while not falling over the sides, but anxiety keeps on making the rope underneath my feet sway and wobble. I'm hanging in there. Thank you, really, for being there for me. Your comments and your support help me more than you can imagine. I want to get better. I want to get over this and reclaim my life as it used to be – or, if that is not possible, to rebuild my life in a new and perhaps better way. Anxiety disorder and depression can be managed and sometimes outright overcome. I have read of people who have done so successfully. Maybe I can be like them.

Hi guys. Thank you for your kind messages. It was kind of a rough weekend and so it is only today that I feel strong enough to actually write back. I have been adhering to this new technique I mentioned and it helped somewhat, but at the same time I have been experiencing increasing levels of anxiety that I cannot really explain and so it’s been a mixed bag, really. On the one hand, constantly reminding myself that not every single thing in the day needs to be emotionally meaningful is very helpful. Reading your comments, I see now that, just as I kind of suspected based on my own experience, emotion is not necessarily linked to everything we do, particularly when it is mundane stuff like brushing your teeth. To me, though, just as I wrote about, even brushing my teeth is somehow a deeply emotional activity. I don’t know why and I am trying to teach myself not to focus too much on giving an emotional dimension to everything. Of course, things which are significant will be linked to an emotion, as well as positive or negative experiences, but I think one of the things that is exhausting me so much is the fact that not a moment goes by in the day when I am not either fighting against a negative emotion or exercising as much willpower as I can to prevent myself from doing so, or simply obsessing over my emotional state. Even things like going to the store turn into literal inner debates. Like yesterday, for example. I had to go to the store to buy some food but I was also feeling very anxious around the middle of the day. It went like this: I need to get some food. I’m out of milk. I’m scared of leaving the house. Leaving the house brings negative emotions. I have to stay inside. This is irrational. I need to get some milk. I should go to the store – it won’t take long and it might even do me good. I remember that sometimes, when I was feeling bad, going to the store in the sunlight made me feel good. I could maybe even take my dog with me for company. I can’t go. The mere fact that I have to clutch at memories of times when leaving the house helped me emotionally shows me just how sad and pathetic my mental state has become. Why bother? Maybe I should just give up. Everything hurts. There is no escaping the fear and anxiety. I don’t want to go to that dark place. I’m putting my shoes on now. I’m going to go get my milk. I won’t make it. If I’m having so much trouble with this one thing, how can I hope to face the rest of the day? I have work later. I don’t think I can make it… I must remember not to give an emotional dimension to this activity. I have to go now before the other voice gets too strong. I have to go now, before it’s too late! That’s an example of the inner debate that I have about everything. Not just going to the store but maybe things like sweeping the floor, writing an email, deciding what to wear. It’s incessant and it’s exhausting. It takes a lot out of me and sometimes I get scared that I will just shut down one day or something. I’m tired of feeling so wound up all the time. Today for example, a nightmare woke me up much earlier than usual and I was not able to go back to sleep, so I am in full damage control mode right now trying to avoid getting a panic attack because I feel like a failure for not sleeping until my usual time. It’s irrational and stupid, I know, but the emotions are there. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do to fill the extra hour or so that waking up so early has created in the day. I’m terrified of feeling tired later on and having trouble doing all the activities I need to do. I’m confused because I honestly don’t know why I was not able to go back to sleep – sure, I had the nightmare, but I have had nightmares other nights and I have been able to go back to sleep. Maybe it’s just random. If so, though, it’s very very scary because it means I will never know when I might get a bad night. I’m hanging on, though. Yesterday, for example, despite it being a rather anxiety-driven day, and a busy one at my job, I was able to calm down enough by evening time to actually enjoy walking my dog after I got home for the day. It had rained in the afternoon, and so the evening was cool and refreshing. It was as if though I could sense that the plants I passed as we walked were glad for the rain, and it lightened my heart to be able to spend a few relatively peaceful minutes just walking around the block, letting go of the stress of the day. The anxiety rose again after I returned home, but at least I had those moments to remember. I think I need to hold onto those memories and not the bad ones. Memory is malleable, after all. If I focus on the good things and try to ignore the bad ones, maybe it will be better for me in the long run, by helping me build long-lasting, positive memories.

It’s been a rough week. Whether the fact that I have felt really anxious since Monday is due to some sort of cycle in my brain, or whether it was triggered by an outside event which I have not yet identified, I don’t know. I haven’t sat down to write in my journal since then, but I think it’s important to not give up on writing on here because it has helped me in the past and sometimes it gives me perspective. When anxiety rises to the point that it eclipses every other emotion, it’s hard to

Thank you guys, thank you as always, I’m trying to hang in there and for the most part I think I’m doing it, but it’s terrifying to have had relatively smooth sailing and then for the waters to get all choppy and wild again. There’s no rhyme or reason to the comings and goings of my anxiety that I can tell. Whenever I have trouble sleeping for any reason it makes it worse, like last night. My anxiety levels are pretty high as a result today, at least for now. I know that I have to get started the day, get moving, do what I need to do, and anxiety will go down. The panic attacks are so debilitating, though. I just had one earlier today and it definitely wasn’t fun. However, yesterday I was talking about all this with someone close to me and, looking at the entire last week in perspective, I was able to realize that in general I’m actually doing better, if only because, despite the fact that it was a particularly busy week with lots of unexpected things and activities which would normally stress me out very much, I was nevertheless able to just carry on and do what needed to be done. I have mentioned before that one of my biggest fears is simply not being able to function anymore, not to be able to carry on with daily activities, but last week, despite the challenges, I proved to myself that I am able to adapt to challenging situations and things were definitely a net positive over previous weeks. That’s definitely good. The hard part is remembering that when I am feeling down. Challenging the bad thoughts and the insidious sensation that I am drowning in my own worry is so hard sometimes. Something scary about it all is that at times it seems like I kind of let myself get anxious to the point where a panic attack is coming. I’m not sure how to explain it, but it’s like this part of me wants to get to a crisis, wants to just give up and to allow the anxiety to get out of control. It’s messed up. It requires an effort of will to kind of steer myself away from that and into productive activities which will hopefully distract me enough so that I’m not teetering over the edge of an episode anymore. I’m kind of sad today because I’m honestly nearing the end of my patience I think, and I don’t want to. But it’s been so long since I’ve had an easy day… I remember years ago, when I would simply wake up, no big deal, go through the day, go to bed, repeat. I don’t understand how I could have done that. Every morning is so challenging now that I simply don’t understand how it could have been that once I would wake up feeling neutral about things in general, or sometimes even good. I have to keep the good stuff in mind. I have to keep moving forward. Sometimes it kind of feels like I am running along a frozen lake with ice underneath my feet just strong enough to take a single step of mine before it cracks. The only way I have not to plunge down into the icy waters of panic is to keep running, but all the while I’m so worried that my strength is going to run out eventually, which terrifies me, which in turn saps my strength even more. Sometimes, this entire situation sucks. Doesn’t mean I’m giving up, though. Not by a long shot. Today is a busy day and I’m going to face it head on, like I always do. I still have emotional strength left. And I’m doing better all the time – I just need to remember that if I can.

It’s hard to be patient. As days turn into weeks which turn into months and still there are times, morning times particularly, when I wake up literally shaking with fear brought on by a nightmare or a random thought, it’s hard to be patient. The anxiety never leaves me entirely. It is always there, whispering, or sometimes shouting. It goes with me everywhere I go. It casts a shadow over my day. I fight it, of course. I have even won some battles against it, but when I feel like I do right now,

Thank you all. This week has been tough but I'm trying to find ways to do everything I need to do and not let the anxiety gain the upper hand. The days are full of ups and downs, but I will try to focus on the ups if I can. I also need to be patient, which is easier said than done... But, every now and then, I'm finding the energy and motivation to do things which I hadn't done in a while, or only intermittently in the last few months. This entire process is a mixture of hard lessons, wonderful revelations, discouraging downs, and sometimes shining hope. I'll keep working hard at it. Thank you for supporting me on this journey.

I've been trying different amounts of coffee and I discovered that the magical amount is about half a cup taken around 3 PM. It smooths out the energy dip and it does not appear to impede my ability to fall asleep later in the evening. I don't take it every day, and I don't find myself craving it when I don't, which I suppose is a good sign. I'll keep experimenting and see how things turn out.

Hi everyone. It’s been a while since the last entry. Things have been… I don’t know. Both good and bad. Throughout that these last few days, I have tried my best to just kind of move on with the days and try to pay less attention to how I feel emotionally all the time. This also included not writing a journal entry in several days, so I could see whether I could just get up in the morning and begin the day. I’m trying to see whether this can help me set my thought patterns on a better track some

Hi guys. I don’t even know what to say. I’m finding it hard to deal with things as they are now, but I did want to mention that there has been some progress, at least a little bit. Yesterday it took a lot of effort for me to start my day, but I managed. I have begun to understand that one of the things that brings me down so hard is that, in the mornings, my energy levels are really low and I tend to extrapolate and think that I will be feeling so tired for the entire rest of the day, which naturally makes the day seem like an insurmountable obstacle. However, yesterday something interesting happened. I discovered that I had enough energy to go through my day – in fact, my energy levels were… Good, I think. I was able to do all the things I had planned and then some. I was able to do things in the afternoon and evening that, had you asked me in the morning, I would have said no way, there’s no way I can manage – but I did. One of the things that helped me a lot was yoga. I had my second session yesterday. When I went in I was actually very stressed out, anxious, fearful. The session was challenging, but it was challenging in a good way. I tried to focus on my breathing as I did the different poses, tried to listen only to the sound of the instructor’s voice, and see only what my eyes could show me through the windows of the room, which was a beautiful winter morning under a bright blue sky. I managed to distract myself enough to be mindful every now and then, although I was constantly plagued by bad memories and bad emotions. The fact that I was committed to the session, however, forced me to shove those things aside whenever I could. There was also the fact that some of the poses were really challenging and during those times I really had no mental bandwidth left to worry because my full attention was given to the moment. During the last part of the session, where calm music is played and we meditate, I was able to relax a tiny bit as well. Again, most of the time my mind was still restless and anxious, but a little bit of the time it was not and I could kind of catch my breath emotionally. After I left the session, I realized that I was moving… More softly? More gently? I remember sitting down on a bench under the sunlight and looking up at the sky. I was less panicky, less anxious. I was a little bit less desperate to drown out the thoughts in my mind with a podcast like I normally do. All throughout the remaining hours of the day, this very faint calmness was always with me. It wasn’t a magical cure or anything, but it did help and I am thankful for this. Later on, and this is something that I am only now recognizing, although I may have talked about this before, is that my energy levels went steadily up until they were at a comfortable level and they stayed there for the remainder of the day. In fact, despite the fact that I only slept for about five hours, I was not sleepy. It was weird. Surely five hours is nowhere near enough sleep? But, if it’s not, then why wasn’t I as awfully tired as that other night when I slept for three hours? I do not have answers to any of this, but I am heartened by the fact that I do appear to be needing less sleep now for whatever reason. I am also coming to terms with a trend that should have been obvious to me, but only now am I internalizing it. Simply put, I am an evening person. I have always had a very hard time waking up early, even before this rough period in my life again. Mornings have always been challenging, and during the worst of my depression I actually skipped them entirely by waking up around 10 AM, when the morning was all but gone. Right now, though, I cannot do that because I wake up at 5 AM or 6 AM. This means that, for the first couple of hours of every day, not only do I have to deal with bad memories, the aftermath of any nightmares I may have had during the night, and the fear of not having slept enough, but also with the simple fact that I have very low energy and everything takes much more effort than it should. I wonder… Should I begin drinking coffee in the mornings? I normally don’t because I am terrified of growing dependent on any substance, even if it’s just coffee, and also because I usually experience a dip in my energy levels after lunch time, so that’s when I drink a little bit of coffee about once every three days or so. I’m also kind of wary of caffeine because I don’t know if it would just exacerbate my anxiety. Anyway. As the day progresses, I grow more and more alert. Sometimes I get this energy dip around 1 PM, but I have spoken with other people and many say that it’s around that time that they also feel kind of tired. Coffee does help me deal with this when I feel really tired, but some other days I simply power through. As the afternoon progresses even further, I begin to perk up. I think the reason why afternoons and evenings are my favorite part of the day is because I am fully alert by then. I have the energy and mental acuity to do many things that I simply can’t bring myself to doing the mornings. By then, usually, if I have been doing what I should and keeping busy and being productive, my anxiety levels will have dropped. Yesterday I managed to get to know what I would say was a five out of ten – still uncomfortable, but manageable. That was a huge step from the morning when I was maybe a nine of ten. I used to think that the entire morning person or evening person thing was just made up, but now I think that, in my case at least, there is a direct correlation between my mood and the time of day. It’s heartening on one hand, because I know I can look forward to maybe suffering less and feeling less bad every afternoon. However, it also means that mornings will continue to be tough for me and that I need to find some way to cope. At least last night I was able to sleep better. I slept for about six hours and dozed in bed for another hour. Something that helped me this time around was focusing on my breathing, but I tried to breathe the way I did in yoga class. Long inhale, exhale. I accompanied the breathing with gentle movements as I was lying on my mattress and it helped a little bit. I’m still anxious today – but I slept more than yesterday and that reassures me. I am learning how to deal with the insomnia when it comes, and little by little I grow stronger and more resilient in the face of adversity like this. Sometimes I get very scared that every day has to be this hard, but the lessons I am learning, tough though they are, will stay with me forever.

The mind, as experienced in the dark hours of the night which fades into morning, is an interesting thing. When sleep will not come, and the world is quiet all around, even someone who is not accustomed to meditating is sort of forced into introspection. Lying in bed, tossing this way and that, there is no other companion but one’s own thoughts and no other sound but one’s own breathing. It is an opportunity, I suppose – an opportunity to reach down and find inner peace through awareness of the

Thank you for your support, guys. Yesterday morning was one of the toughest I’ve had because the change was so sudden and so painful. The panic attack was very strong. It brings about this awful combination of feeling exhausted for no reason and feeling terrified of the day ahead. I fear not being able to do everything I need to do and the fear grows and grows. I tried my hardest yesterday and I was able to dial down my anxiety and fear by the end of it. It’s just like it was at the beginning, when the morning would be devastating and then slowly, as the day progressed, through many individual acts of defiance on my part, I would push the anxiety and pain to the side. I think yesterday might have even been a little bit easier than it was a couple months ago. I plunged into my daily activities despite the fact that I fear not being able to do them, and by the end of the day I was rewarded with, if not respite, at least less anxiety. It’s not over yet, though. Today I woke up around four thirty and couldn’t go back to sleep. It was as painful as it always is. Memories assail me… And the bad thoughts crawl out of the corners of my mind and begin whispering horrible things in my ear. I tried praying but it didn’t work. This time, though, after maybe an hour and a half of tossing around in bed, I managed to gather enough strength to actually stand up even though it was still dark out. I did some yoga in my room – not a lot. Just some breathing exercises, lifting my arms up and bringing them back down very slowly. I managed maybe five repetitions before I panicked and I crawled back into bed again, but it was something. It’s the first time I have done something to fight against the feeling of being trapped in bed with my thoughts. I don’t know if it helped, but then I had another full-blown panic attack which I am fighting against right now by sitting down and writing my thoughts instead of just crying. Today, like so many days before, the prospect of what lies before me looks impossible to manage. How will I go to work? How will I do other things that I have to do? Added to all of this is the fact that I am kind of sleepy, and the tiredness terrifies me. It takes so very much emotional strength to fight against all of this that, when I don’t rest as much as I think I need to, if you’re just won’t be able to manage. This fight is hard. I try to remember that I am making progress, that others can see it and sometimes even I can, but the fear is everywhere and it is hard. Time is my friend. I need to remember that. This will pass. Even if it doesn’t go away right now, it will pass eventually. It’s hard to have faith that it will pass when I am trapped in the bad things, like right now. But I must. And I must somehow find strength to face today. I must try. Thank you all for bearing with me and thank you so very much for your messages of support. I am going through the toughest period in my life bar none, and your kindness and compassion in caring enough about me to offer support even through the distance is priceless to me. Sometimes the bad thoughts say that I don’t deserve help or compassion from others, but I know those thoughts are not rational. I’m hanging in there with all my strength. I will transform this day into something good, like I have done so many times before.

I know that there are going to be bumps along the road, but they are scary. Even more so when you were not expecting it, when it seems like the bad things come out of the blue and you don’t understand why and you don’t really know what to do. Yesterday was one such day. It actually started the night before, although I didn’t realize it at the time. That morning two days ago, I had literally sat down to write a note which I published here about how I felt cautiously hopeful with my newfound e

Thank you for all your comments, guys. In a way, I find it’s odd to be feeling less bad overall – it’s confusing because I got used to so many bad things happening one after the other that right now I can’t help but wonder whether this is not just the temporary eye of the hurricane. Nevertheless, I also think that everything I’ve been doing up to this point, like building up my emotional toolbox, cultivating strategies to deal with bad emotions when they come, and developing new hobbies and ways to keep occupied, is making it so that I am less scared overall and, even if I do feel bad again, I know how to get out of the rut. Sort of. Trying new things is helping. Ever since my yoga session, where I realized just how much flexibility I lack, I have been working on stretching out more in the gym and at home. Right now, my objective is to develop enough flexibility in my legs to be able to sit down on the floor kneeling, all the way down, and actually relax! It’s a fun little goal that I now have, which adds something positive to my days. It’s something which I know is good for me and which distracts me when I need it, so it’s a great addition to my activities. I have also begun to truly assimilate certain things which help out enormously during the tough parts of the day, like my emergency morning plan, which is now sort of becoming just my morning plan. I now do many of the items on the list automatically, and they work like an anchor, steadying me even though some mornings I may not be feeling my best. Today, for example, I was thankfully able to sleep – I desperately needed to and I am really really thankful I did. But I also had some dreams which were sad and a little bit scary, so when I woke up as the morning grayed, I kind of felt as if I were on the brink of rising anxiety which could escalate into a full-blown attack. Instead of giving into it, I stood up and began my morning plan. It’s such a relief to have a set list of activities I can rely on to notch my mind away from the negativity and focus it on something else. Not to say it’s a magic cure or anything – I still feel uneasy right now, for example, but I will fight it just like I do every day. There’s always hope, and it’s so wonderful to finally be feeling more of it, to be able to dare, every now and then, to truly hope that things are changing for the better. It is liberating. There’s a lot of work to be done still, but I think I’m getting there.

They say time heals. During these last troubled months, I have heard this phrase often and I have gone through so many different ways of reacting to it. I have rejected it as impossible. I have desperately clung to it as my last shred of hope. I have marveled at its truth every now and then, when fleeting moments have shown me that there is true wisdom behind that statement. For the most part, however, I have kind of kept that thought in my mind, that time will heal me, simultaneously hoping it

Guys… Thank you so much. I’m fighting this tooth and nail, and I am finding that, sometimes, I discover strength where I thought I had none left. The anger I sometimes feel is kind of a new thing considering I spent so much time just cowering in fear of another panic attack. Drpaladin, I try to channel the anger, as you mention, and in my case it takes the form of snatching motivation away from the claws of what I can only call will-lessness. It’s like a total lack of volition or agency that comes with depression and anxiety and all of that. These bad feelings are strong, but maybe I am stronger. I am surrounded by love, from you guys and my family and my friends, and all of that support props me up when I feel that I can’t continue. And slowly, like ever so faint afterimages in the darkest of nights, so fleeting I sometimes wonder whether they were ever really there, I begin to feel the first faint stirrings of inner peace and confidence in my ability to get through this.

I wonder whether anxiety follows any sort of rules. It’s not very likely, and I suppose that’s part of the reason why it’s so hard to fight against it. You may be doing okay and then suddenly you are not – sometimes there is a reason but other times there isn’t and it’s very confusing. Sometimes it feels like fighting anxiety is like fighting the hydra. Seven new fears rise from the vanquished one. Everyday’s a tough battle. Sometimes I win, more often I lose, but even when I lose I make sure to

I also drank quite a lot of Coke and for the longest time I thought I would never be able to stop drinking so much because I grew to depend on it, or thought I did. Thankfully, one of the good things to come out of this entire horrible experience is the fact that some of the things which used to seem so daunting to me, like my tendency to overeat or overindulge in soda, are now essentially pushovers. I don’t miss the soda one bit!

Thank you all for your nice comments and your encouragement. It’s really scary when you think you are doing better and then something happens and suddenly you feel awful again, but even though it happened, I reacted as well as I was able to and I think it is starting to pay off. It’s a little bit later in the morning today – I was able to sleep for nearly six hours straight, something for which I am enormously thankful. As soon as I decided to get out of bed I got started with my emergency morning plan. This is the third day I implement it, and it is quickly becoming a source of comfort and stability to know that I have a list of activities that I can do in order to get the day started, and which can also help me in the long run. My energy levels are also much better today. It’s so weird – I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that I seem to be getting very close to enough sleep even though it’s nowhere near the 10 to 12 hours I used to need a month ago. Not sure why it’s happened, but I need to be patient and collect more data points so that I can learn whether the insomnia is just a transient phase or something to be dealt, for example, with a sleeping aid. Today I am hopeful, though – the tendency appears to be towards enough rest, even if I’m having a hard time understanding that “enough rest” might be much less that I am used to. The nights are still challenging but, thankfully, the awful anxiety that attacks right as I am falling asleep is nowhere to be found anymore and I hope it stays that way. I have found that having a routine to get ready for bed helps enormously, just like in the morning, although with a lot of flexibility mixed in so I don’t become dependent on a specific order of activities or else I don’t go to bed. The most important things I have found which helped me have to do with food, like avoiding eating in excess right before bed. I used to do this a lot before, to the point where I would already be in bed and I would sometimes get up and have a peanut butter sandwich before climbing into bed again. Now, I am working on becoming disciplined and having my last little bite of food no later than 8 PM, so that by the time I go to bed around ten or eleven, there is no food, sugary or otherwise, keeping me awake. It sounds like a very small change to make, but it has helped me a lot and it goes hand-in-hand with another food change I have made, which is to have my main meal of the day around 3 PM instead of at dinnertime, which is what I used to do before. I used to barely eat anything throughout the day and then stuff myself silly around five or 6 PM – but now, I’m eating smaller portions throughout the day and I’m barely hungry most of the time. I don’t know why it works or whether it only works for me, but so far the results have been good and I think this change in diet is one of the factors that is helping me deal with the insomnia. I’ve also not fully discounted the fact that this bout of sleeping trouble might be partially caused by the rather sudden way in which I stopped drinking Coke throughout the day, which I’ve alluded to before. It’s week three since I gave it up and, although I may sometimes feel a little bit of, hey, a glass of soda would be just the pick me up you need right now for the little kick of caffeine and whatever else is in that beverage, for the most part I’m not missing it. My body might, though. Who knows – there are so many variables at play, but I think I’m on the right track. Valkyrie, I’m so happy to hear you’re considering a daily walking routine. You’ve also inspired me – I haven’t forgotten the progressive relaxation you suggested and tonight I tried again, though I suspect I still suck at it. Nevertheless, it gave me something to focus on once again and it’s nice to have that, especially if you wake up from a bad dream like I often do. Being able to share my thoughts with all of you has become one of the cornerstones of my path to recovery, and I can’t thank you all enough for your support through this difficult time. I don’t think I’m going to ever get tired of saying it: thank you.