I have control.

I lost my glasses on the ski slope at West mountain today, and it set in motion the cascade of negativity that is just like every other time.

But something was different about this one. And in hindsight, I'd felt it several other times in recent history before.

It felt almost as if I was TRYING to flip out, like I was deliberately choosing to get angrier and angrier. And when I actually stopped and thought about it, it all dissipated very rapidly. But this level of calm, given the circumstances, felt totally alien to me, so strange that I had to pursue destructive and self-destructive behavior in order to "make things right."

I've seen enough into abusive relationship behavior to understand immediately why I would deliberately choose to be negative: it's all a matter of comfort, familiarity, and routine. But beyond that, I have control, control far more natural, and far more of it, than I ever did on any brain medication, any therapy, anything else.

I still feel the black clouds of self-doubt clinging to me as I struggle to brush them out of my way to clarity, but there can be no doubt about it.

Something has clicked in my brain.

I think the very something I've been waiting for.

I had to do a mental doubletake just then to make sure I wasn't on any medications, because it feels so strange to feel this well, given the circumstances.

And pretty much most of my negativity for the majority of this week has been because I've chosen to continue the negative loop, because I felt it was the right thing.

Obviously, it isn't the right thing. But 'twas logical.

I realized there was this disparity in a convorsation with my mom tonight. She asked me if her worries about me were rational. I told her that all worries are irrational. What she meant by, and I knew it, was that did my actions warrant her having fears. Were her fears justified. Well-founded.

From a logical point of view, yes, all fears are logically well-founded at some level. Everything in life is potentially bad, therefore, fear itself is logical. But not rational.

Logial, but irrational: Arachnophobia - spiders could potentially have a poisonous bite. However, the odds of running into one of those spiders in your house, in the Northeast, is very low.

Some fears are logical and rational: Jumping out of an airplane without a parachute.

Some are utterly illogical and irrational: Stepping on cracks in the sidewalk could induce deadly earthquakes. But even then there is some semblance of logic; there is a direct, albeit weak, connection between sidewalk structural integrity and plate tectonics. An utterly illogical fear would be...hmmm I'm hard-pressed to think of one...Because a truly illogical fear would be a fear of something completely impossible. Anything is possible with one's own mind, and since fears deal moreso with preventing the anxious state of mind, rather than the stimulus directly, any thinkable fear is a logical fear.

To sum up the 4th possible case, it's pretty much impossible to have an illogical, yet rational fear (if its rational, it poses some real threat, therefore a logical reason to fear it).


So on that note, back to fear itself. Most fears are really not fears of something bad happening, but the fear of being in the state of fear. And that is why FDR's quote is repeated nearly ad-nauseum. Because it's so freaking true. (Magistra Sugarman's quote "ab ovum usque ad malum," is equally as true, in context, but nonetheless nauseating.)

So...what makes this period of time different...
Well, there is the utterly irremovable variable, which is time, and the dynamic nature of life.
But I have ingested a good deal of mugwort and wormwood. This actually strengthens the case for trying mushrooms, if only once. Other than that, maybe it is just the fact that I've had temper tantrums run the exact same course 999 times, and it took the 1000th one for something to click. I'm not a slow learner, just a really thorough one!! >.<