Progress

(Content is difficult to phrase, so I imagine I will return and revise the words from time to time)

One day in mid-May, I realized that I was in Hell and that I wanted out at any cost.

I began again the struggle to believe that if I committed myself to small changes,
that in the unforeseeable future, I would eventually be somewhere different.

I imagined the abstract day in which I would make it far enough to look back from somewhere different.

And I did progress in increments, the website happier.com and the book Reality Therapy both being instrumental in giving me particular thoughts and direction.

I tried to practice discipline of intention.
I followed the exercises, hoping to practice recognition of my own positive traits until I believed them myself, trusting in the claims of the exercises because they were my only map, consisting of an arrow pointing forward and away.

I noticed something that I think a friend recently called 'dignity' coming from within, apparently having been summoned by a vacuum, and by a realization that not only I would never acquire it from anything or anyone else, but without it, I would not make it very far.

May wasn't all that long ago.



Recently, a friend of mine - who had previously brought up ideas of hell and getting used to it - noticed some 'unhealthy looking people' near a bus stop and mentioned that it reminded him of some dark years of his own life.
made me remember too.

He presented his wonder at the small miracle of waking up each day and still recognizing himself as himself.

Today, I talked with a philosophy friend of mine - with whom I walked a strikingly similar terrain, though through different paths in the darker parts of the cave - and we still recognize each other.

We came through in increments, tiny struggling increments, but are far enough to look back on where we were before, as well as who we were before. But we still recognize ourselves.

I have made it to the days I imagined - to a future that is different than the past I hoped to leave.

I have made it to the person I thought I was and that I wanted to be, and I am grateful for the friends who have been patient and who recognize me.

The three of us all are conscious of the depths of our personal hells,
and of managing ourselves and our environments positively and carefully so as to never return, now that we are far enough to see where the pits we recognize begin.

.. therefore, our lives will be awesome