"The Dip"
I've spent the last few years revamping my life. Painstakingly. Facing fears one by one. Sometimes overcome by fear. Losing many battles with it. What do I mean by losing battles? Meaning, the fear wins. It becomes more real than me. Losing to fear means it attacks me, and I can no longer differentiate between it and me. My thoughts are the thoughts of my fear. My feelings, gripping my heart and mind, are those caused by fear.
For example, I fear a life of meaninglessness, purposelessness, disconnection. From this fear I produced POWERFUL longstanding memories of myself in a forest. There I am, alone. The only human left. Just time ticking, one second at a time, and despite being surrounded by nature and sounds of birds chirping and water running, all I can see, hear, and feel is eternity. I am nothing but living and breathing, restless and in pain. All my identities stripped from me. That of x-athlete, funny girl, goof ball, computer scientist, nerd. It's all gone. Just me, figuring out how to spend each long, stretched out second of my life. Picturing the sum of all the seconds my life may last. How to emptily fill it. What's the point.
Sometimes I feel this way when I am around people. I am surrounded by family, or friends, and I feel complete disconnection. Like I am back in that forest. Even though they are right there in front of me. They are all there, but I have momentarily forgotten the feeling of belonging. Who I am is nothing but a figment of my momentary manic imagination of the past. They say "thank you", I say "you're welcome". They say "I love you", I say "I love you too". Although I don't exist, I hold on to my faith that if I play along for long enough, I will reappear. My identities will come flooding back to me. Until then, I feel every second, frantically search for distraction. Eat something, chew, chew. I am invisible and I am falling at a rapidly increasing pace. During these periods of time, I force myself through life. I wake up and know, by faith, if I get moving, get eating, get drinking my hot cocoa, make it to the gym, do exercise that shuts my thinking mind off, I will somehow not end up where I am, in my head. The outside, it makes no difference, I just know I need to not be where I am inside my head. People wonder why I am so "easy going". Because I have learned there is nothing more important than not being in certain places inside my internal safari. Outside, whether doing something "fun", or "working", or "relaxing", I could care less. It is my internal jungle I am navigating. When I am at a peak found in my internal jungle, the sunset seen on the outside comes alive, connected to everything and all. When I am at a valley in my internal jungle, that same sunset might as well be a blank white wall, blood splattered and slowly dripping down.
I have had these images since early childhood. Attached to these images/memories are dark, DARK, Leora feelings. Even the thought of these feelings make my heart sink and can bring tears to my eyes. They are feelings of loneliness, helplessness, pain, torture, fear, sadness, despair, all wrapped into one, melted into a volatile swirling pitch black candy cane dripping of eternal hell.
By writing the paragraph above, I am able to put myself in what I call a "depression".
Now, follow along, as I will bring us out of it.
I picture my 5 year old self. Holding up a branch for my brother. He told me to keep it held up. I am a mountain. I am the stream. I give my cute nasal sounding 5 year old self a hug. Watch her run and find fascination with something I remember long ago made me curious. Although at this point I still feel depressed, disconnected from interest, curiosity, humor caring, I can start conjuring up memories of times I didn't feel this way. I look through my journal.
Flipping through my journal now I find the following:
"Be yourself, everyone else is taken."
Pages of mathematical formulae.
Crotchless underwear. (AHAHAHAAH so funny to me, I remember joking around with people on this subject)
More mathematics. Vector mathematics, statistics. Slowly I am learning, understanding more and more of it. Allowing it to sink into my thinking. The intuition of thinking in terms of statistics as I look at leaves on the tree. Probabilities. Distances. Relationships. MMMM. Beautifulllll. Magicalllll. (I am now starting to feel more removed from my depressed attachment)
3D drawings I made
Notes about systems engineering as I engross myself in my new JPL environment. Data. How they think there. New worlds of thinking. Exposed to me. How lucky am I.
"When we learn something new, we uncover the deeper dimension of our self which was always aware of this truth." I had this written, likely a quote I had found and connected to.
A to do list:
-Adjust for inflation fy: NORMALIZE costs
-Model has room for optimization
- fill data
- + data
- ADAPTABILITY/ROBUSTNESS cost family, uncertainty vs. risk
(I start feeling love for myself, my learning, my life. Starting to feel more removed from those dark lonely forest images)
"If someone handed your body over to a passerby, you would be annoyed. Aren't you ashamed that you hadn over your mind to anyone around?" A quote I connected to, so I wrote in my diary.
Another part of the journal I write
Dear Leora,
It has been so nice to meet you lately. I understand you have an issue with "Taking in nature". I'm so very sorry. I never meant to make you feel that way in that regard.
You are so wonderful.
You are free from danger.
You are free from danger.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live life with ease.
When you are out staring at nature or panicking, stick one ear, open it wide, listen for my voice.
Trust me,
trust me,
trust me,
trust me.
I want you to live free from danger.
I want you to be happy, Leora.
I want you to be healthy.
I want you to live life with ease.
Every moment is a memory in your life. Make them YOURS.
MAKE THEM YOURS.
I felt me again.
Doing it for me.
Doing things for me, every little thing.
Me, my life, the ones I love.
Simplify
How does nature
Keep things
simple.
They say reality is our gr8est teacher
"The here and now"
"No more, no less"
Things are so obvious and simple to the genius
The genius human
The genius nature
The genius universe
They make it look easy, don't they?
The fluidity of intuition
Birds flying
Water flowing
Thoughts flowing
Trees slowly melting, bending towards the sun
Leaves outstretched
The world is your oyster
Purpose
If the trees were watching us
If the flowing river saw us
If the flying birds observed our thoughts
Wow.
At one time in our lives,
our parents delayed our gratification
Slowly, we become our own parents
Time for us to see ourselves off
To not have dessert until AFTER dinner
Eat all your peas
Take care of yourself
Make your own choices
Eating, living
Painting it
Painting my lifestyle
My persons
My family
My interactions
Help each other move out of the shadow cast by our thought habits and conditioning
For example, I fear a life of meaninglessness, purposelessness, disconnection. From this fear I produced POWERFUL longstanding memories of myself in a forest. There I am, alone. The only human left. Just time ticking, one second at a time, and despite being surrounded by nature and sounds of birds chirping and water running, all I can see, hear, and feel is eternity. I am nothing but living and breathing, restless and in pain. All my identities stripped from me. That of x-athlete, funny girl, goof ball, computer scientist, nerd. It's all gone. Just me, figuring out how to spend each long, stretched out second of my life. Picturing the sum of all the seconds my life may last. How to emptily fill it. What's the point.
Sometimes I feel this way when I am around people. I am surrounded by family, or friends, and I feel complete disconnection. Like I am back in that forest. Even though they are right there in front of me. They are all there, but I have momentarily forgotten the feeling of belonging. Who I am is nothing but a figment of my momentary manic imagination of the past. They say "thank you", I say "you're welcome". They say "I love you", I say "I love you too". Although I don't exist, I hold on to my faith that if I play along for long enough, I will reappear. My identities will come flooding back to me. Until then, I feel every second, frantically search for distraction. Eat something, chew, chew. I am invisible and I am falling at a rapidly increasing pace. During these periods of time, I force myself through life. I wake up and know, by faith, if I get moving, get eating, get drinking my hot cocoa, make it to the gym, do exercise that shuts my thinking mind off, I will somehow not end up where I am, in my head. The outside, it makes no difference, I just know I need to not be where I am inside my head. People wonder why I am so "easy going". Because I have learned there is nothing more important than not being in certain places inside my internal safari. Outside, whether doing something "fun", or "working", or "relaxing", I could care less. It is my internal jungle I am navigating. When I am at a peak found in my internal jungle, the sunset seen on the outside comes alive, connected to everything and all. When I am at a valley in my internal jungle, that same sunset might as well be a blank white wall, blood splattered and slowly dripping down.
I have had these images since early childhood. Attached to these images/memories are dark, DARK, Leora feelings. Even the thought of these feelings make my heart sink and can bring tears to my eyes. They are feelings of loneliness, helplessness, pain, torture, fear, sadness, despair, all wrapped into one, melted into a volatile swirling pitch black candy cane dripping of eternal hell.
By writing the paragraph above, I am able to put myself in what I call a "depression".
Now, follow along, as I will bring us out of it.
I picture my 5 year old self. Holding up a branch for my brother. He told me to keep it held up. I am a mountain. I am the stream. I give my cute nasal sounding 5 year old self a hug. Watch her run and find fascination with something I remember long ago made me curious. Although at this point I still feel depressed, disconnected from interest, curiosity, humor caring, I can start conjuring up memories of times I didn't feel this way. I look through my journal.
Flipping through my journal now I find the following:
"Be yourself, everyone else is taken."
Pages of mathematical formulae.
Crotchless underwear. (AHAHAHAAH so funny to me, I remember joking around with people on this subject)
More mathematics. Vector mathematics, statistics. Slowly I am learning, understanding more and more of it. Allowing it to sink into my thinking. The intuition of thinking in terms of statistics as I look at leaves on the tree. Probabilities. Distances. Relationships. MMMM. Beautifulllll. Magicalllll. (I am now starting to feel more removed from my depressed attachment)
3D drawings I made
Notes about systems engineering as I engross myself in my new JPL environment. Data. How they think there. New worlds of thinking. Exposed to me. How lucky am I.
"When we learn something new, we uncover the deeper dimension of our self which was always aware of this truth." I had this written, likely a quote I had found and connected to.
A to do list:
-Adjust for inflation fy: NORMALIZE costs
-Model has room for optimization
- fill data
- + data
- ADAPTABILITY/ROBUSTNESS cost family, uncertainty vs. risk
(I start feeling love for myself, my learning, my life. Starting to feel more removed from those dark lonely forest images)
"If someone handed your body over to a passerby, you would be annoyed. Aren't you ashamed that you hadn over your mind to anyone around?" A quote I connected to, so I wrote in my diary.
Another part of the journal I write
Dear Leora,
It has been so nice to meet you lately. I understand you have an issue with "Taking in nature". I'm so very sorry. I never meant to make you feel that way in that regard.
You are so wonderful.
You are free from danger.
You are free from danger.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live life with ease.
When you are out staring at nature or panicking, stick one ear, open it wide, listen for my voice.
Trust me,
trust me,
trust me,
trust me.
I want you to live free from danger.
I want you to be happy, Leora.
I want you to be healthy.
I want you to live life with ease.
Every moment is a memory in your life. Make them YOURS.
MAKE THEM YOURS.
I felt me again.
Doing it for me.
Doing things for me, every little thing.
Me, my life, the ones I love.
Simplify
How does nature
Keep things
simple.
They say reality is our gr8est teacher
"The here and now"
"No more, no less"
Things are so obvious and simple to the genius
The genius human
The genius nature
The genius universe
They make it look easy, don't they?
The fluidity of intuition
Birds flying
Water flowing
Thoughts flowing
Trees slowly melting, bending towards the sun
Leaves outstretched
The world is your oyster
Purpose
If the trees were watching us
If the flowing river saw us
If the flying birds observed our thoughts
Wow.
At one time in our lives,
our parents delayed our gratification
Slowly, we become our own parents
Time for us to see ourselves off
To not have dessert until AFTER dinner
Eat all your peas
Take care of yourself
Make your own choices
Eating, living
Painting it
Painting my lifestyle
My persons
My family
My interactions
"We have a singular capacity to take responsibility for our unique piece of what it means to be alive, at least while we have our brief moment in the sun. "
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