I Dream of Vengeance

The title of this blog comes from a discussion I had with a friend in which we discovered we shared a fatal flaw. Please feel free to comment but be kind to me and others. This is not a place that you are entitled to be no matter who you are; this is for me.

[melodicwriter]

[idreamofvengeance]

I Dream of Vengeance turned 2 today!

Ngl I find it a little bit funny that today was one of the worst mental health days I have had in a while.

[animentality]

I sometimes think about the letter KA Applegate posted for her fans who were disappointed by the ending of her series, and while I understand simply not liking how a story ends, I really respect her reasoning.

Like you can dislike the ending, that's fine.

But her reasoning is very interesting to read. And I really enjoy the framing of the anti war message.

[idreamofvengeance]

I agree with her reasoning and I like the ending. As someone who started the books in the late 90s as a child, and finished them in the mid 00s as a teenager, I never once felt that the books spoke down to me as a reader. Even as they were kids books (YA was not really a thing at that time) or at least marketed towards kids and teens, there was always a sense of respect and realism that was woven into the story.

Animorphs never glorified war and violence the way most other media does. Well, maybe I should reread them. But as far as my memories go, the thing I always remember from those books is that war is hell. And those books were very, very dark.

[idreamofvengeance]

Singularity

I have been thinking about trauma. When I reminiscence, or am triggered, I feel an endless amount of hatred flow through me. I understand the mechanics of thought; namely that thinking originates in the brain. But I feel as though the hatred starts in a part of me that is beyond my body.

A black hole is an object which is so dense that - beyond a certain point - nothing can escape from it. Even light. At the centre is what scientists call a "singularity". This is the point at which gravity and density are infinite. Infinite in the extreme; space, matter and even time are warped beyond human understanding.

This hatred begins somewhere so deeply ingrained into my psyche that it is my very own singularity. Everything is crushed and warped in the infinity of my singularity. But unlike a black hole, the hatred pours out. And oh, how it has learnt from my singularity. It is infinite. It seeps out in a trickle and into my brain and whispers to me "Remember what happened", and "Think about who hurt you and how happy they are now while you rot". It gets stronger, and goes deep into my chest, choking me all the way. "This is the same path", it screams. I know it is a part of me because of how angry it feels. It makes my mind feel validated. It is so powerful.

Finally it reaches my heart where it becomes fuel; and my heart, an inferno. If nothing can escape my singularity, nothing can enter my inferno. My hatred pours into every cell in my body. My limbs are aflame, and my mind screams in rage. If my fists could hit them, they would. If my teeth would bite them, they would. If my nails could tear their throats, it would.

The thing is, I do not hate everyone or everything. I hate, specifically, the people who have hurt me and who hurt others. I think that I have been through the stages of grief. I've denied and pretended nothing was wrong. I've been angry before, and lashed out as part of the denial. I think I skipped bargaining, because I do not blame myself for what was done to me. Depression is the more obvious one, because that has lasted a long time and it comes and goes in waves. But after I gained acceptance, I did not achieve this sort of enlightened wisdom that comes from grieving. I was grieving for time and for my younger self, but I also grieve for my current self and maybe I need to examine this again.

And when I realise that I only burn myself, the inferno cools down. I am left sad once more, now I feel that I grieve again. The heat that just now has filled my being now seeps out of my skin into the air. My limbs are heavy and my chest is not tight. My jaw is not clenched and, sometimes, my eyes weep. The fire is gone out.

But the fuel remains.

This has been therapeutic and I am in a better mood. They say that writing is good for you, and I agree. I love writing.

[idreamofvengeance]

Avoidance

Ever since learning about avoidant behaviour and how it can be severe enough to be a personality disorder, I have been surprised by my reaction to things. I think that deep down I was aware of it on some level but internally I always tried to rationalise it in strange ways that might not seem connected to someone experiencing reality the same way as I do.

An example, I have a job interview later today and I am now writing this because I felt like looking up story competitions for fantasy writing. It's odd because when it comes to career progress, I end up hanging onto my dream. But when it comes to following my dream, I end up distracting myself with anime or TV or movies or doomscrolling.

I will have to explore this at some point and also make a point of discussing it with my mental healthcare providers.

[idreamofvengeance]

Job Hunt more like Job Cunt

The more I think of it, suffering from mental health problems and personality disorders is one thing. Having those exacerbated by unemployment is another. It is just the worst when you're excited to apply for a job but then you get rejected after spending time making an application. And internally it is also that I don't even like working! Or careers! Or jobs! I just want to have fun and be able to do things I enjoy, and I want to get paid for it. I don't understand why that is so wrong because so many people seem to be able to do that. It's just weird because I don't have any "adult" interests like stock markets and padel, or whatever the fuck else functioning adults enjoy doing.

I've been wondering whether it is because of my ADHD and anxiety that I feel rejections like this so strongly. It often feels that when companies reject me from jobs, they are all looking at me and laughing amongst themselves. It doesn't matter whether it was a face-to-face interview, a video interview, a phone call or even if I get an automated message from a website. I understand that this is not rational but knowing that doesn't really make a difference. It just feels like I am going to die useless and alone and that makes me cry.

[animentality]

[idreamofvengeance]

Agree with this. Written by liberals. Ha. That goes beyond "all violence is bad" and is closer to "violence in response to violence is worse". Zaheer was cool. Red Lotus were cool.

[idreamofvengeance]

12th January 2024

So I had an interesting and horrible experience today that I must speak about. I am currently looking for Vorellix and haven't taken it in a few days. My dad is assisting me with it for which I am very grateful because he is a doctor and has experience in this field.

Last night we were speaking about the front gate and how I needed a key for it. It was not the end of the world but we had discussed this many times before. At the moment the back staircase is unstable because the wood is being replaced. Only I use it all the time so it is hard to explain to people why it keeps causing me injuries. But the person who added the wooden boards to it was lazy and didn't want to mix cement. What he did was just add a few wooden planks as support and built a staircase over it. It was unstable and always creaked, sagged and wobbled.

I would always hurt my left Achilles tendon on it and eventually my parents agreed to redo it, for which I am very grateful. This brings us to today.

When I woke up, I took my ADHD medication and put some clothes in the washing machine. Then I tried to go upstairs through the front entrance and veranda. I was afraid that my mum had not left the key on the gate. When I got there, I noticed that the key was indeed not on the gate. This made me fly into a rage that I felt I didn't have much control over and things spiralled.

I was banging on the gate hoping that someone was there to open it for me even though I knew that nobody was there. Then I went back down the stairs, and started slamming the gate at the bottom of the staircase until the latch bent backwards. I tried to secure it in place and continued going back downstairs. I opened the other gate, the circular padlock is not something I really mind but when I'm stressed it becomes annoying because there are so many locks and doors and gates. So I slammed that gate shut. I latched the stable-style door and then I was faced with another door and gate combination. I unlatched that gate and then kicked that stable door in frustration. Thankfully it didn't have a lock that was slow to get through. Then I walked into the downstairs area and was met with another stable door. This one had a latch on the wall that was loose and because it irritated me to open and close, I started kicking the bottom part of the door until it was in pieces. I felt so angry with myself for doing that that when I climbed up the broken staircase and got inside the house, I started banging another stable door against the wall until it broke in half. This sudden shock calmed me down a bit and I realised that I had broken two doors and damaged another, as well as a gate.

I felt so stupid and pathetic and hopeless and out of control for doing that. And the worst part is that because I had heard my mum's car leaving, I was worried that she had not left the key on the front door's gate and I should rather just go upstairs through the back staircase. And if I had done that, then I could have avoided all of this unnecessary rage and other negativity.

I am feeling a bit better now but still like what the actual fuck. I must speak to my psychiatrist about this. I always think about the term "violence without a victim" because I know I have a tendency to slam doors. And when I was younger (school age) to throw objects. Apparently I also used to get into fights as a primary and pre-school age kid and hit older cousins when I was a few years old. So this is a thing that goes back. I have a tendency to respond really badly to things like this. As an adult I know that I won't do that but I am still really upset with myself for reacting so poorly. I really do try to be good. And yesterday was such a good day.

I feel better now, what is done is done. But for fucks sake, I wish I didn't do these things.

[idreamofvengeance]

What Happened to You?

At the moment I am in Cape Town. It is 23rd December 2023, at 2029h as I am writing this. I am staying in my cousin's old room at my aunt and uncle's house. I am painfully aware that my anxiety is keeping me from going out and socialising with everyone. Today I woke up later than usual and I stayed home while they went out to the waterfront.

As the day progressed, a childhood memory came to my mind. Due to my trouble remembering things, I get very happy when I do remember something. I can't remember when it was but I know that I was a kid. My dad took us to see somebody, it might have been a family member or a friend or even a patient of his. The person is not important. What I do remember is that there was a guy there who was playing a Capcom game emulator on his computer. I think he was playing 1942. I remember this because I think that at the time I was a kid and we had a similar game emulator. My dad had bought it for us in Malaysia so this was definitely in the 00s.

I remember because to my kid brain, he seemed older so I don't recall his age. He might have been a teenager or an adult, I couldn't say. But something else from that day (maybe it was my dad seeming sad and using the tone he does when talking about something tragic) made me think that the person playing those games might have been mentally ill.

Lately I have been feeling like playing video games again. I stopped years ago to focus on work but what the fuck has work ever done for me? It just made me sad and angry at the unfairness of the world. Maybe listening to Heaven and Hell by Black Sabbath right now is helping me feel this way. But honestly I think subconsciously my mind was made up in June 2023. I have one life. If I want to live a silly life full of video games and fun, why not? Why shouldn't I work a job that makes sense for me? Why can't I see that Randal Graves was right the whole time?

Truthfully, I just want to live a quiet life and play video games and exercise. That's it. I still want to write but I don't want to deal with people all the time.

I don't know what happened to that person playing 1942. I hope that he is happy. I just know that I see myself in my memory of him and I can't explain why.

[idreamofvengeance]

Weed, Eating and Self-Harm

Current medication: Vorellix 10mg and Amfexa 10mg.

I was given an interesting thought by my psychiatrist in our initial consult which still sticks in my mind. The idea is that overeating can be a form of self-harm. In this regard, I will have to preface this with a trigger warning for eating disorders and their effects on the body.

Weight

The last time I weighed myself was 10th October 2023. At the time the scale read 88kg, take off a kilogram for shoes, clothes and contents of pockets and I felt that 87kg was a fair representation of my weight. My age was 32 at that time.

As an adult, the lowest I recall my weight being is 71.4kg. This would have been around 2018 when I was obsessively tracking calories, exercising every morning at 5am and following a vegan diet at the time. As happy as I was with the weight loss over a few months, I eventually stopped as the realities of life started to hit me.

Since then, my weight has fluctuated in between 72kg and 90kg. I think that around the start of July 2023 I would have been pushing 90kg and this was confirmed in October 2023 at my weigh-in. Since starting my Amfexa at the very least I have been consistent with working out as well as not eating too badly.

Eating and Weed

Even without munchies I have a tendency to overeat and eat because I am bored. I genuinely feel that stress-eating is something I am conscious of doing but I don't really have any conscious control over it all the time. Sometimes when I start I just can't stop. This is behaviour that I know alcoholics experience with drinking.

When I have munchies it is on another level where I will continuously eat without ever stopping.

The good news is that the Amfexa has a side effect of suppressing my appetite for which I am very glad. I am actually a bit worried that if I was not on it, I would continue to eat a lot.

The reason I am writing this is that I take a day off gym in the week to kind of recover and refeed because I eat at a calorie deficit for the other six days of the week. Yesterday (02nd December 2023) was meant to be that day. However I was out the house and walking around all day so around 8k steps is pretty decent compared to my usual activity. But I also smoked some weed and I ate more than I should have on a normal refeed day.

So my eating yesterday was as follows:

Breakfast - a little bit of cornflakes and milk.

Lunch - Americano and cannelloni with beef mince and cheese. This was at a restaurant for lunch with my mum at maybe 1300h

At around 1700h I smoked a joint. It was an outdoor pre-roll, very cheap. After this I ate as follows: microwave popcorn, my usual home filter coffee, a smaller than usual slice of carrot cake, two crumbed chicken drumsticks with one roti and one multi-seed wrap as well as a big bowl of carrot salad with vinegar dressing (no oil in the salad), two slices of brown toast with a haas avocado from the six-pack with salt, pepper and sriracha, a small bowl of vanilla ice cream with eight small squares of Cadbury milk chocolate, and a mug of my usual home tea. This was between 1700h and 2300h.

In all honesty I was a bit afraid until now because I actually lost track of the cake and could not remember what I had eaten entirely. But now that I do recall I feel much more relieved about the loss of control with food. If I am being honest I normally would not have eaten the cake and the ice cream. This is very interesting because I think if I was not feeling a high level of stress yesterday I would not have eaten those things.

For the day I figure my calories consumed were around 3200 calories which is much more than I have eaten in a while both in terms of volume and caloric density. As I am reflecting on this I realise that I am actually happy about one thing; I did not order UberEats and I did not binge on fast food. This is a huge victory for me and the refeed day, even though it did get out of control with the cake and ice cream, was a success even on weed!

Aftermath

The aftermath is that I had massive shits today. But they were not painful or bad. They were consistent and smoother than my usual binge-eating aftereffects. And I am happy to note that I am feeling fine. I did not go to the gym today because I think that yesterday actually necessitated a rest. I did legs on 01st December 2023 and then the walking yesterday plus food made me think that future refeed days need to be days that I work out on.

Another interesting thing, to go back to the start of this post, is the aspect of self-harm. I definitely do not "feel good" today compared to other days in terms of my physical well-being. It sounds foolish to say but I did not really ever consider the effects of overeating except for weight gain. My mood is better than usual as well. This makes me think that self-harm through overeating is something that I would do unconsciously. And now that I am conscious of it, it is something that I do not do. Try as I might, I cannot mark yesterday's refeed as a total loss of control or as self-harm via eating.

Today I have just eaten a large bowl of cornflakes. It is important to note that when I say "large" now, this was a normal amount to me before. I think I am going to have some avocado and toast with sat and sriracha just now because it is 1700h and I am feeling hungry. At the same time I think this might be my last meal for today because I don't feel like I am starving.

Conclusion

Unrelated to the topic but I am a bit worried about my prescription for the next month. I have been prescribed Vyvanse and I want to take it if I can get it because pharmacies have low stock. And in this regard I am uncertain if I should continue with the Amfexa if I can't get the Vyvanse.

Oh well, we will see.

xoxo

[idreamofvengeance]

Night 1 - 10 & 11 October 2023 (1800h - 0200h)

What an interesting drug. I have been prescribed this for anxiety and depression. Whilst my psychiatrist and I both understand that the depression itself is brought on by bipolar disorder and ADHD, I think that maybe from a diagnostic and treatment perspective it is more important to treat the more severe and dangerous symptoms first.

As it relates to patient/client care, I agree with this. As it relates to ADHD, I kind of want to immediately be "right" at once. I have trouble with organisation so this might seem like random ramblings but I think it is a bit cathartic. Especially as I just "feel" better and I think it is important to note this for my own memory as much as for the sake of writing.

So. The prescription is 10mg for 30 days to be taken nightly. I think I will set an alarm on my phone [I just did. I chose the alarm tone "cuckoo" because I cannot escape my black sense of humour]. This itself feels like a win because I didn't just ponder and fixate on it.

I want to log something very interesting. My mum cooked beans curry tonight, I love it and am eternally grateful that she goes out of her way in this regard. We also had the water cut off due to repairs of an important pump in this area. These details are unimportant save to add some flavour to what is, I believe, to become an important memory. When my dad goes to bed, he empties the pots out and puts the remaining food in the fridge. He is cursed with the same night owl gene that I have. Maybe there is some underlying anxiety disorder there, but I can feel myself getting side-tracked so I will try to stay on topic.

Because there was no water to add to the empty pot, the smell of curry permeated the kitchen and staircase going down to my room. Ordinarily I would have become furious in the late hours of the night and spent so much time angrily fixating on what to my manic mind would seem like insurmountable odds. It would feel like the entire world was conspiring against me specifically for the purposes of (as I would think) irritating the shit out of me. This would in turn make me even angrier, and then I would feel hopeless and get sad.

Instead I just went upstairs, put a little bit of water into the dirty pot from what was remaining in the pipes and the kettle. Then I mixed in some of the dishwashing solution that my mum and dad use, and rinsed the pot out a bit. I used a paper towel to wipe what was on the rim of the pot, and then soaked a corner of it in the same solution (Sunlight and water) and wiped it cleaner. Then, I opened the small window in the dining room and lit an agarbatti in my room for a few minutes and then moved it to the staircase.

Now I realise that to a normal person this might seem like an insignificant event, but merely the fact that I was able to not fly into a rage feels huge to me. So I think that it is of the utmost importance that I log this.

xoxo

[lascapigliata]

tony soprano privacy rights activist

[idreamofvengeance]

Opening Statements

Recent events in my life have made me realise that simply writing things down for myself isn't as helpful as it should be. Fantasising endlessly about what I should have done, what I should be doing, and what I will do is entirely pointless.

What I need is a space where I can just scream endlessly into the void and maybe do so anonymously as well. So I have made the decision to not tell anyone about this blog that knows me irl.

If you are reading this, please feel free to stay. Please be kind to everyone if possible. I think it is also important to note that this is not a space for you, it is mine. If you want to stick around, it is important that you respect this.

Finally, this is not a space for your political agenda. I will be going into detail about my opinions so lets just get this out of the way; I am a leftist.

I have a few things planned out but for now, welcome!

[hoyatype]

Discipline is not a lack of freedom, it is a harmonious relationship with time. Managing your schedule and daily habits well is a necessary component to free up the practical and creative capacity to make great art.

rick rubin, the creative act