There's both happiness, and sadness, weirdly enough.  I'm in a strange in-between, where I see both the light and the darkness all at once.  It feels as if the seasons themselves were undecided.  I remember it was really warm recently, but I also remember that it was cloudy and raining.

During this time, I still find myself falling back on enduring habits.  Steady as ever, though so many things.  There are little changes, here and there, of course.  Course corrections, perhaps, or perhaps simply the effect of the winds.

I spent some time yesterday looking up what people's experiences were like when they tried to stop talking for an extended period of time, like a week, or even a year.  Vows of silence.  I wondered to myself what it would be like for me.  It feels a bit silly to call it a "vow" of silence, personally, because I feel like it just wouldn't be something I'd be desperate to break.  Of course, talking is something that is second-nature to me, so it might be a little weird to get used to, but it might honestly be an "excuse" to let sort of a true version of myself shine through.  Well, for a certain interesting definition of "true" at least.  Honestly, though, I feel like it would feel more liberating than constricting.  Is that funny?  I feel like being put in a situation where you are expected to talk, where you are forced to talk, is one of the worst things to be trapped in, sometimes.  What if you just, never =had= to talk?  That's really what I would be exploring.  But eh, it's not something in my near future, just due to practical reasons.  Maybe someday.  Or I could just do a variation where I meet up with various friends and spend time with them where neither of us talk with each other.  Haha.  But yeah, I wonder.  It's sort of like how wearing a mask can also sort of make me feel more "free" in that I don't have to worry about what my smile or mouth looks like.

I noticed for the past few days, that I had trouble with my appetite.  Thankfully, that seems to have gone back to normal now, which I think is an impressively good sign.  But it was honestly a bit....nostalgic?  To feel this sort of anxiety and stress, maybe even uncertainty and self-loathing (?), and to have it affect my eating.  I think when I had this before, I just never really noticed it as odd because....that just sort of felt normal to me.  But now, it really struck me how obvious it was.  I stopped midway through lunch and just realized that I wasn't hungry anymore.  And that it was so obvious that it was due to my mental and emotional state.  To think, that I went through so much of my life feeling this way...

Somehow I've been getting a little emotional while cooking.  I'm not entirely sure why.  I guess it just....feels good.  It makes me feel...proud?  Happy?  Maybe it just makes me feel useful.  Worthwhile.  There were a few days when I wasn't really excited about cooking at all...probably because the people who I enjoyed cooking for most were not there.  But now it's back to normal.  It's back to helping to sustain me.  And yeah, I noticed a little bit, that I was getting emotional.

Sadly, working out somewhat strenuously seems to have more of a negative emotional effect on me every once in a while.  This is related to my recent hardships, I feel like.  That feeling of not only inadequacy, but also just wanting to push yourself harder and harder, for no good reason.  Ah, I guess I mentioned this a week ago too.  I think it's that feeling that you =want= to make yourself feel bad.  They say sometimes that depression is anger turned toward the self.  I think probably the reason I feel this acute emotion sometimes is because treating myself poorly physically resolves a sort of cognitive dissonance -- if you think you deserve crap, that you're worthless, then treating yourself (or having yourself treated) that way will "make sense", in a way.  Fortunately, I'm a little more balanced in this feeling, so I don't currently have thoughts of self-harm, or even self-loathing.  But there is a bit of that sort of emotion, still, I think.