It feels like when I remember the feelings I had when I was the leader of Syzygy, the stress, the lack of support, the unending criticism, the grueling daily work with no reward, the gradual suspicion and eventual certainty that I am a terrible leader and human being who doesn’t deserve to exist in this world…. this triggers a heightened awareness, a constant fight or flight state of mind.

In this state of mind, I am unable to relax, and unable to deal with anything in life. I recently have been trying to learn how to relax again, and for the past couple of months I have started reading my “comfort books” (books I read tens if not hundreds of times when I was younger). I’ve been rereading Sherlock Holmes recently and have been discovering, to my delight, that I no longer always know every detail after just reading the first sentence of each story. But tonight I cannot read it. I cannot relax enough to absorb what I’m reading.

I finally understand why for years, it was all I could do to play hours and hours of games like candy crush. Games that don’t require much thought but require enough attention to numb my mind. It didn’t relax me much, but it numbed me so I didn’t realize that for years, I have never left that fight or flight state of mind.