Have been pondering (and experiencing recently) the interesting academic questions and analysis prolonged exposure to emotional pain allows. At some point, you can almost feel your perspective shift in real time – quantifying the emotion somewhat as you learn to zoom in, out, above, and around it. In my experience thus far, I’ve not been able to cast off or kill the carnal emotions but can certainly perceive a weird, dual-role experience in which I’m still feeling and reeling from hard emotion but also able to observe myself in that space like a researcher.

And when those emotions are particularly strong and hard and suck on some days, that’s when that duality becomes most pronounced and weird. So what do I do on really bad days? I’m starting to watch and feel some vague interest in finding out, like Lauren is a character in a story that I can mind-game myself into engaging from a distance.

I don’t know if any of this is healthy. Just trying to make it through.

-LS