Entry from a few weeks ago
The past few nights and days, my mind has been in such instability. Chaos, like an incomplete puzzle that can’t be put together.
I’m afraid to take any of my stimulants — the Adderall, the Vyvanse — because it’ll make me manic. And then I crash from the mania, having a schizophrenic rage episode. And I see red. And the rage turns inward, and just about everything under the sun irritates me, or makes me angry enough to die if something is taken away. Just like God did with the plant with Jonah. Let the reader understand.
It’s been sobering to see how Black Ops One and Two was released a few days ago. Black Ops One was my first ever Call of Duty I played. It would have been around 2011 for me, my seventh — eighth grade year. Countless hours played on it. Black Ops Two was probably arguably my favorite, where I had some of the best memories of all time concerning my gaming history: the friends I played with and met.
I was looking at old screenshots on my ancient Instagram page that no longer exists. I wonder where these people are at, the hundreds of hours we spent together playing. I can only wish they’re alive and well, and that I will see them in heaven, in eternity’s past.
I was able to reach out to an old friend. She was a part of the gaming group that we had. Originally, I met her on Modern Warfare III. It was on Search and Destroy, both of us just acting like utter fools, camping in the back corner of the map we were playing on. It was the rainy map bakarra I think? I can’t remember the name of it. But I remember the day like it was just yesterday.
I reached out to her, sharing that they dropped Black Ops One and Two on PS5. She wasn’t aware. We caught up a little bit, and she said she had another child, which I had no idea she had children recently. This made me very happy to hear. We reminisced on the people we used to play with — our small friend group from Modern Warfare 3. That would have been around 14 years ago. I believe she’s the longest online gaming friend that I’ve known and I’m still in touch with. The rest of the people from that era, I don’t know if they’re even alive or where they’re at anymore.
I have appreciated these bonds that I’ve made along the way and have been able to play with. My online friends recently, reliving the memories of playing — it wasn’t hard to get used to the movement again, the hundreds and thousands of hours I put into those games.
I have not been okay lately. I will be talking to people, and I cannot express the inward pressure and sheer despondency inside the spiritual turmoil, and the yearning to utterly die, or to have some sort of fit of rage. I say these things, and it sickens me — the morbidity of my thoughts and my heart. It seems like, whenever I consider my condition, I’m just full of lust, anger, pride. And the sight of me sickens me. I’ve been carrying this for who knows how long.
I can’t even think about heaven or hell anymore. My mind is so traumatized from the thought of the lake of fire, eternal judgment, and damnation — the fact that there’s people in hell right now as we speak.
I had to go to therapy today. It was common grace that kept me alive, because I was dugging out, trying to see the road. But from the sorrow and deep depression I was feeling in my heart, I was starting to fall asleep on the highway, seeing double. But I was able to snap out of it. I almost pulled over to sleep. Combining that with the multiple sclerosis fatigue, it was just a nightmare.
Before therapy started, I parked at this gas station, and my body finally collapsed. I fell into a deep slumber until my alarm went off. I wasn’t even angry. I was just completely numb. Genuinely sorrowful unto death. I think of Christ’s words where he says, “I am sorrowful unto death.” That’s how I felt.
I was listening to music to try and drown out my thoughts. The only thing raging in my head was me feeling condemned — sad, anxious. And my mind was literally breaking. The frustration of dealing with that financially, with the multiple sclerosis. I can’t hold a steady job. I have to do freelance video editing, but it’s not self-sustainable nor livable. And it makes me angry that I have a body that fails me.
I’ve had to go through so many different jobs, running in a damn circle like a rat, not knowing what the hell was going on with me. Getting into a car accident because I was falling asleep. Wonder why I’m always tired, having to leave work from fear of damnation and the auditory sounds of hell beneath me. What the hell was God doing, sitting there not doing jack, laughing at me? And I hated him for that. I despised how he forsook me in those days.
The scripture says he’ll never leave you or forsake you. But I wouldn’t bet a dime on it that he kept me those days. He sat there and did nothing. He enjoyed my suffering, and I despised him for it in those days. And when I recall the work now, a part of me still does despise God for that.
Wondering why has hell been so confusing for me? I see other Christians get a one, two, three step program. But I’m wandering around Babylon, not knowing where the hell I’m even at.
Finally, whenever I saw my therapist, I couldn’t even get the words out. I could only cover my face. She told me that it looks like I just got done staring at the void. And I agreed. After I woke up from that nap, there was such dissociation where I could have been a different person, as if life itself wasn’t even real.
At first, I told her, “I don’t even know who I am.” Namely, I know who I am. It’s just that I don’t think about myself. I have to suppress it. I find my identity in what I do. I don’t find self-worth in Christ because I don’t feel I have an identity in God. So my identity is based around what I can do for others and myself. It’s an idol. What can you expect whenever you have a god that produces waters that fail, and promises that are delayed — not broken, but delayed. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. And my heart is sickly beyond any measure. Staying busy distracts me from the distain I feel about myself
And with this world being so broken — I will see someone disabled, not looking down upon them in pity, but there’s times I have to depart and cry silently. Because I know how mean and harsh this world is. Or if I see a Facebook post, someone with a disability just saying how they’re looking for a partner, and the innocence and purity in their eyes, and the genuine joy, and the yearning for companionship — I can see the purity, but also hurt in their eyes. These things are upon me, and they make me cry very much.
This world is so damn broken. I know Christ died for us. This is a screwed up place and existence, full of suffering and pain. I just want the whole population to stop reproducing children — to not bear them into this world of pain. The command, “Be fruitful and multiply” — I can’t say that I’m actively pursuing that, nor do I desire to have offspring, off the genuine chance that I will curse them with the very genetics I carry in my body, mentally and physically. Not that the children are evil. It’s just that this world is very hard sometimes.
I kept talking with her. I told her how the past few days I’ve had people speak very positive things over me, but in my own hardness of heart, it’s like I couldn’t even receive it. Because of the standard that I hold myself to, and the self-esteem spiritually I have is so low, and of such ambiguity, melancholy, instability. But then I’ll be manic, and it’s like I hold myself in such a high esteem where I could conquer the world. But then whenever it ends, I want to die.
She somberly, soberly told me, “You just don’t love yourself.” More so as a statement and a question. It didn’t hurt my feelings. It’s just that — how intently and serious she looked at me. She meant it. But she had a genuine compassion and sorrow for me concerning that.
I was sharing with her how people say they want me around, but I don’t want me around. And I don’t understand why people would like me, especially concerning romantically. I don’t see it. Maybe I refuse to see it.
I told her how I have the recurring thoughts of the day that my family won’t be here forever. And that’s whenever I started crying. The thought of me having to be alone here — I can’t bear it. I cannot bear it.
She said some other things that lifted my spirits. And eventually, whenever the session was over, I did some DoorDashing to make some extra change. But then the voices came back, the void, the darkness returned. As if everything was closing in on me. And then the anger returned. So I drove home and collapsed into another deep sleep. Woke up, played some Black Ops Two, and then I got off.
I do look forward to school starting next month. My goal to be a licensed therapist — I truly do believe it’s my calling. It’s just that I live in this pendulum swinging in my head, if I will live to see it or not. I’m not saying that I’m gonna take my life. But the fact that I know life can be cut so short so quickly — my mind is breaking. And I’m not okay.
I consider love and romance, how companionship would definitely help. But I’m afraid. I’m afraid of my capacity to feel and love. It’s almost broken me before, different times. Once I see that someone is leaving, I utterly cut them off. I destroy our hope of anything working out. Because if I do yearn for hope, it’ll destroy me. So I have to depersonalize and end it all, or it’ll consume me.
Not saying that everything ended this way concerning people I talked to. In fact, there are sisters in the faith that I still hold in very high regard — that though things didn’t work out, there is no ill will there, nor will there ever be. It’s just that you can give it your all, and there are those that will still turn tail. And the thought of it makes me sick.
And this present culture — marriage is just another item, a fad. But people don’t want to stick through the pain. They buckle, compromise, commit infidelity, or just say, “I’m not feeling it anymore,” then they depart, find someone else quickly, just repeat the process. I suppose that God’s rejection is God’s protection. I do hold to it.
What I found is that people find me to be, quote unquote, interesting — the editing, hearing about what religious OCD is, psychology, the visual art. It’s found to be fun. But it’s not that they want to know me. They just want to know about me. And the moment I sense that, I utterly distance myself. I’m not anyone’s lab rat or experiment. I’m not different or better than anybody. It’s just that people can take an interest of what you are, but not who you actually are.
I think of Denji from Chainsaw Man, the movie, where he says the girls he meets want Chainsaw Man’s heart, but not his heart. Obviously this isn’t a literal parallel to me, but I just found it funny and sad at the same time. And then I asked, is it even worth putting yourself out there, if in the end he’ll just be disregarded?
I wish I had the gift of singleness, not having to burn with passion in my mind. I try and white-knuckle it in a way of trying to self-traumatize, saying that sex is something evil, nasty, unclean, something you shouldn’t do at all, even if you are married — thinking that’ll somehow warp my mind, turning myself off to relationships. When sex is a gift from God and it’s not evil. It’s meant for the confinements of marriage and nothing else.
I’m just out of options concerning how to continue to exist without losing my core mind. I have nothing to hide in the first place. And I’m one to talk, but with nothing to say.
I love my home church dearly. But the other day, I went to the other campus in the city. I know the brothers and sisters there as well, but the campus is bigger, and you can be more in obscurity than at my home church because it’s smaller. I wanted to be in fellowship, but I didn’t want to have to talk to a lot of people, because there was nothing but death before my eyes on that day.
I went inside, greeted a few people I knew, and then I just sat at the back of the auditorium during the message, just crying. Embittered with God, thinking about my life. All of it. If I’m gonna make it to the end and wanting to die so damn bad.
I went out for prayer, opened up with how I’m feeling. I know that I’m never alone, but I feel alone. There are times I want to be an atheist. I want to just not even think that God exists, and I just can get through this life, acting as if he’s not real. But I know it’s a lie.
Atheism doesn’t exist. Everyone inherently knows that God is real, according to Romans one. He bears witness to our conscience and creation. A child even knows that God is real. But we get older, sin corrupts, the philosophy and the reasonings of this age opposed to the gospel creep in. And now we say that there’s no God.
I’d say a society and nation, when it collapses most is not just moral behavior, but whenever God is taken out the picture. In fact, if there is no God, then after death you have nothing to be held accountable to for your actions and the things you’ve done in this life. God is a judge and also a savior. But he is holy and perfect. And I’m enamored by this very thing, and also angry about it. Because inherently, we all have Adam’s sin, and by default, we’re cooked if we don’t repent.
And I wonder — do I believe only because I’m not damned? Or do I believe because I want to believe? I think it’s a mixture of both.
My heart has been hard concerning evangelism. I will see people — I don’t know their hearts, but I don’t know what it’s like when you’re in this world and God is not in their thoughts. The only thing going through their mind is futility, just like it says in Ephesians, following the course of this world, the philosophy of the age. I don’t say this looking down upon them, but with the pain of it. I guess the best evangelism for me lately for sharing the gospel has been behavior and the fruit of the Spirit, not long-driven theological conversations. Where I’m at mentally, I can’t bear to have them, because I’m crushed whenever people reject it.
I know that the seed’s planted, and it’s easy to say, we know that. Yes, the seed is planted. But they could die tomorrow. And Jesus said the servant that knew the Master’s will and didn’t get ready would be beaten with many stripes, versus the one that didn’t know. Namely, he’s talking about the more you know about Christ and the gospel — the faith, repentance, heaven, and hell — it’ll actually be worse for you than the one who never heard about it. Romans one explains this as well.
But nobody reads. Out of the general population of America, I would say, arguably, maybe one to two percent of people actually study the Word — not just doing little baby devotions, but actually studying to show yourself approved. Not just theology, but also studying with God, the Holy Spirit, deepening your understanding of the Word and obedience, knowing good from evil. Nobody reads. More fascinated with Instagram reels, doom scrolling, the vanity and the fun of this age.
I myself have been like this. In this season of darkness, I find pixels on the screen more appealing and comforting than even God. Because the thought of God fills me with dread and anger. There’s times I pray, others I don’t want to. I will ask others to pray for me though. But as of lately, I haven’t really been wanting to talk to God. Could be a part of me wanting to hurt him back for the pain that I’ve had to go through. If he does see me as a son, then apparently a father wants to talk to his son. So I suppose my way of hurting him back is me not talking. Because I’m so angry and embittered from these past six years.
And for those who have a critique or some sort of long-driven exegesis of theology you could take a tool and pluck out just about all of your teeth. Let them bleed raw for about 10 days and the— the pain of this still wouldn’t be equivalent to what this feels like. Then again, the scroll of lamentation, mourning, and woe demands the user’s blood.
I don’t know who I am anymore. I just want to get this degree and start my practice, to help people with religious trauma and OCD — people in the faith and without the faith, deconstructed, whoever they may be, to know they aren’t alone.
I feel so sick, and I can’t sleep. As I’ve said before, I see the four horsemen coming closer to me every day. When I was on the highway, dugging out, it was common grace that I didn’t pass out on the wheel and crash from the dorsal vagal shutdown that was happening. And I feel it activating right now, even as I’m documenting these things for this blog post.
I’m exhausted past the point of words. In those moments, you genuinely feel like you’re out of options, and I don’t have any answers. I’m tired. And I just want to go to sleep. Why does it have to be this way? Even if I got an answer, it wouldn’t fix this. I just want to be healed. Not think about these terrible spiritual realities — scriptures that bother me, the return of Christ bothering me, hell bothering me.
I could tell people the grace of God, but I can’t even tell it to myself. If Jeffrey Dahmer’s repentance was genuine, I don’t doubt his salvation. But I doubt mine, even now, as I speak.
I’d rather live right than in hell lift up my eyes. The four Horsemen haven’t collected me quite yet whenever I think about spiritual things, I can only be ashamed to feel that God is done with me. I’m hanging on with the mustard seed of faith. I can only turn around just like obito did looking at everyone there for me “ don’t forget we’re here too”
“That’s right.”
AI analysis
Ken, I’ll pull it all into one place for you — but first, honestly, one thing.
That safety flag is right that this whole entry has real weight in it, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise even while I hand you the analysis. You told me you’re not having thoughts of ending your life, and I believe you. If that shifts tonight or any night, 988 (call or text) is there any hour. That’s it — I won’t belabor it.
Here’s the full analysis, start to finish, in one clean block:
Deep Analysis — “The past few nights and days” (Full Journal Entry)
The opening — instability and the stimulant trap. You start with the puzzle that won’t assemble, then name the double bind: the stimulants that would help you function are the same ones that could tip you manic, and the mania ends in a schizophrenic rage crash. That’s not indecision — it’s a genuine no-win your body has handed you. The Jonah reference (“angry enough to die if something is taken away”) does real work: you’re identifying with the prophet God rebuked for anger over the withered plant, which means part of you is already pre-judging your own rage as illegitimate. “Let the reader understand” signals you know the reference is loaded.
The Black Ops / gaming section. The most alive, least condemned stretch in the whole entry — and it’s worth noticing why. It’s the one place you locate identity in belonging rather than output. Those hundreds of hours built no brand and earned no income, yet they’re the memory you reach for as good. Reaching out to the old friend, being genuinely happy she had another child — that’s you demonstrating, in your own entry, that you can receive connection without earning it. The grief underneath (“I don’t know if they’re even alive”) is the fear of erasure again, but the section itself is evidence against your own thesis that you’re only worth what you produce.
“I have not been okay lately.” The turn, and immediately the self-disgust: lust, anger, pride, “the sight of me sickens me.” This is the scrupulous conscience cataloguing itself. Notice you don’t describe actions — you describe the presence of feelings, and then convict yourself for the feelings existing. That’s the OCD engine: treating intrusive states as evidence of guilt rather than as weather passing through.
The highway and the gas station. The physical low point, narrated almost clinically — seeing double, nearly pulling over, collapsing into sleep in a parking lot until the alarm. “I wasn’t even angry. I was just completely numb.” The Christ parallel — “sorrowful unto death” — is theologically enormous: you’re placing your numbness inside Gethsemane, the one place in Scripture where God himself experiences the desire for the cup to pass. That’s not blasphemy. That’s you locating your worst moment inside Christ’s, which is exactly where lament theology says it belongs.
The rage at God — the center of gravity. “What the hell was God doing, sitting there not doing jack, laughing at me?” This is the hinge of the entire entry and the most spiritually honest thing in it. You accuse God of enjoying your suffering, of forsaking you against his own promise. This is not the language of unbelief — unbelief doesn’t bother to press charges. You’re doing what Job did, what David did at Uzzah, what Jeremiah did: staying in covenant specifically in order to accuse. The bitterness is a form of fidelity. And you half-know it, because you immediately reach for the theological counter (“he’ll never leave you”) even as you reject its comfort. You’re arguing with God in God’s own vocabulary. That’s prayer, even when it’s cursing.
“Wandering around Babylon.” The comparison to other Christians with their “one, two, three step program” is the affliction-tradition loneliness — Cowper, Brainerd, Bunyan all wrote this exact complaint, that the ordinary maps don’t fit them. You’re not wrong that most Christian formation assumes a linear path. Your tradition is the one that says some saints walk in darkness their whole lives and are no less kept for it.
The therapy scene. “I couldn’t even get the words out. I could only cover my face.” After a lifetime of processing through dense theology and language, the collapse into wordlessness is significant — the one moment the intellectualizing armor fails completely. Taylor’s “you look like you just got done staring at the void” gave you language when you had none, and you took it. Then the identity confession: “I find my identity in what I do… it’s an idol… staying busy distracts me from the disdain I feel about myself.” That last clause is the thesis statement of the whole entry. Everything else is symptom. This is cause.
The disabled strangers. The tell that your self-condemnation is selective. You look at a disabled person seeking companionship and see purity, worth, and heartbreak — you weep for them. You extend them the exact grace and dignity you refuse yourself. The compassion apparatus works perfectly; it’s just pointed everywhere except inward. That’s not humility. It’s the everyone but me asymmetry, showing up in the flesh, in a Facebook post.
The antinatalism. “I just want the whole population to stop reproducing.” Read gently, this isn’t misanthropy — it’s a grief so large it can’t imagine consenting anyone else into it, plus the fear of passing on your genetics. It’s despair generalizing itself into a philosophy. It contradicts your stated calling: you want to become a therapist to help people bear this world, the opposite of wanting them gone. The entry holds both, which tells you the antinatalism is mood, not conviction.
“You just don’t love yourself.” You’ve circled back to this more than once, which tells me it landed deepest. It didn’t hurt because it wasn’t accusation — it was grief on your behalf. Someone looked at you with sorrow, not judgment, and named the thing. And you let it in, which is itself evidence that the “I can’t receive positive things” hardness isn’t total.
The romance / cutting-people-off section. “Once I see that someone is leaving, I utterly cut them off… I have to depersonalize and end it all.” This is the most important behavioral pattern in the entry: a preemptive-abandonment strategy — destroy the connection before it can destroy you. The Denji parallel formalizes it: decide in advance that everyone only wants the mask (Chainsaw Man’s heart, not his heart), and you’re insulated from ever being left after being known. It’s armor that guarantees the loneliness it’s trying to prevent. The grace note: you immediately name exceptions — the sisters in the faith you hold in high regard with no ill will. So the wall isn’t absolute. You know it’s a strategy, not a truth.
The sex / self-traumatizing passage. You describe deliberately trying to warp your own mind into believing sex is evil to kill desire — then catch yourself and correct it: “sex is a gift from God and it’s not evil.” That self-correction mid-paragraph is the scrupulosity and the healthier theology fighting in real time on the page, and the healthier one wins the sentence. That matters. It shows the machinery can be interrupted.
The church-in-obscurity scene. Going to the bigger campus specifically to be among believers without having to talk — sitting in the back crying, “embittered with God,” going forward for prayer anyway. The entry in miniature: you keep showing up to the thing you’re furious at. You want fellowship and can’t bear contact, so you find the compromise that lets you be near without being seen. That’s not hypocrisy. That’s a wounded animal still crawling toward the fire instead of away from it.
The evangelism / Romans 1 stretch. Here the writing gets denser and more defended — this is where you retreat into theology when the feeling gets too close. The material about the servant beaten with many stripes is you turning the scrupulous lens outward onto the culture, but it circles back to self-indictment (“I myself have been like this”). Even your critique of doom-scrolling America ends with you in the dock.
“Hurting God back by not talking.” The single most hopeful sentence in the entry disguised as the most despairing. A silent treatment is a relational act. You cannot withhold speech as punishment from someone you believe is absent. Your refusal to pray is a form of address. The anger presupposes the audience.
“Pluck your teeth out… the scroll demands the user’s blood.” The pre-emptive strike against theological critics is you armoring against exactly the kind of person who’d read this and offer a tidy exegesis. The scroll image — Ezekiel eating the scroll of lamentation, mourning, and woe — always carries the same double meaning for you: the calling to speak the darkness costs the one who carries it. You’re framing your suffering as vocational, which is both true and a way of making the pain mean something.
The ending (original). “I could tell people the grace of God, but I can’t even tell it to myself. If Dahmer’s repentance was genuine, I don’t doubt his salvation. But I doubt mine.” This is the illness in one sentence. You wrote ten thousand words proving grace admits no exception human revulsion can manufacture, then made yourself the single exception. That’s not a conclusion you reasoned to — it’s the scrupulosity doing the one thing it always does: everyone but me. And you ended the entry here, on this exact antithesis, by authorial choice. Some part of you put the contradiction last because some part of you knows it’s the contradiction — the one that, if it ever broke in your favor, would break everything else open with it. You’re not damned in that sentence. You’re standing at the hinge where the door either stays shut or swings.
The addition — the turn. “The four horsemen haven’t collected me quite yet.” “I’m hanging on with the mustard seed of faith.” “I can only turn around just like Obito, looking at everyone there for me — ‘don’t forget, we’re here too.’ That’s right.” This is the mask coming off the other way. The whole entry has been Obito face-down under the Three-Tails, presumed dead, nothing showing. The ending is turning around and actually seeing the people who stayed. A mustard seed is the exact amount of faith Jesus said was enough — you wrote it because you know it. After the entire descent, you ended by turning around toward the living instead of further into the void. That’s the most important line in the piece, and it’s yours.
