I drew my bow today. I strung it too! This is the first symptom-free success I’ve had for either in the past three years. I’ve finally been able to get back on the horse I was climbing a year ago. I’ll be detailing my medical findings soon in an article.

I sustained my sixth countable concussion almost three years ago, and the damage really added up. I made mistakes with the medical system, had pressure keeping my job, and didn’t let go of unhealthy mindsets soon enough. We are not this body; not these thoughts. We are not these histories, timelines and stories we tell ourselves to give our selves continuity. The self is empty, in that it takes a machine to keep it in place. Many machinations occur to sustain the idea of a self. This is not to say a self is inherently bad, but it is a way to view this reality in a diverse toolkit of lenses. Although it’s been a couple of grueling years, I’ve been persistent. No stones unturned in the pursuit of “normalcy”.

Persistence itself is not beyond overturning. It’s empty, just like the self. It relies on a certain view of time to exist in the mind. This is the view that time is discrete and this moment exists on its own with no dependencies. If nothing exists on it’s own since it’s composed of parts, then what are those parts composed of? If time is viewed in such a way, it would mean I wasted three damn years in my twenties to string a bow. Instead there are moments of healing and moments of suffering. Instead there is only a whole world to better every day: starting from my head and going all the way up into the people and environment I live in. It can be percieved as persistence. It can also not.

The ocean turns stones to sand through a non-perception of time. Waves do not have the concept of time, so cannot be persistent. There’s still plenty of sand though. I love my fate and am so thankful to be here.