There are things that are really, really hard to do when you’re mentally ill. What those things are will often vary from person to person, and sometimes they sound dumb as hell when you say them out loud. Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.

But Prozac makes many things possible and today I went to the dentist for the first time in… a while. Let’s say a while. And while I was sitting there I thought about discipline and Mars energy, and it made perfect sense that this appointment had ended up on a Tuesday.

On one hand, I struggle with too much anger; on the other, confidence and assertiveness are very much works in progress for me. Being able to recognize attack and defend against it are key to being able to actually do this work long-term. After years of my ex telling me when she decided I was under attack, or when she was under attack, my ability to actually tell was pretty destroyed. Afterward, I went too far in the other direction, putting aside any possible negative reasons basically up to the point where I wrote off clear indications of a problem as being paranoid. That’s really not any healthier. Pretending you’re not in the middle of a war is not a long-term strategy, despite what people will tell you about the current political situation.

Even if your goal is to stay under the radar and win the battle quietly, you still have to acknowledge there’s a fight if you want to actually address that goal.

This is a difficult area to write because I am pretty sure of the Martial power who works in this spot and I called on them today and it went well, but… well… I don’t have a proper name for them yet. So it’s hard to talk about it. I know perfectly well who I mean, and today’s ritual used all the things that worked for me yesterday to address a power who’s particularly suited to the “help me learn to see my enemies and also fucking smash them please” types of intonations this project calls for.

The theme of this project is apparently “blogging about things that are hard to blog about.” Maybe by next week I’ll have a name!

On the up side, that’s one complete week done…