Ok this is going to be a vent, because I realised I get crying bouts and difficulties in concentrating from holding stuff in, and I really need to be able to study.

I'm doing well. I find it's kind of unfair. This is probably some echo from years back.

I'm getting amazing dental care and my depression is healing very well. I still take all the meds and other care as before because I sure don't want to stumble and fall back down now, but my direction is very good.

The problem is I wish my family members could have what I have, and I can't give it to them. There's almost nothing I can do. I'd share the good I have in a heartbeat if I could.

One family member is saving up for major dental care to be able to have a different surgery safely, and I can join in the saving up with a small amount of money, but I wish we could just switch places right now because my condition isn't life-threatening and I'm much younger.

Another seems psychotic or manic, I don't know, I'm not a health professional and I'm being lied to anyway (and this is not my mother, whose delusions I have been familiar with for years) and I'm physically too far away to do much. But I recognise that things aren't okay at all and it's eerily reminiscent of what happened to my mom. If the condition can't be reversed or the person refuses to believe it is a condition at all and won't take meds or other treatments, that'd be the second family member I've lost to the weird world of delusion.

It's easy to live in my cozy little bubble of university studies in this town far away. Luckily it is, else I would waste my life worrying instead of working. But it's funny what my brain does to try and live with these things after I've been closer to them, which I was for two weekends in November.

I'm getting really, really random flashbacks. Bad things, good things, neutral things, things I don't remember thinking of for years. It's very weird, I've never had this before, ever - I've always had some kind of "favourite" memories (usually traumatic) that I replay over and over, but now it's just random, like tv channel surfing. I'm getting mild deja-vu as well. I had a frightening form of it when I had a wrong dose of meds (too high) but it went away when the dose was cut down to what it is now, and now it's happening again, except differently. The weirdest thing though is that I had one of my recurring nightmares, but for the first time EVER it had a happy ending.

The nightmare begins with me being at my childhood home, and I watch a war or a storm begin outside. This time as well it was a storm. I watched it come near in disbelief, and then I realised the house was going to be destroyed. Then something happened - the storm dissolved away a few feet away from the walls, and I went outside with my brother. We walked over dead people, watched the flooded scenery, and I realised I could make it rain candy by thinking of it. It was cool, but then I became afraid I'd think wrong thoughts and make wrong things happen, and then came some waves we just jumped over. I went back to the house to discover it had been renovated and painted bright yellow.

I went to the barn, which had been painted yellow as well, and I cried happy tears for the rest of the dream because in it there was everything that the dream-me knew I'd have loved as a child. I felt intense happiness, relief, nostalgia and appreciation of the beauty around me.

I think my brain is trying to believe that something beautiful can come out of this mess. That's better than the stormy dreams that I wake up scared from, relieved that I wasn't about to die after all. Much better, really.

But I don't know. I still am not comfortable with that being the reality of life; on good days it's great that my life is what I make of it and not a divine plan, but on a bad day it'd be great to be able to believe in divine protection and some buff angel friends standing by your side.

I have to keep a distance for my own sake, but I hate to know these things are happening whether or not I'm there to observe them.

It makes me fear that one day I'll get delusions too and not realise it. I was well on my way there when I was religious, and thinking back on it scares me because a main thing about it was that it all seemed to "finally make sense" or some shit like that. I feel a notch more safe now that I've deconverted and done a lot of work to understand the warning signs, but this stuff runs in my family and understanding things won't stop them from possibly happening. The other day I found myself so irrationally scared, I had to tell my bf to please push me into a hospital if I start behaving really out of character. A good thing he studies psychology so there's actually hope he'll notice that kind of change in me should it ever happen.

Ok. I breathe in, I breathe out, I'm okay for now. That's all I can truly have an effect on and that's what matters the most now.

Here I come, thermodynamics homework. May I not be stopped by a crying fit now.