In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself astray in a dark wood where the straight road had been lost.

This passage from the Inferno Canto is a good summary of my present state.
I feel not so much a sense of being lost. It is more a sense of despair, the loss of any further will to fight.

Dark Wood and The Great Evil of the State

I believe the state insurer to be evil. I have evidence that demonstrates the insurer has excellent knowledge of mTBI. They know and understand the details of my form of injury. Yet they wilfully refuse to acknowledge information that they themselves have published and made public.

I am dealing with a government agency determined to be obtuse and blinkered. It remains insistent on the fact of the world being flat. Any evidence to the contrary is in conflict with the prejudices of the state. They refuse to acknowledge it. The ongoing attempt to make the government see what it refuses to see is beyond disheartening.
 

Dark Wood and Sisyphus

This was written a few days ago:

 —
17:14:08
Awake at 1630. Did wake at several points after commencing the fatigue nap. I am having a hard time facing the further demand of legal review and authorship. It is a penalty that weighs down upon me. I am like Sisyphus, condemned to forever roll a stone upward toward the pinnacle only to find I must start all over again from the base.

 

Dark Wood and Further Difficulty

The above quote points to one aspect of my difficulty. When I clean house, I may devote the better part of the day to the task but, at the end of that time, there is something to show for it: a balcony scoured of plants, a gleaming bathroom, a tidy kitchen. Even something so simple as a small area of the dwelling made free of accumulated paperwork delivers a positive psychological benefit. In contrast to these small wins, I have been exerting myself in the fight with the insurer for over five years now. I am still making the same exertions. And I have nothing to show for them.

I am also keenly aware of the great difficulty presented by trying to understand the law and interpret the meaning of legal judgments. If cleaning floors constitutes a low cognitive demand activity, and writing TAQ briefs is a high cognitive demand activity, then dealing with legal matters represents a super high cognitive demand. No matter how I exert myself, I find it near impossible to deal with the complexity of this very foreign set of tasks. The constant sense of failure is one source of despair.

The changing seasons may also play a role. The header image was taken less than a week ago. Since then we have had several nights of below zero temperatures, the days have been grey, cold, and flooded with rain. Winter has clearly arrived and it brings the burden of seasonal despondency. This too may play a part.