floating mind

random thoughts of an uninspired young adult

[thoughtssnthingss]

He crashed into the soft top surface of my heart, disturbing the whole thing down to my core. Only took me a decade to realise it happened the second I saw him. One minute he’s a flash before my eyes, the next my life has changed, never to be the same again.

And you mean to tell me this piece of rock from the cosmos, this core-shaking matter is moved by me too! The observers in my heart report of signs of impact where he’s landed. Where the edges of his crater form there are marks on his surface.

My heart’s a different place since he’s landed. Softer still, yet firmer. I never thought I’d be thanking a foreign object for a sense of stability with any amount of inner peace yet here I am, calm as still waters. Waters stiller than they were before the waves that rippled across their surfaces after his impact.

Can I truly say I’m grateful to be changed? Not in that way where you accept that the pain comes with lessons, but like a plant getting watered for the first time.

The piece of him beckoning me, insisting I have a piece of me stuck in his heart too. Why do I believe him? Why do I know this more surely than I know my own name and face? He’s clearly a part of me, like the space he carved was meant to be for him always. Insisting I’m a part of him too. What is this?

Is my life really changed for the better because his meteor crash landed on my heart’s soft earth? I am doomed to be blessed by our love forever? Must I really be refined through the fires of our passion? Can I deny my hunger for this?

Can I surrender to my heart’s changing, opening up to itself now?

[thoughtssnthingss]

I still think of the times I said “this hurts” and got in response a story of how much is being done for me or has been done for me. How often I’ve said “I’m scared” and it became about how ungrateful I am. How often I’ve said “I’m unwell” and was told it is all in my head.

Now I’ve found myself pushing back against years of self-denial in the name of what others will say. I’ve policed my own thoughts so as not to offend others with the reaction in my eyes. I’ve arranged my feelings so my face won’t betray me. All to control the emotions of others.

I am breaking free. I can and will live according to My truth. I can cut through the noise in my mind and actually listen. I can get out of the mental prison in which I have put myself for approval I cannot receive as I can only be a bad imitation of what is wanted by others.

[thoughtssnthingss]

It Feels Wrong to be Nice

To be more specific, it feels wrong to be nice to myself. Especially when I know I'm messing up somehow. I'm sure you know the feelings. Like when you forget your keys at home (again) and despite the number of times it's happened already you still haven't thought to find a system to make it stop. Or spending money on eating out when you said you wouldn't do it again this week. But according to a my therapist, being nicer about things could be useful somehow. And I don't know about you, but it sounded like a crock of shit to me. At first.

Well, despite it sounding counterintuitive, I thought I'd try it anyway. I'd fuck something up and all the thoughts about how stupid I am and how I deserve every bit of difficulty that resulted from my mistake would flood in. It was difficult countering them. I mean, I'd been thinking that way for my whole remembered life at that point. It felt ridiculous. I was convinced I was lying to myself. But over time, I noticed it got easier. More sympathetic counters to my inner critic started coming more easily. With that, I noticed it was so much easier to find out why I'd done something I didn't like. I actually could solve the root cause of the issue, not just its results. I believe that self compassion makes it so much easier to see what you're really thinking and feeling and with that same compassion, it's so much easier to make changes.

I'd been thinking about it for a while, about why it makes a difference. Today, a thought hit me. It's really just a personal thought. So, you may or may not have heard that our brains process emotional pain the same way it processes physical pain. And the whole point of pain is to let us know we are in danger. You know what our brains do once something is considered dangerous? It triggers the sympathetic nervous system. That means we enter a defensive state, the whole fight/ flight/ freeze/ fawn thing. That means, even emotional distress will make our brains think we are in danger and we enter whatever state makes the danger go away. I don't know about you guys, but my inner critics hurts my feelings pretty bad and I just end up trying to avoid the pain, so nothing gets done.

When I started responding to the things my inner critic pointed out with kindness and gentleness, it took away enough of the pain from the observation that I could actually look at it. Honestly, my inner critic and and my more compassionate side do a kick ass job together! After all, my inner critic is just trying to help, it just doesn't know how to be nice about it. It's so much easier to become the person I want to be when that self compassion steps in. I can even think about the sides of me I don't like (like that pesky, demoralising inner critic) with an understanding that everything it's doing is out of love for my whole self.

I hope maybe the same thing can happen with anyone that reads this. It takes time and I'm still working on it. But every time I look back at where I used to be I see how much I've grown. Maybe we can grow into the people we want to be one compassionate thought at a time together.❤️

[thoughtssnthingss]

Worth Sharing

I haven't written anything in a while. I haven't thought I've had anything worth sharing to say. Lately though, I have been thinking about what is worth sharing. Funny stuff? Relatable stuff? Does a thing have to be 'worth it' to share it? Maybe not. Depends on you. I mean, a lot of what people talk about is just whatever they want, right? Whose to say people will like it? I mean, someone has to, right? There's so many people in the world at least one other person will see value in your thought. Who's it for anyway? You? Them? It's you, isn't it? I guess that really is what makes it worth sharing. The fact you had the thought and decided 'I feel like putting it out there!' That's a good enough reason because that YOUR thought and everything else is just... not important.

[thoughtssnthingss]

Confident

I wish I was more confident. Confident enough to carry my height and side with the high head and straight back it deserves. Confident enough to say what I think and own it. Confident enough to not feel the need to soften what I say because I don’t think it carries enough weight. Confident enough to know that when I don’t want something it’s okay to not take it. Confident enough that when I realise there’s something about myself I actually like I don’t immediately try to shut it down and explain it away. Confident enough to know something about myself and have no one shake that knowledge. Confident enough to know that I’m not fucking perfect but I’m good. Confident enough to change what I can and accept what I can’t change. Confident enough to look at my future and believe it can exist. I really fucking wish.

[thoughtssnthingss]

Nothing Wrong With Average

For the longest time, I’ve fought my averageness. I look in the mirror and because I don’t look like a model, I am ugly. Because I didn’t get As and A+s in school, I’m stupid. Same applies if I don’t instantly understand what is being said to me, which happens all the time because I often will process things slowly. Because I make mistakes at all, I never get anything right and am wholly a mistake. Every time I slip up, I come to the conclusion that I am simply unfit to be a human and completely valueless and I should just die. 

But then I think about other people. Other people whose looks aren’t stunningly gorgeous but I still consider beautiful and worth loving. Other people didn’t get straight As but I would still consider intelligent because it shows in nonacademic ways. Other people making mistakes every day because nobody is perfect. I think of all these people doing things in average ways, that do absolutely nothing to stand out. Yet, these totally average people stand to someone. Someone out there thinks the world of them. They’ve made someone else’s day in ways no one else could’ve. To someone, they’re the one person that will their secrets. And they won’t be this person to everyone they meet. But in their own average way, in their average world, they’re extraordinary in small ways. And maybe those ways won’t get to be put in the newspaper or announced at a graduation ceremony, but they are there. And someone sees it. 

As much as I’ve come to understand that being like everyone else is really not a bad thing, I still wrestle with the fact that no one will ever want to write a book about me but hey, we all gotta start somewhere right? And for me, realising that average isn’t bad is my start.

[thoughtssnthingss]

is a monster a monster?

Once, when I was still a student,  I was taking a test in a professor’s office and I notice this quote on a mug or something that said ‘It is the condition of monsters that they do not perceive themselves as such. The dragon you know, hunkered in the village, devouring maidens, heard the townspeople cry “Monster!” and looked behind him. I don’t know who said it, but it resonated with me. 

I’ve been watching a lot of Suits lately and these guys do some things that I would consider really shit to get ahead. But to me, they aren’t bad people because they’re more focused on getting their job done than they are about caring about how it’ll affect a complete stranger. To the people they screw over, they’re the worst and should never be trusted by anyone ever. To themselves, yeah, maybe some people (opponents and certain coworkers) shouldn’t trust them, but not no one,  you know? 

Think like this has turned me into one hell of a sympathiser. This is not to say I think the shitty things that people do aren’t shitty or that they shouldn’t be punished or corrected somehow. I just don’t believe people should be completely written off as human beings. Cut them off if need be, find a way to change their behaviour, put them in jail, whatever. But they’re still human and they aren’t simply bad people that only ever did bad things and never loved anyone or anything.

Of course, thinking like this is hard, because it leaves you open to getting hurt because sometimes you give someone a chance to do something good (and they might actually do good!) but then they turn around and do the thing everyone warned you about. And then I question my way of thinking and myself. And I always come back to the conclusion that my bad deed doesn’t make me a bad person and I would like to be given a chance by people who don’t know me at least, you know. But hey, the fact that I’m not a bad person doesn’t mean I’m not a piece of shit sometimes, right? That being said, I still think people can be pieces of shit, hell I think everyone’s a piece of shit so yeah, that’s my take on monsters :)

[thoughtssnthingss]

I’ve thought about this a lot since I wrote it and I drew a new conclusion. So, at the time that I’d written this, I was focused on how we take away from the humanity of people we consider monsters. I haven’t changed my mind on my opinion there; to me, they still have their humanity. But, these people are still people that have caused harm before and will likely cause harm again. So, although I think we can still have sympathy for them, I fully believe their monstrous behaviour should be taken as what it is (monstrous). Such a person should be held away from situations that would allow them to be a monster again. And if help can be given, they should be given extensive help to be less of the monsters they’ve become. But some causes are lost, and I’ve come to terms with the fact that those people should never be able to interact with the rest of the world with all their rights because they will always cause harm to others.

[thoughtssnthingss]

ghosted

I couldn’t believe this shit was happening again. I couldn’t believe I had let a guy into my heart when I knew it was going nowhere again. And I kept trying to talk to him even as he got less consistent, as it went from replying the next day to not responding until I’d triple texted. I could not believe I let myself be an idiot again, believing when he told me ‘I was just busy,’ or ‘Ugh, I was so tired I fell asleep as soon as I got home.’ I believed this fucking guy even as I saw the snap stories with the friends he could make time for. I believed all that shit. I thought ‘he still likes you, he does! he just has a lot on his plate right now i’m sure.’ I was a stupid 17 year old chasing another guy that wasn’t there again. And I stared at my phone, at yet another message left on read. I berated myself. My anger at us both boiled. Why couldn’t he just tell me he was losing interest? Is that so hard?! But fuck him. I was the idiot here, I ignored all the signs again. I got all the more enraged! How could he! Did he know how many other people wanted to be in his place! Did I know how many other people wanted to be in his place...? Rage gave way to sadness and self loathing, Why was I like this? Why didn’t I just let go. I start to type to him. “if you don’t like me anymore, why didn’t you just say so?” I cried myself to sleep that night. The next day I woke to a message from him. I couldn’t believe he’d taken less than a day this time. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to tell you.” That was all I got. I removed everything to do with him that I could find; it was all deleted, thrown out, returned. It’s been months now and I still think about him sometimes. Him and the others before him. They’re at the back of my mind as I get ready to meet this new guy, hoping he has the guts to say something when things change, when he realises he likes me more or likes me less. 

[thoughtssnthingss]

Being the Abuser

Half the time you don’t realise you’re being abusive. You think it’s normal to hurt your loved ones. Or you think you’re being abused and everything you’re doing is to protect yourself from that. Or you’re just expressing how you feel. All this because you don’t know what abuse is. Of course, this does not apply to all scenarios and abusers. 

Sometimes you’re being an asshole and you know it and, at that moment you don’t care enough to stop. Then later, when you’re by yourself and you’re thinking about it, when you reach out to touch the person you love and they pull away from you because they’re scared or you say something nice and they look for the meanness in it, it hits you how much you’ve hurt them and you genuinely think you’ll never do this again. You think about how you’ll only be nice and you won’t do that again. But of course, you do it again. But that’s obvious. You know you’re hurting them. 

Then there’s the subtle things you do. The things you don’t realise you’re doing. The neglect, belittling feelings like jealousy and worry, stoking feelings of jealousy and worry, the presentation of negative emotions, all of it. You don’t know it’s happening. You think you’re just depressed or anxious and it’s just not a big deal even though you’re tearing them apart. And to them, it is a big deal. There’s the controlling behaviour, policing their actions, crossing their boundaries and thinking it’s just what they should do because you’re in a relationship. The line is so blurred you don’t even realise you’re crossing it. It’s the way we switch from insulting anger to sudden tears because we noticed that being rude and intimidating isn’t working. It’s those little, emotionally damaged, subtleties that do us in. How can you stop it when you don’t even realise it’s shitty behaviour? 

Eventually, someone realises the relationship has to end and it’s done. The bridge gets burned. And you look back at it and realise just how shitty it was. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, you look past the ways they fucked up and realise how much you were fucking up too.  

[thoughtssnthingss]

Tug O’ War

Push and pull inside

Between life and death

Between my will to carry on

And my lack of drive

Between putting myself out there

And hiding in my shell

Between my heart’s desires

And my brain’s fears

Between my chance at growth

And what feels like safety.

So the war continues

Between who I think I am

And who I want to be

[thoughtssnthingss]

i don’t want to be vulnerable

I look into their eyes looking into mine. I think it means something, the way they’re looking at me. I have my hands in theirs, wrapped up, safe. They tuck my face in the crooks of their neck. They kiss me softly after they say goodbye and watch as way make way to the door. They laugh with me when I’ve done something silly. They are reassuring when I feel anxious. They want to know more when I tell them stuff. They seem genuinely interested in me. So, over and over, I let them in. They raid the rooms of my heart, make it home, whether or not they realise it. Then one day, they get and they leave. And everything that meant something means nothing. Every act of affection, every word of concern, it all comes to nothing. Today I stare in the mirror and I vow never to let them in. No more will words move me. Their eyes staring into mine will no longer see anything. Their lips gently grazing my forehead will no longer stir my heart. Wanting me to meet their friends will become another nothing. Never again will I be affected by the things that seem intimate. My heart will be stone and my touch will be ice from now until the day I die.

[thoughtssnthingss]

Why Do I Share?

You that feeling when you’re in a group of friends and everyone’s talking so you decide to talk but then no one’s listening? It feels that way when I make posts sometimes. Well, sometimes. I make a video, post a selfie, write a poem, share random crap about how my day was going and I know that like maybe one person will notice. It’s like standing in an auditorium for a thousand people but having an audience of one person. It feels like I should just shut up, stop singing, stop typing, stop sharing. But I keep sharing. And I keep wondering why I’m sharing. Then I realise I’m sharing because I feel really good about something. Or I feel really bad about something. Or I just have an opinion. I feel. And maybe, just maybe someone will feel with me too. Maybe someone will like that selfie I like. Maybe someone can relate to my opinion. Maybe someone can soothe my pain or be comforted by the fact they aren’t alone. Maybe no one will even notice, but I got it out. The feelings are to big to keep to myself and I have to put it out to the world, even if only one other person will actually see it.

[thoughtssnthingss]

Falling Back to You

I’d finally gotten over things. I’d gotten over you. I could finally sleep without dreaming of you. I could finally go a day without wanting to talk you. I could finally shut up about you. 

Then one day I got a text. I’d lost most of my contacts but still had all my old texts. This new text said ‘What’s up?’ I went to look at the text, to look back at old conversations and figure it out who it might be. It was you. You, the person I was finally forgetting. Everything rushed back, all the stupid old feelings and anxieties. I replied knowing this would hurt me later. You asked to see me and we made plans to meet that afternoon. You took me on a walk in the park. A simple walk in the park, just me and you. We talked a bit. I kept repeating to myself that this meant nothing and you wanted nothing with me. And that was probably true, but you did want something from me. And I gave you what you wanted. Of course I did. I let you pull me to you. I let your hands grab my bum like they used to back when I meant something to you. I let you kiss me. I let you fuck me, right there, surrounds by trees and rock and dirt. We hung out a little longer after it was done. You hugged me before you drove me home. You kissed me goodbye. For a moment, I felt like I meant something again. But it was only for a moment. 

Now here I am, thinking about you, wondering what you’re doing, trying not talk about you, trying not to talk to you, hating myself for loving you still while you go about your days forgetting I exist. 

[thoughtssnthingss]

Just Stop

She’d drowning for a while now. Drowning, lost at sea. Sometimes she’d think she found something, safety. But no. Nothing. She keeps trying to fight for life, for air, and not water in her lungs. But it’s nothing but her and the water. And she’s losing it. She’s losing consciousness. She can’t do it anymore. She’s going to give in. She’s gonna stop fighting.

[thoughtssnthingss]

Overcast

I looked outside and couldn’t find the sun. All I could see was rainless clouds. When I woke up this morning, I thought I’d go for a walk later. But later had come and I wasn’t going anywhere. The mood had taken over me. I thought of everything. The person I had unexpectedly and swiftly drifted from, the people I still had but I was too scared to have, the uncertainty of the future. And I was filled with an overwhelming sadness. A sadness that soon became too much to bear. It gave way to numbness, emptiness. I could no longer feel. I could not feel my emotions. I could not feel my fingers. I had grown cold inside. My friend tried to get my attention but I was no longer present. My mood, like the day, was cloud too thick to see the sun.

[thoughtssnthingss]

Unwanted

stood outside the church, waiting for the music that would cue my entry. This was supposed to be the happiest day of my life, but my heart felt like a rock in my chest. I stared at the door, unwilling to move. My maid of honour gently grabbed and squeezed my hand. She knew the pain this was causing me. I was to be wed to a man I barely even knew, a man I definitely did not love. I looked at her, tears in my eyes. I really did not want to do this, I no longer had a choice. I took a deep breath and pulled my hand away ready to walk in. I hoped no one would somehow see the sadness through my veil as I walked down the aisle, everyone looking at me with smiles on their faces. I got to the front and saw my parents. Resentment filled my heart. Why was I being forced to do this? I got to the front and went through the motions, the vows and everything. Well, I did at first. Then I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it anymore. I looked around me, at the bridal train, my parents, the wedding guests, my groom to be, and I just could not do it anymore. I turned away from the unloved man, away from the unwanted marriage, and I ran. I took my shoes off and I ran away from that man, from the charade. I ran into the car I was supposed to walk into with the man that would have been my husband. I drove that car, with words ‘just married’ painted on the back, to the beach, hoping that the person I loved would know to come meet me there. I was going to get away from all this and I was not going alone.

[thoughtssnthingss]

I Realised I Lost Someone

I hadn’t thought about her as a friend in years. I just thought she never liked me. And sure, we make acquaintances and when they stop talking to us, it doesn’t matter. But we got close. We got really close. Then we fell out and drifted. A mutual friend told me she did not really care. I carried that bitterness in my heart for so long. So, so long. I felt horrible for caring about someone that did not care about me. That always seemed to happen to me, caring deeply and thinking they cared too, thinking I was special too, just to find out I was just another person to them. Disposable. Forgettable. Then one day, after I’d been thinking about her all day, I got drunk, like I always do, and I messaged her. I thought ‘fuck it’ and I sent her a message. She responded. I almost didn’t expect her to. I asked her about that time, about our friendship. And she told me all the ways it was special to her. She told me about all the stuff she did with me that she never really did with anyone. Months later, I felt the pain of losing someone that cared just because I thought I was nothing to her.