Thoughts of the Mind

The Mad Hatter: “Have I gone mad?”

Alice: “I’m afraid so. You’re entirely bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”

I find myself interesting, if not a little bothersome on occasion – do you relate?

While I’m learning to love myself more, it’s not so simple. I both love and loathe my mind – all at once and intertwined. It’s quite easy to find myself quite interesting, but also be quite irritated by what goes on behind these telling eyes. Do you relate?

I love that there is a constant array of floating thoughts, ideas and observations about the world and my world and about you: you lovely human being that makes life amazingly complex and difficult and incredible. These floating thoughts, though, they are the source of my vexation.

I love my mind. I love that my thoughts are ever-changing and becoming something. I love my thirst for understanding. I love my desire for depth and stories. I love the tidbits of real in my day to day when you share your life, and how it feeds me and connection cravings.

But I loathe my mind, sometimes, too. It can be so overbearing. Is loathe too strong a word? Or is it just honest evidence of exactly what I mean? Do you loathe my mind, sometimes, too? Because I detest the way I think to myself, sometimes. I hate how harshly I judge myself, sometimes. How unwilling to forgive or let go or accept myself I can be, sometimes. I despise how sometimes I don’t want to be vulnerable. How incredibly skilled I can be at avoiding vulnerability. How skilled I am at building walls to protect the places where it feels a tad too sensitive. I abhor my desire to control and hide my emotions; the ways I obsess over how I appear out there in front of my eyes-that-hide-nothing. Because I don’t want to “mess up” (whatever that means). I don’t want to be imperfect. “Be” imperfect? Or be labeled as imperfect? The latter matters more, which of course is a truth I dislike. If I actually am ok with being imperfect, but I just don’t want you to see me that way, how much more wild I am than I realized.

I want to be seen. Yet, somehow, I want to remain unseen.

I hate how unkind I can be to myself. How much I want to control what you see in me. And how I turn things over and over in my mind that do not deserve that amount of attention, and will never come under the control I think I have but sure don’t. But the things that I hate about my mind, are also the reason I love it. Do you relate?

I love that I don’t run from vulnerability and tough things and conflict, even though my mind wants me to. Even if I run at first, I always, without fail, circle back. I love that I’m always capable of growing. I love that my imperfections mean I’m real and living and human and not alone. Because I know you know what I mean. I know you know what it is to love that you are interesting. And to learn to love that you are irritating. Learning what living can look like, is like no one and nothing else, yet it’s something all of us go through. No dichotomy, here – despite how much more comfortable that would feel for my lovely, loathesome mind.

I’m bothersome, and I love it. Because I’m interesting, and I’m living.

Do you relate?