My thoughts wouldn’t stop. So I had to beat them before they beat me.
“She’s a life ruiner, she ruins lives” — Mean Girls
I remember being in 9th grade not because of the teachers, my friends or the transition from middle school to high school.
I remember it because my Mom fell to the floor one day and for the rest of the year, she became someone else completely. She dropped at least 20 pounds, gripped us in the hallways as we walked by and asked us to look at her.
Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.
It was terrifying. She was scared to drive. Go to the bathroom. Take a walk. At any moment her ear would ring and she’d fall to the floor. But losing her balance wasn’t even the worst part.
It was losing her mind.
Call it anxiety. Call it depression. Call it obsession.
I try not to attach these titles to my name. I try not to identify with them because I am not them and they are not me. I refuse to let them stick.
But what I’ve noticed about my own mind is how quickly I can become entranced. It’s like some invisible woman is just sitting across from me with that little pocket watching swinging it back and forth and back and forth until I’m just spiraling.
A therapist told me once that I wasn’t living in the present. I was living in my head every single day. So much so that I could hardly recall what I had done for the last week.
All I could talk about was what I was worrying about.
Meditation has been a life saver, honestly. When you learn how to identify those spiraling thoughts, observe them and let them flow away from you — something just changes. You realize how much of your life has been lived in this nightmarish fantasy-land.
You realize you haven’t lived your life in a while. You’ve lived in a chaotic world you’ve created.
And you didn’t even realize you did it.
